Amid growing concern about extremism in Australia — and with two men being charged with terrorism offences in WA — Multicultural Affairs Minister Anne Aly has a simple message: do not abandon people on the edge of radicalisation.
Dr Aly is uniquely placed to address one of the biggest challenges facing the country — prior to entering politics she built a career as one of the world’s top radicalisation researchers.
In 2015, she was invited by then-US president Barrack Obama to speak at a White House summit on countering violent extremism.
Anne Aly says social factors can drive people towards extreme ideologies. (AAP: Mick Tsikas)
The world has changed significantly since then, but Dr Aly says the pathways of radicalisation and the ways to help those caught up in its whirlpool remain fundamentally the same.
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“The first thing is to not abandon them,” Dr Aly told the ABC.
“Often the pathway down radicalisation, it’s a very emotive pathway. It is not done by a logical kind of choice to go down that pathway.
“It is usually driven by other things in that individual’s life that makes them look for or seek out a way of bringing meaning into their life.”
In addition to reaching out for help from professionals, Dr Aly said it was important to help people reconnect with their community by getting them involved in hobbies or activities they may have pulled away from.
“Nobody ever changed their mind or left a violent extremist organisation because somebody presented them with a fact sheet,” she said.
“So don’t think that this is all about facts and figures — it is highly, highly emotive and it is about emotion.”
Anne Aly says those at risk of radicalisation need support. (ABC News: Simon Beardsell)
Improving social cohesion
Often those emotions are rooted in concerns about fundamental elements of life and whether people feel they are being provided for in areas such as health, housing and education.
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“Western Australia is the strongest economy in the nation, we are a great place to live, enjoying [an] extraordinary lifestyle,” WA Premier Roger Cook told the ABC.
“But not everyone is doing as well as everyone else.
“For a lot of people, things just don’t seem as affordable as it used to be, and they become then susceptible to political leaders who see an opportunity, an opportunity to pit one sector of the community against another.”
Dr Aly agreed.
“It is issues of opportunity, economic opportunity … opportunity to thrive, that underpin social cohesion,” she said.
“When people feel insecure, whether that’s in their work life, in economic life, where they are feeling cost of living pressures, then you see an uptick in incidences of racism.
“The way to deal with that is to do things at the government level, to make policy decisions, make legislative decisions, make economic decisions, that deliver for people.”
Dr Aly could rattle off a long list of efforts by the government to address those issues, but she acknowledged meaningful change would not come quickly.
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Mr Cook said his government was trying to pass laws against “people who want to spread hatred”.
They include updated protest laws which would make it easier for police to refuse permits for protests deemed to promote hate and efforts to outlaw people boasting about crimes online.
But Mr Cook acknowledged the limits of that approach.
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“We can encourage, we can legislate, we can fund programs which lead community conversations towards good places rather than bad places,” he said.
“But at the end of the day, we need everyone in the community to be on board.”
One way of encouraging that, Dr Aly said, was reinvigorating community institutions, such as football clubs and community groups, to bring people from different walks of life together.
“Once you find a commonality with somebody … it’s much easier then when you have a disagreement to remember that there’s something that you still share,” she said.
Optimism for the future
Despite the myriad causes for concern, Dr Aly remained optimistic those challenges could be overcome.
“We’ve seen fractures in our social cohesion, in our unity as Australians and, overwhelmingly, Australia has always risen to that challenge,” she said.
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While describing social cohesion as “fragile”, the Member for Cowan — one of Western Australia’s most diverse electorates — maintained it was not out of reach.
“You have to work hard at it,” Dr Aly said.
“You can’t be complacent about it — much like a marriage, I guess.
“We can’t take for granted the fact that we live in this beautifully diverse country, where people from all over the world come together.”