A federal watchdog has called for controversial terror laws to be dumped. 

The federal government's Independent National Security Legislation Monitor, Grant Donaldson, has recommended that laws allowing convicted terrorists to be held in prison beyond the completion of their sentence be scrapped. 

The laws allow for a continuing detention order (CDO) or an extended supervision order (ESO), which restricts a person's freedom in the community. 

While Donaldson believes ESOs should be reformed to include a new focus on rehabilitation and reintegration into the community, he says there is no place for CDOs to continue. 

He argues that it is unfair for a person to be punished for a crime they have not committed and that the laws have made Australia “a coarser and harsher society”. 

In 2020, Abdul Nacer Benbrika became the first convicted terrorist subject to a CDO and later lost an appeal in the High Court challenging the validity of the law.

Donaldson's report is critical of a decision to withhold from court proceedings a report raising significant concerns about the risk-assessment process used to decide if terrorists can be released. 

The Department of Home Affairs commissioned the report, authored by ANU academic Emily Corner, to test the validity and reliability of various risk-assessment processes. 

It raised serious concerns about those processes, finding that “it is not reasonable to anticipate that the instruments are able to predict their specified risk with anything other than chance”. 

Donaldson has previously raised concerns about secrecy around the report, which has never been released in full. 

He says the report should have been provided to Mr Benbrika's legal team and to other defendants involved in similar cases.

Donaldson's report recommends changes to the law requiring disclosure of any similar documents in future.