THE counter-terrorism white paper released yesterday represents yet another plank in the Rudd government's evolving national security strategy.

Critics will argue that is evolutionary rather than revolutionary, that it draws too heavily on existing strategies and policy settings. But it is more than just a statement of the obvious.

And there are some important new developments in here as well.

The centrepiece of the white paper is a judgment about the changing nature of the terrorist threat to Australia and the continuing rise of so-called home-grown terrorists. In the wake of recent convictions of terrorist cells in Melbourne and Sydney, the paper argues that the main source of terrorism in the future will be local amateurs who have bought into the Salafist jihadi ideology of al-Qa'ida, but who may not have had any connection to al-Qa'ida's money or training.

The white paper stops short of quantifying this particular threat to Australia.

Early on in the document we are told a significant number of Australian extremists have been radicalised to the point of committing violence.

In other places the document says the terrorist narrative resonates with only a small number of Australians.

The metrics are important. Because if the main terrorist challenge to Australia comes from the enemy within, then the principal policy response must focus on a strategy of counter-radicalisation and counter-ideology.

In the words of one former police commander, we must not only defeat the men who carry out these terrorist attacks, we must defeat the corrosive ideologies that drive people to commit them.

That is certainly the case with the recent British counter-terrorism strategy, Contest Two. In that document, the British government committed pound stg. 100 million ($172m) towards preventing individuals from becoming terrorists. Although the scale of the problem facing Britain is larger, the principle is the same.

The proposed strategy must match the perceived threat.

Aside from a small section on resilience and reference to community engagement in the Australian white paper, the government offers no new funding or programs to counter home-grown extremist ideology.

Instead, media attention will focus on the two main deliverables: $200m for aviation security measures including body scanners at airports and next generation x-ray machines; and $69m for enhanced visa restrictions for individuals from 10 as yet unnamed countries.

Each of these measures is warranted and probably overdue. But neither is directly related to the paper's principal strategic assessment.

If home-grown terrorism is the problem, why is border security and a better visa system for foreigners the answer?

Another aspect of Australia's counter-terrorism arrangements in this paper is the creation of a Counter-Terrorism Control Centre to be located with the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation. The new centre will manage priorities, identify intelligence requirements and harmonise the collection and distribution of information. This is all sensible stuff, if just a little Orwellian.

But, as the paper notes, these functions are already being done by the National Threat Assessment Centre and the National Intelligence Co-ordination Committee. It's not clear another layer of bureaucracy will necessarily improve the flow of information. If anything, it could slow things down.

White papers are never easy to produce, particularly on a subject as complex and fast moving as international terrorism. This paper is a modest improvement over the previous effort in 2004. It takes policy forward in small, incremental steps. The real challenge in the next few years will be aligning the counter-terrorism strategy to funding priorities.

Because, as former secretary of the Defence department Arthur Tange liked to say, strategy without money is no strategy at all.


Carl Ungerer
24th February 2010

Source: The Australian