Premier announces new laws to protect NSW police if they shoot-to-kill terrorists
PREMIER Gladys Berejiklian announced today NSW Police will be legally protected if they shoot a terrorist dead under new laws to be introduced by the end of the month.
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NSW POLICE will be legally protected if they shoot a terrorist dead under new laws to be introduced by the end of the month.
Premier Gladys Berejiklian has announced that her government has accepted and supports all recommendations made by Coroner Michael Barnes following the Lindt Cafe siege inquest.
Asked whether the proposed changes would have allowed a sniper to take out Man Monis during the Lindt siege, Police Commissioner Mick Fuller said “absolutely”.
Ms Berejiklian said the law would be the “strongest in the nation” and stressed that public safety would always come first.
“As we have seen as recently as this week in Melbourne and on the weekend with the cowardly, evil acts in London, we need to be ever-vigilant to the emerging and evolving risks of terrorism,” Ms Berejiklian said.
“I don’t want the Police Commissioner in any doubt as to his ability to call it as he sees fit,” she said.
The Commissioner will have to make the call as to whether to declare an incident a terrorist incident, which triggers the new shoot-to-kill provision.
Mr Fuller said there was currently a “grey area”.
The Commissioner also said the public order and riot squad would have access to long arms by the end of the year, describing the move as a “measured response”.
“They won’t be carrying them for every operation they do,” he said.
He did not believe that general duties officers needed to be armed with the weapons, given the state faced a different terror threat to nations where that was the case.
Mr Fuller said the changes would allow an individual sniper to make a decision about whether to take the shot once a terrorist incident had been declared.
“It’s when you get in a situation where, like with Lindt, you have a sniper sitting 300m away looking through a scope ... at the moment, they have to determine within their own mind that they have the legal ability to use lethal force,” he said.
“I mean, it’s just impossible to make that decision with any certainty. And if there’s uncertainty, you can understand an officer would hesitate.”
While he said the new laws could have been used during the Lindt siege, he again noted how difficult it would have been for the sniper to shoot Monis.
“The sniper option was not the best option because they were shooting through glass into glass with a high-powered rifle and there was no guarantee of where the bullet would go,” he said.
“So notionally yes, it is a piece of legislation that certainly could have been used in that situation but I still think that environment was a very challenging one for a sniper.”
Mr Fuller also gave an example of when the Australian Defence Force would be called out to help with a terror situation.
“If you had five or six Lindt Cafes happening at once, clearly I would be on the phone through the Premier ... calling Defence out to assist,” he said.
Following this morning’s Cabinet meeting, the Premier said that “NSW will continue to have the toughest counter-terror laws in the country”.
The legislation will be introduced next sitting week.
This come as Tony Abbott expressed fears yesterday of over-protective ministers getting in the way of plans to set up a homeland security-style counter-terrorism office in Australia.
The idea has been floating around for years, with some suggesting Immigration Minister Peter Dutton wants to lead the super-agency.
The former prime minister said he could see an argument for a Home Office-type situation in Australia, now and when he was in power.
“What we don’t want is to see turf-protecting ministers getting in the way of the best possible counter-terrorism arrangements,” Mr Abbott said yesterday on Radio 2GB.
“That’s what I fear that, in the end, we might end up with sub-optimal arrangements because some ministers start protecting their turf.”
Asked why Malcolm Turnbull hadn’t gone ahead with it, Mr Abbott replied, “That’s a good question.”
The backbencher echoed British Prime Minister Theresa May’s comment that “enough is enough” when it comes to fighting extremists.
They have effectively declared war and have to be treated as enemies — not simply misguided individuals who deserve compassion.
“These are our enemy and they need to be dealt with much more severely,” he said.
He said it was critical that vetting of immigrants be up-scaled from when Labor was in power, adding that it was right and proper for authorities to look long and hard at people who want to come into the country.
“The last thing we want is people coming into our country who don’t like us and might in some cases want to do us harm.”
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