Counter-Terrorism Legislation Amendment (Foreign Fighters) Bill 2014

The majority don't want to limit who the bill's new advocating terrorism offence applies to.

Labor Senator Jacinta Collins had proposed that the offence shouldn't apply to a person "who engages in good faith in public discussion of any genuine academic, artistic, scientific, political or religious matter".

###Advocating terrorism offence

More than 40 legal, human right and community groups oppose the bill's new advocating terrorism offence (see ABC News). The offence is broad. It only requires a person to be reckless about whether another person will engage in a terrorist act, rather than having to intend them to.

Read more about the offence in the bills digest.

###Background to the bill

A number of incidents happened before and after this bill's introduction. There was one of the biggest counter-terrorism operations in Australian history. The Prime Minister Tony Abbott also confirmed that Australia would be sending the military to Iraq to fight the Islamic State (IS) (also known as the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) or the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL)).

Two particularly significant incidents were when:

• Australian teenager Abdullah Elmir threatened Prime Minister Tony Abbott in an IS video;
• Canadian gunman Michael Zehaf-Bibeau attacked the Canadian Parliament.