Police will need wider powers to monitor and restrict the movement of extremists if Australia is to avoid a Paris-style terrorist attack, according to the former top bureaucrat who oversaw the introduction of the controversial terrorism control orders.
The suggestion police use control orders to actively monitor private communications and movements much more widely is likely to reignite a national security debate as France grapples with the intelligence failures that led to the most co-ordinated and deadly terror attack in the country's history. 
Roger Wilkins, who left his post as secretary of the federal Attorney-General's Department last year, said the key to preventing a similar disaster in Australia is to increase the use and scope of control orders, particularly for returned fighters.
Several of the eight jihadists who killed 129 people in Paris on Friday are believed to have fought in Syria and Iraq and returned to Europe. About 30 Australians are believed to have returned home after fighting in the region.
"When we started that process of control orders we asked the question, so what do we do with this university of terrorism which is what Syria and Iraq is?" Mr Wilkins told Fairfax Media at a high-level counter-terrorism financing summit in Sydney on Tuesday.
"We've got people going there and coming back. We know who they are and they do in Europe too. So . . . you actually need to make some compromise in terms of usual civil liberties.
"You need to be able to say, 'well, I'm sorry, you can freely go around Belgium or France or Australia but we're going to need to monitor your telephone, your computer, your finances and your movements until further notice.'
"The take-out message [from Paris] for me is that response, the use of control orders, needs to be much stronger. In a modern, liberal democracy that's about the only thing you can do."
Control orders have been used a handful of times in Australia on individuals who the AFP believe may commit a terror attack. They heavily restrict the movement, communications and associations of suspects without the need for a criminal prosecution.
The federal government introduced a fifth tranche of national security legislation last week to widen the scope and secrecy of control orders, including lowering the age in which a judge can grant an order from 16 to 14.
The control orders have the support of both sides of Parliament with shadow attorney-general Mark Dreyfus telling Fairfax Media on Tuesday they had "clearly emerged as a useful tool in dealing with the present terror threat" and the opposition would "carefully consider" the further changes being proposed.
Federal Justice Minister Michael Keenan also re-affirmed the government's support for control orders in the wake of the Paris attacks, saying the orders were a form of "enhanced surveillance" that have proved effective.
Mr Wilkin, who recently served as president of the Financial Action Task Force, supported calls to lower the age limit to 12 years old, saying control orders were "the best and most sensible way of dealing with this problem".
Control orders have been heavily criticised in legal circles, with former Independent National Security Monitor Bret Walker, SC, recently saying the orders require tremendous amounts of surveillance without any evidence of making the country safer. His recommended abolishing the system in 2012.
International counter-terrorism law expert Ben Saul said Australia has introduced so many new powers since   September 11 that it "kind of undermines the rationale" for control orders.
Muslim community advocate Keysar Trad, who has had contact with some young men named in control orders, said the approach alienated and divided young Muslim Australians with few safety gains.