Hate preachers getting legal advice to pursue ‘radical recruitment’: AFP
Hate preachers are seeking legal advice for “radical recruitment”, the Australian Federal Police chief has warned.
AFP Commissioner Krissy Barrett appeared before the Senate estimates hearing on Tuesday night for the first time since the December 14 Bondi Beach terrorist attack.
This is also the first time since sweeping new hate speech laws were rushed through parliament last month.
Ms Barrett said the AFP had “taken an even more aggressive approach” since those laws were passed, including targeting hate preachers, whom she warned were seeking legal advice to “promote their hatred and radical recruitment”.
“This means that in some cases, particularly when it comes to hate preachers, we fail to meet the threshold for impeachment,” he said.
However, Mr. Barrett said investigators knew who “many of these malicious manipulators” were.
Ms Barrett said the new hate disruption teams, formally known as National Security Investigations teams, had so far charged 21 people across Australia.
Individuals were accused primarily of alleged threats against members of parliament, senior office holders, and the Jewish community.
It included separate teams targeting white supremacists and hate preachers.
Ms Barrett also warned the AFP was seeing a rise in “individual complaints”, including making threats online and carrying them out in the real world.
“Some of these criminals don’t want or need an accomplice or a network to inflict threats or violence; this personalized grievance is often linked to world events, their own feelings of injustice, or obsessions with people or weapons,” he said.
“At the same time, feelings of loneliness or exclusion may be driving some of this radicalization; individuals who struggle to connect seek forums or platforms where their polarizing views are accepted.”
Ms Barrett said that although the majority of the AFP’s terrorism caseload were religiously motivated cases, there had been an increase in cases of “ideologically motivated violent extremism” and a continuing trend in young offenders.
Ms Barrett said 26 young people had been charged with terrorism-type offenses since 2020.
Speaking at the hearing, Ms Barrett remained mostly silent on the cases before the court over the alleged Bondi attack and the alleged attack on the Perth Invasion Day Rally, out of concern not to prejudice those cases.
