The proscription of organisations has long been a central feature of legal regimes aimed at the suppression of terrorism. Australia is no exception. Going back many decades, the Commonwealth government has sought to meet the threat of political violence through the proscription of related organisations. In the wake of the September 11 terrorist strikes against New York and Washington, renewed efforts were made for the proscription of organisations in many national jurisdictions (for example, the United Kingdom, United States and Canada) as well as at the international level (for example, through the United Nations and the European Union.

In Australia, the Commonwealth looked directly to the justifications offered by the United Kingdom’s Lord Lloyd of Berwick and Paul Wilkinson just a few years before. In their major Inquiry into Legislation Against Terrorism, Lord Lloyd and Wilkinson presented three principal rationales to explain the role of proscription in the prevention of terrorism: ease of proof; providing a basis for the criminalisation of fundraising and other activities of terrorist groups; and as a clear symbol of ‘public revulsion and reassurance that severe measures [are] being taken’.