Days after 15-year-old Farhad Khalil Mohammad Jabar shot police accountant Curtis Cheng outside NSW police headquarters, Senator Fierravanti-Wells said young people "go off the rails" for many different reasons.

Stressing the need to do more work at the community coal face, the Assistant Minister for Multicultural Affairs said young, disengaged Australians were being "preyed upon, just like paedophiles prey on young people".

Senator Fierravanti-Wells, who has spent several months talking to community groups about how to counter violent extremism, said that in light of her consultations: "I believe that this should really be looked at as as social issue, with a national security angle."

"If you look at the young people who are travelling overseas [to join extremist groups] they're getting younger," she said.

Senator Fierravanti-Wells said there needed to be more focus on what compels a young person to get involved with violent extremism. "What puts [a young person] so much at the margins of society?"

Terrorism experts have warned that while radicalisation used to occur over a "fairly lengthy" period of time, the process has now sped up.

Senator Fierravanti-Wells said the federal government could not stop the radicalisation of young people on its own.

"We cannot be in the homes, we cannot be in the schools," she said.

She said the issue and its solution should be owned by both Muslim and non-Muslim Australians.

But when asked if there was a "lack of leadership" in Muslim Australia, Senator Fierravanti-Wells replied that the situation was complex. "There is no one common leadership in the Muslim communities."

The Assistant Minister for Multicultural Affairs, who is due to provide a report to Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull on her community consultations soon, said, "It's very clear that we now need to review what we are doing, reset the agenda".

She pointed to peer-to-peer work (where young people counsel each other) that is being done in some communities.

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