As the nation reels from two terrible stabbing incidents in Sydney, two days apart, a question emerges that’s not easy to address.
When is violently terrorising a community “terrorism” and when is it not?
It’s not a debate that leaders and law-enforcers are terribly keen to have. It’s very tricky terrain.
Assyrian christian orthodox Bishop Mar Mari Emmanuel was stabbed mid-sermon at his church in the western suburb of Wakeley on Monday night in what has been designated a terrorist act. Preceding that, on Saturday afternoon, five women and a male security guard were killed in a stabbing rampage at Bondi Junction’s Westfield shopping centre in which the male attacker was shot dead. Police see that very differently.
In one section of the Australian community, there is some unease that the Wakeley church incident was so quickly branded terrorism. In another, some point to the crisis of violence against women and ask why the Bondi Junction incident wasn’t.
Plenty of people will support the decision in both cases. Government and law enforcement see a clear distinction between the two kinds of incidents. On Friday, federal attorney general Mark Dreyfus condemned violence against women but warned against “blurring lines” around terrorism and said on ABC Radio National that revisiting definitions was “going down a wrong path”.
There are some basic contrasts between the two awful events.
One resulted in multiple fatalities and the other, mercifully, did not. In one, the male accused was killed and in the other, the alleged attacker – a child – is still alive. At Bondi Junction, people appeared to have been targeted at random, but the church attack appeared specific. Crowd responses to police were also markedly different.
At Bondi Junction, all of those who died were women except the heroic security guard, Faraz Tahir, who tried to disarm the attacker.
There are also overlapping factors, beyond that the incidents occurred on opposite sides of the same city. Both were knife attacks in places where people gather. Both of the accused were “known to police”. In both cases, a history of mental illness, or behaviour consistent with it, has been cited.
But in one case the mental illness was given primary emphasis in determining the nature of the incident. In the other, it was deemed secondary to religious beliefs.
It’s the fact that the 16-year-old alleged attacker at the Assyrian Christ the Good Shepherd church made remarks of a religious nature that saw that incident designated a terrorist act.
Targeting one group – members of a church – constituted terrorism while targeting another – women – did not.
The definition of terrorism under Australian law focuses on the motives of an alleged perpetrator, not who they target, though the two may be related.
In summary, a terrorist act is defined in section 100.1 of the Criminal Code Act as an action or threat made with the intention of “advancing a political, religious or ideological cause” and of coercing or influencing through intimidation a domestic or foreign government or the public or “a section of the public”.
To meet the definition, the action must fit within a list of other criteria. These include that it: causes death or serious physical harm; puts a life other than the perpetrator’s at risk; seriously jeopardises public health or safety; causes serious damage to property; or seriously interferes with, disrupts or destroys a designated electronic system. Designated systems include those covering information, telecommunications, finance, delivery of essential government services, or systems used for or by an essential public utility or a transport system.
The definition still leaves room for judgment. For example, it’s not clear how the agencies untangle extreme religious or ideological influences from the impact of past life experiences and personal trauma in deciding what drove someone to an act.
What constitutes an “ideological cause” is also a grey area. At its most basic, ideology is a set of opinions or beliefs. Hating women – a “section of the public” – would seem on the face of it to fit that bill.
Designating something as a terrorist act unlocks considerably more serious security powers than are available in cases of criminal violence, including powers to detain and question. This is obviously more relevant to police and other agencies when an alleged perpetrator is still alive.
New South Wales police commissioner Karen Webb decided quickly that the Wakeley incident met the definition. Explaining this on Tuesday, Webb said she was convinced within hours that it constituted religiously motivated extremism. That it occurred while the church service was being livestreamed told her it was intended to intimidate the public.
Newly appointed race discrimination commissioner Giridharan Sivaraman is among those uneasy about the speed of that designation. Sivaraman, who took up his position late last month, said he feared it could fuel racial prejudice more broadly.
“There are just implications when you characterise things in a particular way,” he warned on Radio National on Thursday.
On Friday, Australian federal police commissioner Reece Kershaw moved to reassure those sharing Sivaraman’s concerns.
“We target criminality, not countries,” he said. “We investigate radicalisation and not religion. There is a saying in police. ‘The police are the community and the community are the police’. We are only as strong and effective as our bond to each other.”
In the Bondi Junction attack, Webb suggested misogyny was an “obvious” line of inquiry.
“It’s obvious to me, it’s obvious to detectives that it seems to be an area of interest that the offender focused on women and avoided the men,” Webb said on Monday. She did not canvas whether misogyny fitted the definition of terrorism.
Asio director general Mike Burgess endorsed the Wakeley event’s designation at a news conference on Tuesday.
Interestingly, Burgess had used words similar to Kershaw’s in his annual national threat assessment back in 2021. In a speech that now seems especially prescient for what it wove together, Burgess also emphasised that security and law-enforcement agencies “don’t investigate people because of their religious views” and “it’s violence that is relevant to our powers”.
“But,” he conceded at the time, “that’s not always clear when we use the term ‘Islamic extremism’.”
Back then, Burgess acknowledged that some in the Muslim community saw this as “damaging and misrepresentative of Islam”, and considered that it stigmatised them by “encouraging stereotyping and stoking division”.
“Our language needs to evolve to match the evolving threat environment,” he ventured in 2021.
Even more interestingly, in the same speech, Burgess suggested violent misogyny also qualified as extremism by his agency’s definitions.
“We are seeing a growing number of individuals and groups that don’t fit on the left–right spectrum at all; instead, they’re motivated by a fear of societal collapse or a specific social or economic grievance or conspiracy,” Burgess said .
“For example, the violent misogynists who adhere to the involuntary celibate or ‘incel’ ideology fit into this category. So we need to use language that can accommodate groups that are outside the traditional categories.”
In light of that, two terrible events prompt one more question: how much has changed?