On 11 November, Prime Minister Scott Morrison spoke out against religious extremism because of its link to terrorism and violence. Opposition to his statement was swift, including from federal Labor MP Anne Aly, a former academic researcher into violent extremism and a Muslim. Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton later rebuked Aly by name for denying that violent extremism in the Muslim community was a problem when she has spent decades researching it.

Aly is correct in at least one respect. The Australian government doesn’t seem able to deliver the right nuance on the difference between religious extremism and terrorism. Religious extremism takes many forms. Most extremist religious views do not espouse violence, but all create troubling political manifestations because they are, well, extreme.

In countries that are committed to the absolute human right, freedom of conscience, extremism is a human right. Extremism is not a crime. And government leaders in these liberal democratic countries must be able to distinguish between extremism and criminal terrorist activities.

Morrison called out ‘radical, violent, extremist Islam’. That is a fair comment. His subsequent comment went too far by calling out ‘religious extremism’ and the ‘radical and dangerous ideology of extremist Islam’. The prime minister made these statements while claiming he’s ‘the first to protect religious freedom’, citing his knowledge of the lessons of history.

This is important because too many Australian citizens can’t make the necessary subtle distinction and as a result incubate hostile sentiments towards anyone with extremist views. That includes extremist Jews, extremist Sikhs, and extremist Christians.

‘The question is not whether we will be extremists, but what kind of extremists we will be. Will we be extremists for hate or for love? Will we be extremists for the preservation of injustice or for the extension of justice?’ So said Martin Luther King in a letter from Birmingham jail in Alabama in 1963. He observed that Jesus had been crucified for the crime of extremism. As scholars Jamie Bartlett and Carl Miller wrote in 2011 on the difference between terrorism and extremism, ‘to be radical is merely to reject the status quo’.

In April 2017, Russia’s Supreme Court decided that the Jehovah’s Witnesses were an extremist organisation. As Tim Rymel wrote in the Huffington Post in commenting on that development and extremism in the broad sense, ‘Any religion that denies the value and humanity of others is an extremist religion.’ As an evangelical preacher, a ‘Dad’ and a survivor of gay conversion therapy, he went on to say: ‘Whether those actions lead to direct harm, or simply reduce protections through legislation, extremist ideology seeks to create one class that is believed to be more valued than another.’ He warned that the ‘grandstanding that fundamentalist Christians have done since marriage equality passed in 2015 [in the United States] has created a growing, and disturbing trend toward extremist Christianity’.

Bartlett and Miller concluded from their research that religion is just one of the elements that pushes someone to terrorist action: ‘[I]n addition to being an intellectual, rational, and religious decision, becoming a terrorist is also an emotional, social, and status-conscious one.’

In my own research on violent extremism and terrorism, conducted in universities and think tanks in Europe over a decade, I formed the view that failure to understand the distinction between radical and terrorist motivation makes it more difficult to spot the real terrorists. It also makes choices about appropriate responses more difficult. By blurring terrorists into their broader and peaceful radicalised community, enforcement agencies actually take a softer view of enforcement than they should. By treating the non-violent radicalised community as the threat and as the enemy, enforcement agencies lose focus on their highest priority targets.

That is the mentality in play that sees the Australian government cancel the passport of someone who declares himself for violence in 2015 in the name of religion, Hassan Khalif Shire Ali, only to allow that person fall off the watch list for future violence.

Radicals and religious radicalism are not the enemy. The only enemy is people who declare for violence or who lean towards violence.

In defeating terrorists, the Islamic community is definitely an ally of the government and ASIO. They are, almost certainly, a primary source of ASIO information. But in looking for allies, the government needs also to look to academics, like Anne Aly. Prime Minister Morrison could usefully revisit the work of social scientists and ethicists in our country and internationally on what religious extremism actually is in order to better contain the terrorists.

In the aftermath of Friday’s Bourke Street terror attack, many Australians will be asking why the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation and the Australian Federal Police weren’t watching murderer Hassan Khalif Shire Ali.

Some Australians are no doubt bewildered that the authorities had cancelled Ali’s passport three years earlier on suspicion he was travelling to fight in a foreign conflict, but weren’t surveilling him 24/7.

Others will be wondering why Ali wasn’t a priority counterterrorism target given he had familial links with the group arrested for the 2016 Federation Square terror plot.

So why wasn’t Ali being monitored?

Without perfect foresight, ASIO and the AFP need to use more conventional and resource-intensive methods of monitoring counterterrorism targets.

This is a difficult task given that the Australian government is currently managing more than 400 high-risk onshore counterterrorism targets. To maintain continuous 24-hour physical surveillance on one of these target requires at least 12 staff. To physically surveil all of the top-400 priority targets 24/7 would require more than 4,800 staff on any given day.

Let’s not forget that even our security officials need days off, and on occasions get sick, so the AFP and ASIO would collectively require closer to 6,000 surveillance officers to manage the task.

Of course, ASIO and the AFP could use hi-tech surveillance capabilities like tracking and listening devices. However, that sort of equipment still needs to be monitored 24/7. So arguably they’d need at least 1,200 staff per day to keep track of the top-400 priority targets.

The point here is that it’s simply not possible to continuously monitor Australia’s top counterterrorism targets, let alone the thousands of other persons of interest who are linked to them. So ASIO and the AFP must prioritise their efforts, based on assessments of the capability and intent of each target to undertake an attack.

Recent terrorist attacks, like that in Bourke Street, reveal that would-be terrorists don’t need to have sophisticated capabilities to maim and murder. And contemporary research shows that a person’s intent to undertake an attack can rapidly change. So assessing the risk presented by each target is not an easy task.

Following Ali’s passport cancellation, both the AFP and ASIO would have undertaken a risk assessment.

The AFP would have sought to find evidence that Ali was planning an attack. It appears that there was no evidence to indicate that he was.

ASIO would have been looking for intelligence to suggest that Ali was a threat. Again, it would appear that there was no available information to suggest that he was of intelligence concern.

Just because someone is suspected of wanting to fight in a conflict in the Middle East doesn’t necessarily mean they’ll try a terrorist attack in Australia. Authorities have cancelled more than 240 Australian passports of suspected foreign fighters in recent years; few have been later implicated in terror plots.

It would appear that Ali was not assessed as a high risk in terms of his capability or intent to undertake a terror attack.

Ali’s alleged estrangement from his family, use of illicit drugs, and recent separation from his wife did indicate a troubling decline in his personal circumstances. Neither ASIO nor the AFP has the resources to monitor changes in personal circumstances for the thousands of counterterrorism persons of interest. It is here where those close to Ali—his family, friends or iman—may have made all the difference. However, to be fair, it’s always easy to second guess after the fact.

The public should rest assured that over the coming weeks and months the AFP and ASIO will be reviewing the decisions made with respect to Ali’s case management. They’ll be trying to determine whether they missed anything, or if there are systemic weaknesses in their risk-management approach. This will be cold comfort to the victims of this cowardly attack.

However, we should be very cautious about rapidly introducing any new counterterrorism measures in response to a single incident. On numerous occasions, ASIO’s director-general, Duncan Lewis, has gone to great lengths to reiterate that the national terrorism threat level remains at ‘probable’. And he cannot provide complete assurances that he can stop all attacks.

But the news isn’t all bleak. We should take heart that Australia has enjoyed great success in disrupting attacks, though the threat remains. The Bourke Street attack has proven that our police and emergency service personnel are up to the task. And those managing these capabilities continue to have them prepositioned to respond to incidents within minutes.

Recent reporting in News Limited papers suggests that the government is considering reorganising several domestic security agencies into a super department like the UK Home Office. The aim would be to ‘bring together the AFP, ASIO and Australian Border Force into one agency, where they could better engage, communicate and share information to tackle terror threats.’ Malcolm Turnbull was said to be consulting with senior ministers and awaiting the findings of the 2017 Independent Review of the Australian Intelligence Community before making any changes. ‘Just do it, Mr Turnbull,’ The Herald Sun editorialised.

In fact reports of a major reorganisation are exaggerated and it’s unlikely that big structural changes will be made. However the terror threat is constantly changing and there’s no room for complacency when it comes to making sure our agencies, intelligence, policing and legal frameworks are the best they can be to prevent attacks. The PM is rightly setting a high threshold before making any changes.

The idea of amalgamating agencies into a Homeland Security Department or Home Office isn’t new. Under a different Prime Minister the thought was floated publicly towards the end of 2014. David Connery and I wrote an ASPI Strategic Insights paper that set out the pros and cons of changing ministerial arrangements for domestic security. The case for major structural changes to domestic security arrangements is no more persuasive today than it was two years ago. I see five compelling reasons to avoid big organisational change:

1. The system isn’t broken

There’s good reason to think that our police, intelligence and domestic security agencies are performing their counterterrorism responsibilities well. That’s certainly the Prime Minister’s view—following the arrests of alleged terrorist plotters in Melbourne in December 2016, Mr Turnbull said that the operation ‘speaks volumes for the competence and professionalism of our police and security agencies which are the best in the world.’ Between September 2014 and late December 2016 there were 12 successful major disruption activities; 57 people had been charged as a result of 25 counterterrorism operations. Most countries would be happy with that record. In fact a search on the PM’s website reveals that he’s described Australia’s national security agencies as the ‘best in the world’ no less than 16 time since becoming prime minister. So what problem is a Home Office designed to fix?

2. A single agency doesn’t fix communication problems

It’s tempting to imagine that a single agency will more easily engage, communicate and share information, but unless the plan is to physically collocate the agencies those tasks will be no easier than what happens right now. Intelligence agencies and police forces have strong cultures built around their professional disciplines and won’t easily bend to social engineering that promotes a surface-deep ‘one team’ approach to complex problems. As we’ve seen with recent attempts to undertake major structural changes to institutions—amalgamating Customs/Border Force and Immigration; pushing AusAID back into DFAT, and Defence’s First Principles Review—big organisational changes are difficult to achieve, slow and prone to recidivism. And again, what’s the problem here? Communications can always be improved, but our domestic security agencies had their come-to-Jesus moment about inter-agency cooperation after the Bali bombings.

3. Building new structures doesn’t guarantee behavioural change

Agencies going through big organisational change programs rapidly become obsessed with internal problems and risk losing focus on delivering key outputs. Defence’s First Principles Review starts by listing the 35 significant reviews the Department has been through since 1975. Few reviews after Tange in 1975 changed any real behaviour. Government shouldn’t visit the same blight on the internal security agencies unless they’re convinced that there’s something fundamentally broken in the system. Beyond counterterrorism our internal security agencies have responsibility for a range of activities from fighting crime to counterespionage. With any organisational redesign will come a time-consuming rewrite of reporting responsibilities, authorities and legal frameworks—none of which should be started lightly.

4. Reorganisations can mask the need for deeper reform

While administrators go about the business of developing implementation programs—drawing up traffic light indicators to map progress and writing talking points for Estimates Committee hearings—it’s often the case that deep reform in the form of cultural change doesn’t happen. If there’s a problem about communication and information-sharing between national security agencies, it has more to do with the ingrained habits about ‘how we do things around here’—the formal and informal culture of the organisations. Of course, it’s hard for change-managers to alter workplace behaviours, which is why one can live through constant organisational redesign and actually see little real change.

5. In counterterrorism, let’s keep the focus on operational delivery

A senior ADF colleague used to dryly observe that most major Defence reform plans had little effect 100 metres beyond the Headquarters compound at Russell Hill. It was true that, for all of the hours spent sweating over organisational redesign, the work seemed to have little impact on operations in Timor-Leste, Afghanistan and elsewhere. The essential task in counterterrorism is to keep delivering effective disruption operations. Organisational restructurings will garner limited interest outside of those who imagine some career win or loss—often the real bureaucratic motivation for wanting change in the first place.

While it’s unlikely that a major reorganisation of agencies will take place, the government should consider whether ministerial roles and responsibilities need to be adapted to better manage counterterrorism policy. The challenge here is that significant numbers of ministers have responsibilities for different agencies relevant to the job. One possibility would be to create a counterterrorism sub-committee of the National Security Committee of Cabinet. Or, like the Indonesians, a senior minister could be given the responsibility of being Coordination Minister for Counterterrorism. There’s a precedent here: although not using the title, Dan Tehan has effectively become the Coordination Minister for Cyber Security.

Australia set up a domestic security and spy-catching service to secure intelligence access to the US and Britain. Without the service—the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation—the formal alliance with the US might not have happened. If the crown jewels of Australian defence are the intelligence-sharing arrangements with the US, then ASIO was created to protect the jewels.

Indeed, ASIO’s creation story (1948-49) is founded on the growing panic in Canberra that the US and Britain were refusing to pass confidential information to Australia. Washington and London had discovered, via signals intercepts, that secrets given to Canberra flowed to the Soviet Union. The Brits thought that if Australia didn’t act on security London would have to ‘watch our secrets pour down the drain’ in Canberra. Read more