What is a crowded place?
A place that is used by large numbers of people on a regular basis is considered a crowded place. Crowded places include, but are not limited to, sports stadiums, transport infrastructure, shopping centres, pubs, clubs, places of worship, tourist attractions, movie theatres and civic spaces.
Crowded places are attractive terrorist targets. This is because attacks on large concentrated crowds’ people fulfils a number of key terrorist objectives, including casualties, public fear and anxiety and media attention.
A crowded place may not be crowded all the time. The number of people could vary between day and night, or by season.
A crowd could also be temporary. For example, sporting events, festivals, or one-off events.
If you are a member of the public find out What to do in an attack.
Steps to protecting your crowded place
Owners and operators are responsible for ensuring the safety of their location by mitigating the likelihood of a terrorist attack. This includes having a duty of care for the people that work, use, or visit the site.
To protect crowded places, owners and operators need to have preventative and response arrangements in place, including for transitioning control to first responders.
To build resilience, owners and operators work closely with:
- Police jurisdiction first point of contact
- state and territory governments
- local governments
- The Australian-New Zealand Counter-Terrorism Committee
- Crowded Places Sub-Committee
- Business Advisory Group
- Commonwealth Government
- private security providers
- the community.
