Bureaucrats not sure if scathing report of terror tool released to authorities

A senior bureaucrat says she does not believe her department has released a scathing report into an assessment tool used to evaluate the risk of terror offenders to state authorities who have been relying on it.

ABC TV video still of self-styled Islamic radical Abdul Nacer Benbrika (aka Abu Bakr) during an interview with ABC-TV at his home in Melbourne.

A senior bureaucrat in the Attorney-General’s Department said her division first knew about a report that criticised the assessment tool used to deem Abdul Nacer Benbrika a continued terrorism risk in November 2022, but agrees it was a “live issue” at least four months earlier in April.

Security and counter-terrorism first assistant secretary Brooke Hartigan made the comments in the Victorian Supreme Court on the third day of Benbrika’s trial, in which he is challenging an order that is keeping him in prison after serving his sentence of 15 years. “(We) became aware of the Corner report on 10 November,” Ms Hartigan said.

Asked if the department had disclosed the report to authorities in NSW who had relied on it in high-risk terrorism cases since becoming aware of the report, she said: “I don’t believe we have.”

Ms Hartigan agreed that previously the Home Affairs Department was responsible for the report.

Asked if they had disclosed it to NSW authorities, she responded: “No, I am not aware.”

Under cross-examination, Ms Hartigan was asked by Benbrika’s counsel Dan Star KC if she was “aware now the Department of Home Affairs knew from at least April 2022 that the Corner report was a live issue with the (Independent National Security Legislation Monitor)”.

“Yes,” she responded.

Judge Elizabeth Hollingworth previously has said the court had been given no adequate explanation for why the government had failed to disclose the report by academic Emily Corner, who found there was no evidence VERA-2R – the primary tool used in Australia to determine whether a terrorist posed an ongoing risk – was effective.

Benbrika has served 15 years in prison and was made to serve an extra three under a continuing detention order that is set to end in December.

His lawyers say the Attorney-General’s Department is attempting to have harsher conditions placed on him via an extended supervision order – which would see him released into the community – if he is freed from jail when the detention order lapses.

To make matters more complicated, Benbrika is challenging a decision made by Home Affairs Minister Clare O’Neil to cancel his ex-citizen visa.

The effect of that is he immediately will be placed in immigration detention if it is revoked and moved to Long Bay prison in NSW.