The allocation of secret grants for the federal government's countering violent extremism programs has been criticised by some of Australia's ethnic communities and caused a rift among Muslim community members.
African Australian community leaders are also angry saying they have been shut out of the Abbott government's deradicalisation program, leaving their young people vulnerable to the lure of violent extremists.
The government has awarded so-called "Living Safe Together" grants to 34 organisations – including mosques, multicultural and sporting groups – to run programs aimed at keeping at-risk people from embracing violent ideologies or joining groups like Islamic State.
While the government has allocated $1.3 billion to national security in the past year, the grants program is worth only $1.6 million, meaning organisations are getting around only $40,000 to $50,000 each. Only nine recipients have been made public. A spokesman for the Attorney General's office said that was "due to the sensitive nature of this work, some Living Safe Together Grants Programme recipients have requested that their details not be made public."
Fairfax Media has learned a total of 95 organisations made grant applications, meaning 61 missed out altogether – a number of African Australian community groups among them.
The decision to keep most of the organisations secret has angered some sections of the community who have slammed the government for its lack of transparency. One of the biggest criticisms has been that there can be no scrutiny of whether the organisation receiving the grant even has the capacity to deliver the programs.
"It is ludicrous to think that funding secret propaganda operations could bring anything but further fear and distrust to a fractured community in need of healing," said one unsuccessful applicant.
One Muslim community member said there already had been a "punch up" over who may or may not have received a grant. "It has not been helpful," she said. Some organisations in Sydney boycotted the grants and labelled them counterproductive.
There have also been accusations that the government is neglecting the African community, even though many young African Australians suffer acutely from the kind of marginalisation that can push them towards radicals.
One of the nation's most respected African leaders, academic and former Australian of the Year finalist Berhan Ahmed, was among those who had a grant application rejected by the government.
The Eritrea-born former refugee, who's now a senior research fellow at the University of Melbourne, sought funds on behalf of the African-Australian Multicultural Employment and Youth Service.
"I didn't get anywhere," he told The Sun-Herald. "It was shattering."
Dr Ahmed's application was supported by the Australian Multicultural Foundation and Federal Court judge Shane Marshall, who said AAMEYS was "ideally placed" to combat radicalisation.
But the Attorney-General's Department sent him a pro-forma rejection letter and failed to respond to his calls for more detailed reasons as to why his application was unsuccessful.
Dr Ahmed says the community is being neglected and he is starting to give up.
It is understood one does deal with the African community: the Somali Australian Council of Victoria.
But another Somali community leader, Farah Warsame, says African Australians need more support. His respected Somali Community of Victoria organisation also had a grant application rejected.
"It was incredibly disappointing for the Somali community. I think the government is neglecting African communities," Mr Warsame said.
At least one young man from the Victorian Somali community has already joined Islamic State. Sharky Jama, a former model, was reportedly shot dead in Syria earlier this year.
In Victoria, where all the individuals arrested for terror offences in a recent spate of raids have been identified by tip-offs from within the Muslim community itself the president of the Islamic Council of Victoria, Ghaith Krayem, fears this co-operation may have been fatally endangered by the tough, law-enforcement approach of police and the Federal government.
Mr Krayem said at the moment, community empowerment programs exist, as do deradicalisation programs for hardcore offenders inside prisons. But there was an urgent need to fund programs in the gap -- identifying at-risk individuals before they commit crimes, and trying to convince them back into the mainstream.
These programs are not being funded because "the federal government is only interested in hard-headed enforcement, and that's clear," he said.
"There's a billion dollars going into enforcement, and only a million or two into the other stuff," Mr Krayem said.
The Islamic Council of Victoria also decided to stay aloof from the Living Safe Together grants because the model was "completely counterproductive".
The initial grants of up to just $50,000 were simply designed to get Islamic organisations to put their names on a government register of providers, he said, and "our position from day one is we will not go on a register".
"If someone is radicalised, the last group they want to willingly engage with is something that has 'government' written all over it".
For example, under a recently flagged government program to train teachers to spot the early warning signs of radicalisation, the teachers would contact a government phone number, leading to a government assessor deciding how radicalised a child was. The child would then be referred for intervention to a service provider whose name was on a government register.
"But if I'm a young person who's been radicalised, what makes you think I'm willingly going to participate in a program run by the same government that I'm radicalised against?" Mr Krayem asked.
In Western Australia, Curtin university academic Anne Azza Aly has a different view. She accepts what she acknowledges are "pathetically small amounts of money" from the Federal funding scheme, then attempts to use the funds to genuinely benefit the community.
Her organisation has accepted $40,800 to put towards a mentoring program. The program already exists, and the money is only enough to provide a little extra training for the mentors.
She also said young people's voices needed to be heard in the debate.
"Young people are saying, 'We need to be part of the political process ... governments need to hear us'," she said.
That impulse has fed into the program she is most excited about, called "MyHack", in which five groups of university students, mostly Muslim, are participating in a "hackathon" to come up with ways to combat online pro-terror propaganda.
The ideas would then be presented at a fundraising dinner and voted on. The winner would receive the funds generated by the dinner (hoped to be $10,000) to develop their idea.
"It's getting some bloody brilliant ideas," she said.
"No government could come up with these ideas sitting around talking to each other, and neither could the old-fart community leaders."
