Foreign Minister Julie Bishop has warned the Islamic State (IS) terrorist group is recruiting “highly trained professionals” to make chemical weapons and has already used chlorine in an attack.

Addressing the Australia Group in Perth, Ms Bishop ramped up her warnings about IS, also known as Daesh, describing the group as one of the “gravest security threats we face today”.

“They seek to undermine and overthrow that order and as we have seen, are prepared to use any and all means, any and all forms of violence they can think of to advance their demented cause,” she said.

• War & Peace: Abbott’s battle
• Citizenship debate splits Cabinet
• Iraq didn’t ask for more troops: Bishop 

“That includes use of chemical weapons.”

Ms Bishop said the use of chlorine by IS and the recruitment of “highly technically trained professionals”, including from the West, revealed serious efforts to develop chemical weapons.

“Daesh is likely to have amongst its tens of thousands of recruits the technical expertise necessary to further refine precursor materials and build chemical weapons,” she said.

Cabinet Minister Mathias Cormann said it would be “absolutely terrible” if IS was able to get hold of “chemical, biological or, even worse, nuclear weapons”.

“Countries around the world that are as committed as we are to defeating this threat have got to continue working together to make sure this doesn’t happen,” he said.

Labor frontbencher Chris Bowen described the reports as “very concerning” and said the Opposition would be seeking a briefing on the developments.

“Of course the Labor Party has given full bipartisan support to measures from the Australian Government to lend support to the government of Iraq to deal with the scourge of Daesh and that would continue and, of course, I would have thought we would get a briefing on these latest developments as a matter of some urgency,” he said.

Ms Bishop was speaking at the 30th anniversary of the Australia Group which is an informal alliance of countries that seeks to prevent the export of materials that can be used in the development of chemical weapons.

She told the forum that despite ongoing efforts, “we have not yet won the struggle against the ruthless and amoral individuals, organisations, and regimes that seek to develop and deploy such weapons”.

“Chemical weapons often receive less public attention than nuclear and biological threats,” she said.

“However, toxic chemicals were, by far, the most widely used and proliferated weapons of mass destruction in the 20th century.”

More than 100 Australians are believed to be fighting alongside the IS group in Syria and Iraq and the Government believes another 150 are supporting them at home.