Family First has warned that removing “religious motivation” from Australia’s counter-terrorism laws would put public safety at unacceptable risk and would amount to political correctness trumping common sense.
National Director Lyle Shelton said proposals from Muslim groups and the Australian Human Rights Commission to strike religion from the legal definition of terrorism fly in the face of the evidence presented by Australia’s own security agencies.
“ASIO has made it clear that the overwhelming majority of terrorist incidents in Australia over the past decade have been religiously motivated – and predominantly driven by Islamist extremism,” Mr Shelton said.
According to media reports summarising ASIO’s submission to the current Independent National Security Legislation Monitor review, all but three of the 16 terrorist attacks in Australia since 2014 were religiously motivated, and 12 of those were linked to what ASIO calls ‘Islamist violent extremism’.
In separate reporting on longer-term patterns, columnist Henry Ergas cited court records showing 78 out of 83 terrorism convictions between 2002 and 2024 involved offenders motivated by Islamic fundamentalism, and that 22 of 28 disrupted imminent attacks in the same period came from the same ideological stream.
“These are not opinions. These figures come straight from security agency data and court outcomes,” Mr Shelton said. “To pretend that religious ideology has nothing to do with modern terrorism is simply to deny reality.”
Mr Shelton said dropping the religious-motivation test would blindfold police and ASIO at the very moment they most need clarity.
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