Aussies told to change attitude on privacy

The attorney-general has warned the Paris attacks will mean Australians will need to change their attitudes around personal privacy to aid security.

Independent Senator Jacqui Lambie

Senator Jacqui Lambie says the Grand Mufti of Australia should be fitted with a tracking device. (AAP)

Australians are being warned to change their attitudes around personal privacy as Attorney-General George Brandis flags "greater impediments" following the Paris attacks.

Senator Brandis said Australia was "absolutely" at war with Islamic State and needed to take whatever steps necessary to protect itself.

He said Australians will need to recalibrate their attitudes and reconsider where the right balance between protection and personal privacy lies.

"ISIL have declared war on us," Senator Brandis told the Nine Network on Wednesday.

"They have been completely unambiguous in their intention, they have been completely unambiguous in their purposes, and we would be fools not to take them at their word."

Australia could not throw out its free society, rule of law or fundamental values but would "have to accept greater limitations, greater impediments to personal privacy for example, than may have been acceptable a few years ago," Senator Brandis told the Seven Network.

Meanwhile, the Grand Mufti of Australia Ibrahim Abu Mohammed on Wednesday attempted to clarify his initial reaction to the Paris attacks after initially suggesting racism and "Islamophobia" were partly to blame.

The Australian National Imams Council issued a statement saying there was "no justification for the taking of innocent lives".

The clarification was welcomed by Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull but Independent Senator Jacquie Lambie suggested Dr Mohammed be fitted with an electronic device.

The council reiterated the Grand Mufti's statement from September 2014 in which he said IS "criminals are committing crimes against humanity and sins against God".

"Sadly, in the Paris attacks, people of various faith backgrounds including Islam were brutally murdered."

Senator Lambie, while calling for more vetting of Syrian refugees coming to Australia, said the Grand Mufti wasn't helping the situation by not directly condemning the attacks.

"Maybe the first person that should have an electronic device put on them is the bloody Grand Mufti," she told ABC radio.

Opposition immigration spokesperson Richard Marles welcomed the statement from the Imams Council, saying "it clearly needed to be issued given what he originally said".

The "evil violence" was brought against people of all faiths, including Muslims, he told Sky News.

Resources Minister Josh Frydenberg, who is in Paris for energy talks, said it would be a small victory for terrorists if the United Nations climate change conference was called off.

The summit is scheduled to begin at the end of November.


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Source: AAP



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