In the last federal budget, the government committed about $450 million to countering violent extremism.
The bulk of that was dispersed between security and intelligence agencies.
However, some academics and experts argue that understanding - and empowering - young people is the key to countering terrorism.
Dr Joshua Roose is trying to find out what lures young men to join militant groups or to support their ideologies.
The Australian Catholic University's Dr Roose thinks it may be connected with expressions of masculinity.
"In the Australian context that's white male masculinity - it's people who dominate the parliament, people who dominate professions and so on. What you find is that young men who are increasingly doing well in the professions and there's a lot of them if we particularly look at Crescent Finance, who are the most successful Islamic super company in the world. If you look at comedians like Aamer Rahman and Nazeem Hussain and people like that and Waleed Aly, these people are very comfortable in working in worlds dominated and defined by white men and adapting and evolving in that context."
He says not all young Muslim men are able to adapt to that environment.
"And so you see an increasing gap within Muslim communities of young men doing well who are capable of thriving and just contributing to society as citizens - like the vast majority of Muslims - and then you've got a group of young men, small, but significant who feel alienated who feel marginalised and who don't have the tools to articulate that and so this Islamic State narrative, this radical narrative offers them a sense of meaning, empowerment, makes them feel important and they buy into that."
Abdulrahim Elmi runs not-for-profit organisation, Roots TV, in Western Australia.
Mr Elmi says the group works with young Muslim men who have been released from prison and works to prevent them from being manipulated by militant groups by teaching them media skills.
He too believes that many of the young people involved with these groups feel marginalised, making them easy targets for recruitment.
"We've got a young boy - sadly his older brother joined (a group) in Syria and his mum approached me. She said Elmi is there any way that you could speak to him and he's only 15 years old. When I spoke with him I could see that he's a very angry young boy. He doesn't attend school, there's no role model in his family he's only raised by his mother and every time you speak to him, he will tell exactly what's happening in Syria or in Gaza, why is the Muslim world getting attacked? And you can see he's very proactive on social networking. You can see that's he's completely been brainwashed."
Mr Elmi says many of these young men simply want to be heard.
"When I speak with a lot of them, they're really focused on the issues like why are our voices not being heard. They're very active on social networks, so we focus on young people and we make sure that we lsiten to them. We don't take them to the mosque. What we do is we really go to their families, we speak to them and it takes a whole village to raise those young people by supporting them. So we work with the parents, we work with the local schools. So we're facing a lot of challenges from all perspectives. These kids are quite angry and they need a platform to speak and to be listened to."
Early intervention programs are another possible solution.
Ann-Sophie Hemmingsen, from the Danish Institute for International Studies, says Denmark has been trialling such schemes in schools - but they have inherent flaws.
"It's a dangerous path, because you're trying to tamper with something that isn't broken to prevent something from possibly happening in the future so you have to be extremely careful and that's why in a Danish context it is controversial."
Dr Hemmingsen says there are two arguments to the approach.
"One is that you should go out in classes for example and sort of confront the problem sort of head on - teach the children about the dangers of ISIS for example - teach them about terrorism and the results of terrorism. Another school of thought that says we don't want to do that, we don't want to address the problem directly. Instead we should be more subtle and work around it."
Dr Hemmingsen believes the latter approach is the most effective.
"We should not warn for example directly about the dangers of ISIS. What should be done instead is try to build capacity to empower the children to for example, teach them about how manipulation works. So teaching them how do people manipulate with you, so that if someone tries, you will recognise it and you will understand what is going on. Or practical democracy, not teaching the children about democracy, but practising democracy in classes so that the children learn from a very early age how to manoeuvre in a democratic society and how to push their own agendas ina democratic society."
Dr Joshua Roose also believes empowerment is critical.
But he says in Australia, at least, the way authorities deal with young Muslims isn't working.
"We're seeing a cleavage between where multicultural policies of engagement and social cohesion stop, and then the securitised arm of the state takes over, where you've got a young man maybe 14 or 15 who could be reached by community leaders and community approaches, all of a sudden becomes an entirely police problem. There's no attempt to engage him and steer him down a different course, (he) becomes purely securitised and so we treat him as a potential terrorist. We lock him up in maximum security and treat him as a pariah."
He suggests a more grassroots approach.
"The typical multicultural approach is to fund community organisations, and fund quite wealthy community organisations and leaders everyone who puts their hand up and says they have an answer has been funded, but that's not reaching young people. So what we need to do is better engage young activists and young people in communities to reach these people at the margins because by funding and maintaining the same pattern of funding of multicultural bodies, and self-proclaimed experts on radicalisation, history's going to repeat and we're going to see the same problems again and again."
Share
