By Senator Alex Antic
The Labor government has announced $74 million over two years for a new Counter-Terrorism Online Centre led by ASIO and the Australian Federal Police.
This centre will monitor “high-risk online spaces” including social media, gaming platforms, Discord channels, encrypted chats like WhatsApp, online forums, and the dark web. Teams of analysts and sophisticated AI tools will scour these spaces for extremist material and work to disrupt potential threats.
The stated concern is that too many young Australian men are being radicalised online. While some level of monitoring presumably already occurs (we’re unsure exactly how much), this formalises and expands it. In plain terms, we’re being told the government must spy on its citizens. For our safety, of course.
This announcement follows the recommendations of the interim report of the Royal Commission into Anti-Semitism and Social Cohesion (announced after the horrific terrorist attack at Bondi late last year) which exposed serious intelligence failures despite clear red flags.
Nobody wants to see young men drawn into violent and dangerous ideologies yet I also don’t think many want to see surveillance that casts a wide net over young Australian men.
This coincides with ASIO expanding its interrogation powers by making permanent what were intended to be temporary post-9/11 measures. These compulsory questioning powers allow ASIO to force individuals, including non-suspects and those as young as 14, to appear for questioning that can last many hours, with up to five years’ imprisonment for non-compliance. What began as emergency powers are now, as usual, being entrenched without regular parliamentary oversight.
Just like with “hate speech” laws, the critical question remains: Who gets to define what counts as “extremism”? Vague rhetoric about “radicalisation” is instead being used in ways that can be interpreted broadly.
The United Kingdom offers a sobering warning. There, citizens have been imprisoned for social media posts. Those raising concerns about extremism are too often the ones being punished.
I don’t want Australia to go down the same path as the United Kingdom, where legitimate concerns are treated as the real threat.
The government should focus squarely on the ideologies driving actual violence instead of casting a wide net over everyday Australians.
