Yet another terror attack. In this case, though, quite a lot is different.

It is the first such attack suffered by New Zealand—a hitherto relatively peaceful multicultural society far from the usual ‘hotspots’ of terrorist attacks. Australia had the Lindt Café siege in December 2014 and the murder of NSW Police accountant Curtis Cheng—but nothing (thankfully) on the scale of the Christchurch massacre. Larger-scale attacks were planned but they were thwarted by the authorities before they could be carried out.

In addition, this massacre was live-streamed on social media by the perpetrator, Brenton Tarrant, a 28-year-old Australian citizen, who may well have chosen New Zealand for his evidently well-planned and horrifyingly well-resourced rampage because of Australia’s stricter gun controls.

While relatively little is known about Tarrant’s personal background, especially his early life and psychological development, more will no doubt come to light.

Given the paucity of information available at this time, I’m reluctant to speculate on Tarrant’s mindset for fear of muddying the waters for future appropriate professional and forensic assessment of his reasons for committing this atrocity.

And while those such as the Islamic State terror group have used the internet to broadcast beheadings and other atrocities, the live streaming seems to be something new in this region. So, too, is the wakeup call it is offering to our leaders about the too-ready availability of the internet for propagation of hateful material of many kinds.

It’s not news to us that the internet is an anarchic zone. But has it been so evident before that there’s a considerable appetite among the world’s internet users for content of this nature: murder as it is being committed? Tarrant knew he had an audience only too eager to gobble up what he was filming. It’s estimated that the video was accessed some millions of times before the social media platforms took action and prevented further viewings. Many hundreds of thousands of copies reportedly ‘escaped’ before the attempted restrictions were applied.

We can imagine that there’s a willing audience for this type of offensive material, just as there’s a willing market for the purveyors of pornography. But for millions to have sucked up, in such a brief time, this live-streamed slaughter of innocent individuals beggars belief.

We, as a society, need to try to understand the minds of the perpetrators and the minds of those to whom the perpetrators are playing. It’s pointless to supply if there is no demand. It is coming to light that, in Australia alone, there are many far-right extremist groups with, likely, hundreds of thousands of members who lean towards, if not actively support, the ideologies espoused by Tarrant in his ‘manifesto’.

That document will likely offer clues to Tarrant’s state of mind—but it will also provide clues about his intended audience.

Comparisons have been drawn with the 32-year-old Norwegian Anders Breivik, who slaughtered 77 victims in a well-planned massacre in July 2011. He, too, published a manifesto, as did the infamous ‘Unabomber’, Ted Kaczynski, in June 1995. Breivik and Kaczynski have been the subjects of extensive psychoanalytic assessment at a distance (as have many of history’s infamous mass murderers), because rarely is there a genuine opportunity to attempt psychoanalytic exploration of such individuals’ minds—they will be either unwilling participants in such a venture or dead. Nevertheless, Tarrant could afford such an opportunity if the task were to be appropriately approached.

The greater challenge is for humanity is to acknowledge that we comprise a broad range of individuals, from the compassionate, civic-minded ones who respond to these tragedies with such inclusive and caring responses as Sydney saw during and after the Lindt Cafe siege and Christchurch has seen this week, to the divisive, exclusionary, hate-filled ones who are in evidence in alt-right and other demonstrations in recent times.

And it would not be reasonable to omit to mention the parliamentary legislatures in Australia, in the United Kingdom and in the United States for examples of both Islamophobia and anti-Semitism, while in Middle Eastern countries it’s not uncommon to hear calls for the deaths of ‘the Great Satan’ (the US) and ‘the Little Satan’ (Israel).

Extremist hatreds abound, and they are not confined to the left or the right.

The challenge for governments everywhere is to endeavour to manage these extreme manifestations of psychological issues which affect us all but which all too often erupt into significant violence on both verbal and physical scales. The time has come to rethink the balance of civil liberties and freedom of speech in the marketplace against populations’ rights to safety.

We will need to look into our own minds, as well as those of the perpetrators, to achieve this balance.

The most substantial changes to gun laws are those made in response to public demand for tighter controls in the aftermath of massacres such as the terrorist killings in Christchurch.

But reactive policy, particularly in a highly charged environment, can be fraught and New Zealand can learn valuable lessons from Australia’s experience.

The news that the Christchurch attacker held a gun licence and his weapons included modified semi-automatic firearms has sensibly led Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern to overhaul New Zealand’s firearms regime.

Australia’s system of firearms regulation is regarded internationally as an effective and common-sense approach. The national policy framework came into being immediately after the 1996 Port Arthur attack in Tasmania, which left 35 people dead and 23 injured. There’d been previous attacks in Melbourne, both in 1987—in Hoddle Street with seven fatalities and Queen Street, in which nine died, including the attacker.

The system isn’t one national law, but rather a federal arrangement between the states and territories and the Commonwealth. The 1996 National Firearms Agreement coordinates this approach. Notably, work on a national framework had been proposed before Port Arthur, but didn’t go ahead because Tasmania didn’t support it.

Australia’s approach is about regulation not prohibition. While the system is famously strong, it doesn’t prohibit access to firearms or even semi-automatic weapons, but manages access and use. The states and territories use a system of categories based on an individual having a ‘genuine reason’ for having a firearm, which then denotes that category of licence that may be issued. These categories in turn limit the type of firearm that may be used.

Separate from this is the mechanism governing procurement of a firearm, which includes a permit process, cooling-off periods in some states if the applicant doesn’t already have a firearm in that category, limits to the numbers allowed, and strict guidelines for storage and handling, which are actively monitored. All of this is managed by state and territory police. Depending on the licence sought, evidence is required to confirm the genuine reason, and this is regulated by each state, within nationally consistent principles.

Genuine reasons for having a licence and owning firearms include target shooting, managing feral animals (which farmers are required to do), hunting, and controlling vermin. The final category, being a professional shooter, is very difficult to access. It entitles the licensee to have centre-fire semi-automatic rifles but only for use in a business that’s primarily focused on shooting feral animals and which has a standing contract to provide the service.

The regulation of firearms, particularly high-powered and rapid-fire weapons, has had a mixed impact on firearm ownership and firearms-related deaths in Australia. The number of legally owned firearms is estimated to be more than triple what it was before 1996. But authorities have better control and visibility of the legal firearms environment.

Most firearms-related deaths in Australia continue to involve illegally obtained and unregistered guns. Like in New Zealand, the majority of such killings are carried out by organised crime networks or within families, and that has remained the case since the introduction of the 1996 regime provided oversight and regulation of legitimate ownership and use. The main issues now are the illegal importation of firearms, ammunition and accessories, and black-market sales of unregistered weapons.

For counterterrorism authorities, the focus of concern is the connection between organised criminals importing illegal firearms and the possibility of those weapons being available to terrorists.

The difficulty in legitimately accessing semi-automatic firearms appears to have limited or delayed attacks by some right-wing and Islamist terrorist plotters. Notably, those who planned mass casualty attacks using firearms, bladed weapons and improvised explosive devices on Melbourne targets on Christmas Eve in 2016 reportedly could not get weapons lawfully and also had difficulty buying firearms on the black market. That was not the case with those who murdered police accountant Curtis Cheng in Parramatta in 2015. None held firearms licences but they illegally obtained a .38 revolver and ammunition. Similarly, the shotgun used in the Lindt Café siege in 2014 came from the black market.

It’s of great concern, however, that a 2017 NSW investigation uncovered direct links between illegal firearms activity and terrorism. Just a few weeks before the Sydney plot to bomb an airliner was discovered, two men with known terrorist links were charged with illegally supplying firearms.

Transnational serious and organised crime groups are heavily active in Australia and New Zealand, and our large maritime borders make this trade difficult to manage.

The bottom line, based on Australia’s experience, is that revised firearms regulation will help regulate legitimate use, but it will not remove the threat of gun crimes.

For New Zealand, the most important first step is to identify exactly what happened in Christchurch and to find gaps in existing laws, policy or practices to assess what needs to change. A broader review of issues with firearms regulation is also needed. Like Australia, New Zealand has recent policy work to draw upon.

Some of the lessons from Australia’s experience that the New Zealand government might wish to consider include enhancing its licensing regime to include categories of legitimate purpose. These purposes could be linked to ownership of different classes of firearms.

Noting reports that the alleged attacker held a New Zealand firearms licence, citizenship requirements might also be examined.

There’d need to be regular reviews of licensing and ownership and registries of licensees and firearms, which could be shared appropriately with Australian jurisdictions.

The New Zealand authorities need to engage closely with their relevant farming and sporting bodies to understand their legitimate interests and needs.

Additional resources should be focused on investigating importation and sale of firearms and ammunition by transnational serious and organised crime groups.

There’s an opportunity for New Zealand and Australia to increase their already significant collaboration on counterterrorism and policing. New Zealand sits with the Australian government and the states and territories on the Australia New Zealand Counter-Terrorism Committee, which jointly manages legislative and other approaches to counterterrorism.

It would make sense for New Zealand to engage with Australian jurisdictions in a standing body that collaboratively looks at firearms regulation and other firearms issues, such as the relationship with organised crime. The standing Australasian Police Ministers’ Council, of which New Zealand is already a member, and subordinate police commissioners’ meeting would be appropriate.

In an earlier post, we argued that with the forging of the Turnbull government’s Home Affairs portfolio, the time was right to question the policy assumptions underpinning Australia’s domestic security strategies. And with that, we explored the effects of the conflation of policing and law enforcement. With the launch of ASPI’s Counterterrorism Yearbook 2018, we now examine how increased cooperation between law enforcement and intelligence agencies in Australia may be—unintentionally—securitising policing and undermining its independence.

Australia’s law enforcement and intelligence communities have historically evolved and operated in fundamentally dissimilar ways. Each community has had different legal authorities, internal modes of organisation and governing paradigms.

Prior to 11 September 2001, Australia’s counterterrorism (CT) apparatus had a much lower public profile. Many state, territory and Commonwealth agencies had CT responsibilities, but for the most part the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO) was Canberra’s lead agency on the issue.

Putting aside the absurd claims that Australia is becoming a ‘police state’, terror threats since 11 September have served as a catalyst for greater cooperation between police and intelligence officials.

Australia’s current CT policy framework ensures that ASIO still has a loud voice and much influence on Canberra’s strategy setting and operational decision-making. That said, law enforcement contributions—by the AFP and other agencies—are highly valued by the government and policymakers alike. However, the commitment to Team Australia ‘jointness’—the Coalition government’s catch cry for a collaborative policy space—may be homogenising the policy voices.

Despite Australia’s long history of separate police and intelligence communities, it would be false to claim that policing is far removed from CT intelligence operations. Consider the use of control orders, preventative detention and warrantless searches of private property. Certainly these laws haven’t been widely used since 2005: control orders have been used six times, preventative detention has never been used federally and, as far as we know, no warrantless search has ever been conducted.

Arguably, extraordinary powers such as these should be considered the tools of intelligence agencies like ASIO, which use them sparingly to disrupt the most serious of threats. That leaves aside delayed notification search warrants and preventative detention orders, which fall under the jurisdiction of the Australian Federal Police (AFP). But now there are more than a few police who’d like to be able to use these extraordinary powers to pursue transnational organised crime targets.

The increasingly closer policing and intelligence CT relationship is manifest elsewhere in Australia’s security and intelligence architecture. Firstly, the Office of National Intelligence will have greater coordination responsibilities for strategy and capability development across Australia’s intelligence and security agencies than the Office of National Assessments ever had. Its coordination remit will likely include at least some oversight of the intelligence collection functions of other agencies such as the AFP. That architecture lends itself to continuing the trend of mainstreaming law enforcement into national security.

Secondly, the shifting of the CT mandate from the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Law Enforcement (PJCLE) to the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security (PJCIS) speaks to the overlap of policing with national security.

The PJCLE was established in 2010 to monitor and review the performance of the AFP. The PJCIS was established by the Intelligence Services Act 2001 and reviews the administration, activities and expenditure of Australia’s security architecture, including ASIO.

In 2014, the Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security recommended that its oversight mandate be extended to include the AFP’s CT functions. The recommendation came after the government introduced the Counter-Terrorism Legislation Amendment (Foreign Fighters) Bill 2014. The committee emphasised that the extension of its oversight powers would be additional to—rather than a substitute for—those of the Joint Committee on Law Enforcement. But the government conferred all oversight authority for the AFP’s CT functions—that is, those that fall under Section 5.3 of the criminal code—from the law enforcement committee to the intelligence and security committee.

This conferral of authority hasn’t been without controversy. The PJCIS clearly has a legitimate interest in the CT activities of the AFP. But, placing the AFP’s CT activities within the remit of the PJCIS jeopardises public perceptions of police independence in matters of security policy, strategy and operations.

Inevitably the AFP’s CT activities overlap with the functions of other Commonwealth law enforcement agencies, as well as those of state and territory police forces. While not a new phenomenon, the overlap between the AFP and intelligence agencies like ASIO has also increased, and is now more accurately described as a collaboration. This has been a major factor in blurring the lines of parliamentary oversight responsibilities. This conflation of law enforcement with CT activities threatens to further securitise Australia’s police.

The AFP’s international police-to-police cooperation programs have always been underpinned by a global understanding that the agency was neither an intelligence agency nor a security service. At the very least, the PJCIS arrangement has undermined the strength of this argument.

In the short term the simplest way to reinforce the independence of Australia’s police is to transfer the oversight responsibility for CT back to the PJCLE. At the very least, this should be done for the law enforcement elements. This would serve to reiterate that CT isn’t an existential threat to Australia’s domestic security, and that our police aren’t part of our security apparatus.

In the longer term, consideration needs to be given to whether the role of the PJCLE ought to be expanded to focus on oversight of Australia’s home affairs arrangements more broadly.

Throughout 2017, peace and security across North Africa were threatened by Salafi-jihadi terrorism, armed conflict, poor governance and porous borders. Nations across the Maghreb continued to pursue independent counterterrorism (CT) efforts, without much development of multilateral regional CT initiatives.

Some states, such as Tunisia and Morocco, are clearly doing better than others. On the other hand, Egypt suffered the second-highest number of attacks in the Maghreb in 2017, just behind Libya. The attack in Bir al-Abd on the Sinai peninsula in November 2017 was the most lethal in Egypt’s modern history, with over 300 fatalities.

The Egyptian government’s heavy-handed response to terrorism has had demonstrably negative effects on national security. Measures range from extended police powers during ‘state-of-emergency’ periods to restricted freedom of expression, unlawful detention and capital punishment.

These methods haven’t demonstrated to citizens that the government’s capable of securing and stabilising the country. Instead, coercive tactics have consolidated existing grievances and left whole communities vulnerable to radicalisation by violent extremists.

While IS remains a concern—particularly in the Sinai—other groups are emerging. A relatively new group called Hasm (Determination) has executed lethal attacks on security personnel and the Grand Mufti, and at Myanmar’s embassy in Cairo. It’s target choices indicate that its unlikely to be aligned with IS, which indiscriminately targets citizens.

Militants also operate on the borders with Libya to the west and with the Gaza Strip to the east, which remain sources of instability and insecurity because of long-standing socio-political grievances, low levels of governance and established crime–terror networks.

Elsewhere in the region, Salafi-jihadi groups continue to operate with force, particularly in Libya. The Middle East Institute suggests that there are five main groups currently operating there, as well as other, smaller militant cells or affiliates in the shadows. A range of non-state actors have filled the political vacuum in the absence of an effective government.

Although Libya’s competing governing factions—the UN-backed Government of National Accord (GNA) and General Haftar’s Libyan National Army (LNA)—have had some  success in curbing IS in Libya, there’s no long-term CT strategy in place. IS’s territorial strongholds have been lost, and their military capabilities have been severely rolled back, but it’s likely that the group may be reorganising and regrouping. And it and other militant groups remain resilient, active and operational in various pockets across the country.

Therefore, Libya’s governing forces should be prepared for a continued IS insurgency carrying out sustained, low-scale guerrilla attacks.

While analysts predict that IS will likely be defeated in Algeria—owing to its sparse membership and lack of structured leadership—it’s thought that al-Qaeda’s regional branch, AQIM, continues to enjoy solid support and influence. AQIM has demonstrated considerable durability—it’s been in operation in the region since 2007 and retains around 500 members.

AQIM could capitalise on the structural dismantling of the IS caliphate by recruiting militants returning to the region, or even foreign fighters disillusioned with IS. For example, in 2016 AQIM launched a campaign urging IS fighters to switch loyalty. Due to its detailed knowledge of the terrain, climate, governance structures and tribal relations, AQIM holds a favourable position from which to negotiate with wavering militants looking for safe havens and the prospect of continuing military operations.

CT measures across Tunisia, Algeria and Morocco are far more sophisticated and multidimensional than those practised by their neighbours in Egypt and Libya. Hard security, coordinated intelligence and military operations are paired with softer socio-political measures aimed at addressing the drivers of radicalisation. Algeria and Morocco have both imposed a strict policy on the dissemination of religious material, permitting only that which aligns with the governments’ standards of moderate Islam.

Additionally, both countries strongly support imam training programs that promote social stability and the values of integration and tolerance. Morocco has extended this training program to women. Female preachers known as morchidates are taught to deliver religious education that reflects tolerance and inclusivity.

Such measures seem to have had the desired effect. There are demonstrable improvements in national security, and there have been no terrorist attacks on Moroccan soil since 2011. Tunisia has also avoided any mass-casualty terrorist attacks since the 2016 attack on the town of Ben Guerdan.

Although CT measures at home may be proving to be relatively effective, it should be noted that Libyans and Moroccans were involved in attacks in the UK and Spain in 2017, and that a Tunisian national was arrested in Germany on suspicion of planning an attack. These examples demonstrate the need for closer international cooperation and information sharing to effectively counter terrorism and to undermine international terrorist links that may have been formed through foreign fighter networks.

The fallout of the IS caliphate’s dismantling are being felt across the Maghreb. Noting the substantial numbers of foreign fighters and migrants who made their way to Iraq and Syria, the region will likely see many returnees. Unlike in Europe, where border security, intelligence and law enforcement structures are robust and effective, the Maghreb appears to be a less hostile environment for returnees to set up camp, regroup and re-emerge, either within an insurgency or in some other manifestation of organised terrorism.

As coalition forces drove Islamic State (IS) out of the cities of Mosul and Raqqa, several plots in Australia demonstrated a greater involvement by the terror group than had been seen here before.

The volume and pace of counterterrorism (CT) operations continued to stretch law enforcement resources, but all of the plots were disrupted. The time available to authorities to disrupt attacks remained short and international allies provided vital leads to investigators in Australia.

In many ways, 2017 was a turning point in Australia’s approach to CT. A range of actions taken since 2014 to prevent and respond to terrorism were complete or had evolved to another phase.

Between late 2016 and the end of 2017, authorities stopped a number of planned attacks, including the most complex to date, and identified further links between Australians and IS in the Middle East. In July 2017, the NSW Joint Counterterrorism Team disrupted a plan to place a bomb on an aircraft flying out of Sydney. The group allegedly received plans, funds and equipment from IS in the Middle East to undertake the attack and possibly another, involving the release of toxic chemicals in a public place. The IS connection was reportedly made through an Australian foreign fighter related to some of the men. Authorities became aware of the plans only days before disruption.

In February 2017, an electrician in Young was charged with attempting to help IS use laser-guided missiles. The man was involved with relatives who had left Australia in 2015 and are accused of funding IS and helping it obtain weapons through the Eastern European black market.

In October, a Melbourne man was charged with administering a pro-IS website on behalf of an American foreign fighter and with providing funds to the group.

Authorities advise that they disrupted 14 major mass-casualty plots from mid-2014 to 2017 and 34 major operations saw 78 people charged with terrorism offences in 34 CT operations.

In 2017, Australia was a vocal player in global initiatives to address terrorists’ use of encrypted communications, raising the issue at a Five Eyes conference and being involved in the G20 declaration on the issue. The government’s approach of seeking collaboration with technology businesses, rather than imposing new requirements on them, has been sensible and contrasts favourably with the more legalistic approach taken by others.

Offshore CT operations contributed to the liberation of Mosul and Raqqa, and Australia continued to provide training to the Iraqi military, as well as air force ISR, command and control, and strike capabilities. The ADF commitment to Afghanistan was increased in May by 30 personnel to 300, mostly in training and headquarters roles.

After IS-aligned groups captured the Philippines city of Marawi in May, Australia provided two P3C Orion patrol aircraft to gather intelligence to support the Armed Forces of the Philippines, along with instructors to give urban warfare training. That training drew on the ADF’s experience in Iraq.

At a meeting of the Council of Australian Governments (COAG) in October, the Commonwealth, state and territory governments signed an updated Intergovernmental Agreement on National Counter Terrorism Arrangements and endorsed an updated National-Counter Terrorism Plan. COAG also announced that the jurisdictions would introduce technical systems—rather than the existing manual systems—to share driver licence details and other data in terrorism-related matters. They’d also share biometric data including facial identification.

While this announcement created some debate about privacy, the longstanding national approach to security and CT largely mitigated concerns. COAG also endorsed a recommendation from the Lindt Café coronial inquest for a shared approach to fixated threat assessment. NSW and Victoria established dedicated ‘fixated’ threat assessment units in 2017, following Queensland’s earlier lead.

In 2017, both the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security (PJCIS) and Independent National Security Legislation Monitor (INSLM) undertook separate statutory reviews of Australia’s control orders, preventative detention orders, police stop, search and seizure powers, and the declared areas regime. The INSLM also reviewed the high-risk terrorist offenders legislation, which provides for the ongoing detention of terrorists who have completed their sentences but still present an unacceptable risk to the community. The INSLM found that all of the laws remained appropriate. The PJCIS is due to report in March 2018.

NSW become the first state or territory to incorporate the 2016 federal high-risk terrorism offenders legislation. The state is home to a high proportion of those serving sentences for terrorism offences, including some whose sentences are due to end.

Another law from 2016 was used for the first time in 2017, when Khaled Sharrouf became the first—and to date the only—Australian to lose citizenship on terrorism grounds. That law can apply only to dual nationals assessed to be terrorists and whose return to their other home nation would not breach Australia’s international obligations.

In June, NSW passed laws clarifying when police had the right to ‘shoot to kill’ during a terrorist incident. This followed the recommendation of the coronial report into the 2014 Lindt Café siege that police officers should ‘have sufficient legal protection to respond to terrorist incidents’. Western Australia and Victoria announced similar enhancements during the year.

COAG’s dedicated CT committee, the ANZCTC, produced new guidelines on protecting crowded places from terrorism, which arose from a review commissioned after the July 2016 attack in the French city of Nice. The package builds on existing strategic-level guidance to provide more detailed advice, points of contact and tools, including a security audit and a self-assessment risk management tool. A welcome development in the new document is its focus on business and community taking a role in preparing for, preventing and responding to terrorist attacks.

Two significant announcements are changing the way CT is managed at the national level. A new Office of National Intelligence will take a long-term, strategic approach to intelligence, prioritise material to be shared and ensure more effective capability development and management.

A new Home Affairs portfolio brings various national security–related agencies and functions into one ministerial portfolio with a shared, strategically focused oversight department. These initiatives take Australia’s management of national security and intelligence matters to a more mature level, provide structure for the already effective relationships between agencies, and should provide improved strategic direction and capability across all organisations.

That Australia has, to date, avoided a mass-casualty attack despite the capability of Islamist terrorist groups, is testament to the success of the thorough approach taken by police and agencies.

The resources and direction being given by IS to its small number of supporters in Australia suggests, however, that a major attack may yet occur and there remains a need for more operationally focused lessons learned reviews of terrorist incidents and responses to them rather than the ad hoc approach currently taken.

There are strong procedures in place to scrutinise security legislation but there’s no regular mechanism for reviewing CT activities outside coronial inquests that are concerned primarily with the cause of death and not how CT operations were—or should be—carried out.

Formalised reviews of terrorist attacks and disruptions would provide evidence-based understanding of the effectiveness of Australia’s arrangements and areas for improvement.

States take the lead in dealing with terrorist incidents, and operational response units exercise regularly under ANZCTC arrangements. But the high level of operational-level interaction doesn’t appear to be matched by similar exercising and testing of strategic-level decision-making in ambiguous environments by federal and state ministers and business leaders.

It’s vital that key actors understand clearly what their roles are to be in an unfolding and uncertain terrorist incident. During such an event isn’t the time to learn about those different roles and capabilities, which need to be both well understood and exercised.

Australia should involve these key decision-makers in the larger field exercises.