A multimillion dollar government hotline for parents who fear their children are being “radicalised” only received “around five phone calls” in the two months after it launched.
Announced in June by the New South Wales minister for counter-terrorism, David Elliot, the Step Together programme cost $3.9 million over three years.
It was part of a suite of measures announced in the wake of the fatal shooting of police employee Curtis Cheng.
But in a NSW budget estimates hearing Paul Daniell, a director in the NSW Department of Premier and Cabinet, conceded that the programme had been slow to make an impact.
“I think it is about five calls that have been received by the service provider,” he admitted under questioning.
He said the programme’s website was “receiving 20 to 30 hits” each day,
Daniell blamed the slow uptake on a “cautious marketing approach” but the ABC quoted an anonymous source who said the hotline had been almost entirely misused: “one call was a wrong number, the other was a parent worried their kid was dating a Muslim.”
The comments came after questions from Greens MP Mehreen Faruqi about what measures the NSW government had taken to combat right wing extremism.
Elliott said in the hearing that it was “very clear that the vast majority of people who are victims of terrorism in the United States are victims from the extreme right”.
“It is also forgotten quite regularly in this type of debate that the majority of victims of terrorism in the world are Muslims,” he said.
Daniell insisted that the Step Together programme had been “designed to include all forms of violent extremism”.
However, he said the hotline had “not had any calls yet from anyone relating to right wing violent extremism for that service”.
The $3.9 million hotline was part of a broader $47m program designed to fight radicalisation.
When it was launched Elliott stressed the hotline was “a support line, not a report line”, but admitted counsellors at the service could pass information on to authorities if they became aware of a serious or imminent risk.
“If your loved one is showing signs of violent extremism ... it’s better now you get advice and seek support than in the future when they could be facing a lifetime in prison,” he said at the time.
But Muslim groups argued the hotline would only “exacerbate the paranoia and anxiety” in the community.
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