Excerpt:
Terrorism experts and lawyers have dismissed claims by the prime minister that Muslim community leaders need to do more to intervene in the wake of Friday’s fatal Bourke Street attack, and have criticised politicians for their punitive response to such incidents.
The national president of the Australian Lawyers Alliance, Greg Barns, said police and Asio already had almost 80 pieces of legislation “at their fingertips” which had been introduced over the past 17 years to deal with terrorism or suspected terrorism.
“Legislating further is a dumb response,” he said.
Scott Morrison told Sky News on Monday that Islamic leaders needed to do more to prevent terrorist attacks. “If you’re an imam or a leader in one of those communities, you need to know who those people are in your community that might be doing that,” the prime minister said. “They are the infiltrators.”