Security agencies join the terror fight

Top security officials will today hold an urgent meeting to brief ministers on Australia’s response to the Christchurch terror attack.

Australia’s top national security officials will today hold an urgent meeting to brief ministers on Australia’s response to Friday’s terrorist attack in Christchurch, offering a review of the threat posed by right-wing extremists.

With the death toll from the live-streamed mass murder of Muslim worshippers, allegedly carried out by Australian Brenton Tarrant, rising to 50, ASIO director general Duncan Lewis and Australian Federal Police Commissioner Andrew Colvin will ­address a special meeting of the ­National Security Committee of Cabinet.

While Scott Morrison has received regular security updates since ­Friday, today’s meeting will be the first ministerial gathering to consider the attack and possible responses.

The move came as New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said her cabinet would consider tough new gun laws today, and also whether the country’s watch list and security co-operation with other countries was adequate.

“We need to make sure we look more broadly at the work of our agencies,” Ms Ardern said yesterday, as she highlighted a “global surge” in extremist activity.

The New Zealand cabinet is ­expected to ban assault weapons of the type used in the mosque ­attacks, amid reports that gun shops were doing a roaring trade before the expected crackdown.

“We cannot be deterred from the work we need to do on our gun laws in New Zealand,” Ms Adern said. “They need to change, regardless of what activity may or may not have happened with gun retailers.”

Former NSW Police Force deputy commissioner and now senior fellow at the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, Nick Kaldas, said law enforcement agencies had not done enough to monitor the growth of right-wing extremists.

“It has been clear for some years that there is a lot of activity in the right-wing group space,’’ Mr Kaldas told The Australian. “Law enforcement generally is not as aware of these groups as some in the intelligence community.

“It’s incumbent on authorities now that the threat has become so visible that they change tack and dedicate more resources to monitoring that type of group.’’

Mr Lewis and Mr Colvin are ­expected to provide an overview on the current situation, both in Australia and in New Zealand, and provide an update on the groups and individuals ASIO is monitoring. Among the concerns ASIO is expected to raise at the Melbourne meeting is the prospect of retaliatory attacks or the possibility the Christchurch attack could provoke discord within the Muslim community.

The discovery of another murder victim in the Al Noor mosque in Christchurch bought the death toll to 50, Police Commissioner Mike Bush revealed yesterday.

Another 36 wounded remain in Christchurch Hospital, 12 in intensive care, while a four-year-old girl in a critical condition was flown to Auckland.

As graves were dug for the 50 victims ahead of the release of bodies by authorities due to start last night, new accounts of the horror allegedly inflicted by ­Tarrant emerged.

One woman told how her eldest son rang her from one of the mosques during the shooting, ­reporting his brother had been shot in the leg, and was then shot dead himself, screaming, as she listened.

Mr Bush indicated his officers believe three others arrested on Friday were not involved in the ­attack on the two mosques, and that this was a lone-wolf attack.

The background of Tarrant, who grew up in the northern NSW town of Grafton, is now the subject of a major investigation, here and in New Zealand.

The NSW Joint Counter Terrorism Team is investigating ­Tarrant’s life in Australia, and whether he had any links to local far-right groups. So far neither New Zealand or Australian authorities have uncovered any evidence Tarrant acted in concert or with the knowledge of others.

Sources contacted by The Australian pointed out that Tarrant left Australia in 2014, returning only sporadically.

The activities of right-wing ­extremist groups have long been a concern to ASIO and police, however the threat they posed has been dwarfed by the threat of ­Islamic State-inspired terrorism.

National security sources contacted by The Australian said right-wing groups are generally smaller, less organised and more fractured than Islamist terrorist organisations. Much of what they do is also in public, with the ­emphasis being on marches and inflammatory comment.

Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton said his agencies “swung in to action from the moment this atrocity was committed”. “Our agencies have been closely monitoring extremist individuals and organisations before this event and that will continue. The right-wing extremists have always been on ASIO’s radar,’’ he said.

The New Zealand government and the police came under some pressure to answer questions about the adequacy of the police response, including whether a veiled warning in the form of Tarrant’s white supremacist manifesto sent to Ms Ardern minutes before the attack was acted upon.

“I was one of more than 30 ­recipients of the manifesto that was mailed out in nine minutes before the attack took place,” Ms Ardern said.

“It did not include a location, it did not include specific details. I am advised that within two minutes of its receipt at my office it was conveyed directly to parliamentary security.”

Dismissing any suggestions Tarrant could be extradited to Australia for trial, Ms Ardern said “he will certainly face justice in New Zealand”.

Mr Bush rejected any suggestion police were slow to act, saying the first officers arrived six minutes after the first emergency call, and members of the armed ­offenders squad were at the mosque four minutes after that.

“Within 36 minutes we had that mobile offender in our custody,” he said, referring to the ­dramatic ramming of the suspect’s vehicle and his arrest by armed ­officers.

Additional reporting: Ean Higgins