Authorities 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 terrorism control orders. 
The suggestion that police use control orders to monitor private communications and movements 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 jihadis 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 counterterrorism 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 Australian Federal Police believe may commit