18 August 2017
PDF version [311KB]
Cat Barker
Foreign Affairs, Defence and
Security
This quick guide provides an update on
Australian Government measures and funding for countering violent extremism (CVE)
since the publication of Australian
Government Measures to Counter Violent Extremism: a Quick Guide in February 2015.
Terminology
The Australian Government defines
violent extremism as follows (original emphasis):
Violent extremism is the beliefs and actions of people who
support or use violence to achieve ideological, religious or political goals.
This includes terrorism and other forms of politically motivated and communal
violence.
All forms of violent extremism seek change through fear
and intimidation rather than through peaceful means.
If a person or group decides that fear, terror and violence
are justified to achieve ideological, political or social change, and then acts
accordingly, this is violent extremism.
With CVE being a relatively new field, the terminology is
still quite fluid. CVE is a broad term that has been used to refer to anything
from broad-based social cohesion measures through to rehabilitation of
terrorist offenders. Various researchers have drawn distinctions:
The distinction between deradicalisation and disengagement
is also recognised in the Australian Government resource, Preventing
Violent Extremism and Radicalisation in Australia. However, the various
terms are sometimes used interchangeably or understood differently.
National framework
There is a national Countering Violent Extremism
Intervention Framework (which does not appear to be publicly available)
under which the National Diversion Team led by the Australian Federal Police
(AFP) and state-led intervention programs operate. In November 2015, the
Minister for Justice stated that intervention programs were operational in
New South Wales, Victoria, Queensland, Western Australia, Tasmania and the
Australian Capital Territory. In May 2017, the
Attorney-General’s Department (AGD) stated that programs were in place in all
states and territories (indicating they have since become operational in
South Australia and the Northern Territory), and that the Australian Government
funds coordinators in each jurisdiction.
Federal strategy and program
The overarching CVE
Strategy appears to have remained the same, but the
Government announced its new CVE Programme in August 2014. A fact
sheet states that the aim of the new program is ‘to combat
the threat posed by home-grown terrorism and to discourage or deter Australians
from travelling offshore to participate in conflicts’. It indicates that the
emphasis of the program is on prevention and early intervention through
tailored support, with new measures including:
- Early intervention and counter radicalisation
programmes to help and support people to deradicalise and disengage from
violent ideologies.
- Working with communities so they can help
prevent people from moving down the path of radicalisation to violence, and
- Addressing online radicalisation and reducing
the impact of terrorist’s [sic] use of the social media by helping people to
develop the digital skills needed to critically assess terrorists’ claims and
promote alternative messages online.
Specific measures
The ‘Countering
violent extremism’ page of the AGD website states that the Government’s
approach is built around ‘four complementary streams of activity’. Information
on the types of activities is set out on that page, and some information on the
specific measures in each stream is provided below.
‘Building strength in diversity and social
participation’
The Government includes its Living Safe
Together website and multicultural, social cohesion and community harmony
programs in this stream. Such programs are funded and administered separately
to the CVE Programme, under the Department
of Social Services (DSS; some funding was redirected from DSS to AGD-led
CVE initiatives in the 2016–17 Budget—see further below).
‘Targeted work with vulnerable communities and
institutions’
Work with state and territory governments on programs to
rehabilitate people imprisoned for terrorism-related offences and prevent
radicalisation of other prisoners falls under this stream, as does development
of training and resources for the community and educators.
The Commonwealth provides funding each year to the Australia-New
Zealand Counter-Terrorism Committee (ANZCTC), some of which goes towards funding
and coordinating CVE projects (see ‘Federal funding for CVE measures’
below). These include the nationally available training and resource package
(Indicators of Radicalisation for Corrections Officers) and funding for prison-based
programs in NSW and Victoria (where most of the people imprisoned for
terrorist-related offences are held). In October 2016, the Attorney-General
stated that the Federal Government funded the Proactive Integrated Support
Model in NSW (‘a disengagement model that aims to target inmates who are at
risk of radicalisation’) and the Community Integration Support Program in
Victoria (‘a community-led and driven initiative which aims to rehabilitate
imprisoned terrorists by offering a holistic approach to rehabilitation,
including both pre- and post-release components’).
‘Addressing terrorist propaganda online’
When the Attorney-General announced the Combating
Terrorist Propaganda in Australia initiative in February 2015, he
described it as follows:
The new initiative will establish a social media monitoring
and analysis capability to better understand extremist narratives and how they
affect Australians. The measures will also help reduce access to extremist
material online through the recently launched Report Online Extremism tool and
by working with the Australian Communications and Media Authority, private
sector and international partners to take down or otherwise address extremist
content.
The reporting tool
is part of the Living Safe Together website. The Daily Telegraph reported
on 5 February 2016 that Google,
Facebook, Twitter and other search and social media sites had joined a
Commonwealth Government initiative to ‘divert Australian online searches
for extreme militant and propaganda terrorism-type material towards warnings
about radicalisation’.
‘Diversion and deradicalisation’
This stream includes funding and coordination of state and
territory-led CVE
intervention programs:
The intervention programmes involve developing individually
tailored case management plans to connect at-risk individuals with services
such as mentoring and coaching, counselling, education and employment support.
The radicalisation to violence process is unique to each person, so responses
need to be flexible and meet the individual's needs.
...
People can be referred into intervention programmes in
several ways, including by police, community leaders, family members, or
teachers—any concerned parties who have noticed behaviours in that person that
could suggest they are becoming radicalised towards violent extremism.
AGD
provided further details at a Budget Estimates hearing held on 24 May 2017.
The National
Disruption Group (NDG), led by the AFP, brings together a range of federal
departments and agencies as well as state and territory police to coordinate
operational disruption activities targeted at countering threats posed by
so-called ‘foreign fighters’. The NDG’s Diversion Team is focused on
alternatives to prosecution and ‘acts as the conduit’ between federal
authorities and the state-led intervention programs. Further information on the
work of the Diversion Team is provided in an article in the April 2016
edition of the AFP’s Platypus Magazine, ‘Diversion
in Australia: not your traditional counter-terrorism response’.
This is also the stream under which the former Living
Safe Together Grants Programme (LSTGP) was included. Under the LSTGP,
approximately $2 million in total was awarded in one-off
grants to 41 community-based organisations in 2014–15. Unlike the
Building Community Resilience Grants, which were for service provision, the
grants under the LSTGP were made to help build those organisations’ capacity to
deliver services (such as ‘leadership, mentoring, counselling, education and
employment support programmes’). Further information is provided on the ‘FAQs
about the Living Safe Together Grants Programme’ page of the AGD website. The
Appendix provides details of the recipients (where they were disclosed) and the
amounts granted. The Commonwealth
Grants Rules and Guidelines require departments and agencies to publish on
their websites the details of all grants, while allowing some details to be
omitted, including on privacy grounds.
In addition to the four ‘streams’ outlined above, the ‘Countering
violent extremism’ page of the AGD website points to ‘supporting
activities’ (international engagement and engagement with academia) and notes
that a request for tender (RFT) was issued on 19 April 2017 for the provision
of CVE services. The RFT
sought responses in relation to research and evaluation, training, and
non-campaign creative and design services.
Three current projects in universities were outlined in AGD’s
response
to a question taken on notice at Budget Supplementary Estimates on
12 December 2016:
Youth resilience to violent extremism (Victoria
University)
This project will develop a standardised measure for identifying and
strengthening young people's resilience to violent extremism at community
level. The project is a collaboration between researchers at Victoria
University and Dalhousie University (Canada). The department is providing at [sic]
total of $159,324 to support this project in 2016 and 2017.
CVE Evaluation (Victoria University)
This project will evaluate CVE services for the purpose of improvement and
informing the design and evaluation of other services nationally. The
department is providing a total of $181,818 for this project from 2016 to 2018.
Establishment of a network of Civil Society Organisations
(Deakin University)
This project is establishing a network of civil society organisations that are
working in the Southeast Asia region to counter violent extremism. The project
is aimed at facilitating peer-to-peer learning and partnerships. The department
is providing a total of $342,342 for this project in 2016 and 2017.
Federal funding for CVE measures
under the Abbott and Turnbull governments
The CVE Programme was allocated
$13.4 million over four years as part of a $64 million package
of measures aimed at countering violent extremism
and radicalisation. This package was itself part of a broader
counter-terrorism package announced on 5 August 2014 and detailed in the 2014–15
Mid-Year Economic and Fiscal Outlook. The $64 million also included $6.2 million
to establish the NDG Diversion Team.
A total of $21.7 million in new funding was allocated in
the 2015–16
Budget to the Combating
Terrorist Propaganda in Australia measure initially announced in
February 2015.
A further $4 million was allocated in the 2016–17 Budget
for AGD to establish and trial community support and advice services in
conjunction with the states and territories. The amount was redirected from DSS.
Funding for CVE through the
Australia New Zealand Counter-Terrorism Committee
Funding for CVE and deradicalisation programs is also
provided through the ANZCTC. All funding associated with the Australian
Government’s contribution to the ANZCTC, not all of which is associated with
such interventions, is included in a single line item in the Portfolio Budget
Statements. However, some further information on CVE spending through the
ANZCTC has been provided by the Minister for Justice and by AGD.
An AGD response
to a question taken on notice at a Budget Supplementary Estimates hearing
in November 2014 stated that of the annual funding provided to the ANZCTC, ‘$2
million a year is committed to funding and coordinating CVE projects across
Australia’. The Minister for Justice stated on 15 October 2015 that
the Government is providing $11.2 million
to support state-led intervention programs, and that it ‘also supports
prison deradicalisation programs in New South Wales and Victoria’. While it is
not clear what period of time that funding covers, in the context of the
broader answer given by the minister, it appears likely to refer to funding
over the forward estimates.
Details of grants made through the ANZCTC are included in
the Grants
Registers on the AGD website:
- The 2013–14
register listed 19 entries (to 10 recipients), but provides no detail
on the purpose of the grants.
- The 2014–15
register listed 17 entries (to 12 recipients), but provides little detail
on the purpose of the grants.
- The 2015–16
register listed 18 entries (to 14 recipients) for the ANZCTC sub-program
totalling $3,538,521 including GST, of which $1,933,049 (across seven
grants to five recipients) related to the ‘CVESC Program’ (this appears to
refer to the Countering Violent Extremism Sub-Committee of the ANZCTC). The
recipients for the CVESC Program funding were the Queensland Police Service,
Victoria Police, Corrective Services NSW, Multicultural NSW and Multicultural
Affairs Queensland.
- The 2016–17
register listed just one grant under the ANZCTC sub-program, and it was for
the ‘Data to Decisions Cooperative Research Centre’, not the CVESC Program. The
same is true of the 2017–18 register
(which had last been updated on 16 August 2017), but further entries
may be added throughout the financial year.
Appendix: Grants awarded under the
Living Safe Together Grants Programme
| Grant recipient |
State |
Total value
(inc GST) |
Date of effect |
| Grants for which the recipient
was disclosed |
| Auburn Youth Centre Inc. |
NSW |
$40,355 |
4/6/15 |
| Bankstown Multicultural Youth Service Inc. |
NSW |
$55,000 |
4/6/15 |
| The Reach Foundation |
Vic. |
$38,126 |
4/6/15 |
| University of New South Wales |
NSW |
$55,000 |
4/6/15 |
| People Against Violent Extremism |
WA |
$40,800 |
5/6/15 |
| Southern Ethnic Advisory & Advocacy Council |
Vic. |
$70,774 |
5/6/15 |
| Victoria Arabic Social Services |
Vic. |
$55,000 |
5/6/15 |
| Vocational Education and Training Network Australia
Limited |
SA |
$55,000 |
5/6/15 |
| The Migrant Centre Organisation Inc. |
Qld |
$24,805 |
6/6/15 |
| Migrant Resource Centre of South Australia |
SA |
$70,774 |
17/6/15 |
| Queensland Police - Citizens Youth Welfare Association |
Qld |
$55,000 |
17/6/15 |
| Somali Australian Council of Victoria |
Vic. |
$50,000 |
17/6/15 |
| The Learning and Life Centre (Huddle) Ltd |
Vic. |
$55,000 |
17/6/15 |
| The Trustee for Save the Children Australia |
Vic. |
$70,774 |
17/6/15 |
| Victorian and Refugee Women’s Coalition |
Vic. |
$56,881 |
17/6/15 |
| Grants for which a recipient was
not disclosed |
| |
N/A |
$54,593 |
4/6/15 |
| |
NSW |
$60,500 |
4/6/15 |
| |
NSW |
$84,150 |
4/6/15 |
| |
NSW |
$45,000 |
4/6/15 |
| |
NSW |
$55,000 |
5/6/15 |
| |
NSW |
$55,000 |
5/6/15 |
| |
Qld |
$55,000 |
5/6/15 |
| |
Vic. |
$37,530 |
17/6/15 |
| |
Vic. |
$50,969 |
17/6/15 |
| |
Vic. |
$16,500 |
17/6/15 |
| |
Qld |
$55,000 |
17/6/15 |
| |
Qld |
$55,000 |
17/6/15 |
| |
ACT |
$55,000 |
17/6/15 |
| |
NSW |
$55,000 |
17/6/15 |
| |
NSW |
$25,064 |
17/6/15 |
| |
NSW |
$54,945 |
17/6/15 |
| |
Vic. |
$55,000 |
17/6/15 |
| |
Qld |
$55,000 |
17/6/15 |
| |
NSW |
$55,000 |
17/6/15 |
| |
Qld |
$26,180 |
19/6/15 |
| |
Qld |
$50,600 |
19/6/15 |
| |
NSW |
$52,885 |
19/6/15 |
| |
NSW |
$49,900 |
19/6/15 |
| |
NSW |
$55,000 |
19/6/15 |
| |
Vic. |
$47,300 |
19/6/15 |
| |
SA |
$55,000 |
19/6/15 |
| |
TOTAL |
$2,109,405 |
|
Source: AGD, Grants
register from 1 July 2014 to 30 June 2015.
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