A $630 million counter-terrorism funding boost the Abbott government announced six months ago has still not begun to flow to the country's national security agencies, Fairfax Media can reveal.
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The money is not expected to start reaching agencies such as ASIO, the Australian Federal Police and the Australian Crime Commission until April.
Agencies have meanwhile been forced to dip into their existing budgets to fund priorities such additional police officers to tackle the foreign fighter threat, counter-terrorism units at airports and financial experts to track jihadi money.
In his major national security address on Monday, Prime Minister Tony Abbott said: "Last August, the government invested $630 million in a range of new counter-terrorism measures … The effect of these new measures has already been felt."
But a written answer to a question by Labor to the Attorney-General's department states that "funding is expected to be made available to agencies by April 2015".
Mr Abbott cited several areas where the agencies were already benefiting from the additional resources, including counter-terrorism teams and the fast-tracking of 62 new biometric screening gates at international airports, 49 extra AFP officers working on the foreign fighter threat and a new ASIO "violent jihadist network mapping unit". There is also a foreign fighters taskforce at the Australian Crime Commission and plans to combat extremist propaganda online.
The delay in the flow of money appears to stand in contrast to the urgency with which several tranches of new legislation were passed last year. A key inquiry report will be released on Friday into laws that would force phone and internet companies to keep "metadata" about customers' communications for at least two years, which the government aims to pass next month.
A spokesman for Mr Abbott said stronger measures to combat terrorism were "already in place" and were funded by agencies' "existing appropriations" in the knowledge that new money was coming.
"They have the authority to begin spending in line with announced policy proposals of the government and have done so to implement these urgent measures, as the internal management of agency budgets is a matter for individual agencies," he said.
It is unclear what effect is being felt by agencies. Customs, for instance, describes its current airport counter-terrorism teams as "interim", indicating that not all 80 officers earmarked for the program are yet in place.
A spokeswoman for Immigration Minister Peter Dutton declined to say how many were already in place, saying that would harm "operational effectiveness". She said the teams are nonetheless present at all eight of the nation's international airports and had "successfully intercepted a number of people of national security concern".
Shadow Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus said the significant new laws the government had passed with Labor's support needed to be matched by increased resources for agencies.
"The Prime Minister committed this additional funding for our national security agencies almost seven months ago," he said. "Labor has sought briefings on that funding commitment, but has so far received no further details."
