Constructive talk was needed with the Muslim community around laws aimed at countering the threat from terrorism, Assistant Minister for Multicultural Affairs Concetta Fierravanti-Wells says.
Under amendments to anti-terror laws introduced into the NSW parliament, any person who has an association with another person linked to a terrorist organisation would be refused bail.
NSW Attorney-General Gabrielle Upton said on Tuesday the killing of police accountant Curtis Cheng in Sydney by a radicalised teenager had made delivering the new legislation all the more urgent.
Speaking at the National Press Club in Canberra on Wednesday, Senator Fierravanti-Wells said NSW was obviously going through a process of having their own consultation with the Muslim community.
"And so I'll leave it to the NSW authorities to discuss what they believe is more necessary in NSW, perhaps as opposed to other states," she said.
But she said the issue came back to the basic point that there must be frank and open dialogue.
"So when we do have to have dialogue, and we do have dialogue about things like changes to laws or the effect that bail laws can have, we can have a commonsense constructive discussion about it rather than having it through the newspapers and rather than having it in a more strident way."
Senator Fierravanti-Wells said the issue of radicalisation was complex.
"But it's also an issue that regrettably is affecting mostly our Muslim communities and, therefore, it's really important that they also own this issue."
Man Haron Monis was on bail when in December last year he took more than a dozen people hostage at a cafe in Martin Place in Sydney.
However, it's unlikely the amendments to bail laws proposed in NSW would have prevented the deadly Martin Place siege, or the Parramatta shooting, as neither of the perpetrators were under the watch of security agencies at the time.
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