Michael Danby (Melbourne Ports, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

In addressing the Aviation Transport Security Amendment Bill 2006 I strongly support the amendment moved by my friend the member for Brisbane, the shadow minister for aviation and transport security. The purpose of this bill is to amend the Aviation Transport Security Act 2004 to improve aviation security by making new rules for the inspection of air cargo and to allow for improved aviation security during special events at airports, such as the arrival of heads of government for next year’s APEC summit.

It does seem passing strange that the government should be amending its own aviation security legislation after only two years. The 2004 act was, after all, framed in the light of events of September 11 2001 and if its provisions are now deemed to be inadequate this seems an admission that the 2004 act was inadequate at the time it was passed. We can now see that the 2004 act was pushed through parliament without sufficient scrutiny or thought, as we on this side said at the time. Security legislation is urgent by its very nature, but that is no excuse for sloppy legislation that has to be substantially amended only two years later. As we have heard, this legislation takes up only two of the 15 recommendations of the Wheeler report—the serious report that was done into aviation security as a result of widespread feeling that this issue had not been properly examined and that the previous legislation was inadequate.

I must also make the point that the government’s failures in this respect reflect a continuing stubborn resistance to the idea of a minister for homeland security. Labor, in the form of the honourable member for Brisbane, has a shadow minister for homeland security and a shadow minister for aviation and transport security. This gives him oversight of the whole security area within Australia and a broad view of the issues involved.

On the government side, responsibility is divided between the Attorney-General, who has many other things to deal with, and the Minister for Transport and Regional Services, who also has a very broad portfolio. There is no single minister with responsibility for homeland security issues in continental Australia. In the new security environment which has existed since 2001, this is not good enough for the Australian people. It is bad enough that this inefficient arrangement has produced inadequate legislation such as the bill we are now amending. It will be infinitely worse if the glaring holes in our aviation and maritime security arrangements lead to a successful terrorist strike on mainland Australia. That is the risk the government is running by clinging to its outmoded, pre-2001 ministerial arrangements.

Having said that, to the extent that this bill aims to improve Australia’s aviation security, it is welcome and the opposition supports it. However, the honourable member for Brisbane has moved an amendment referring to the government’s mismanagement of the aviation security identification card system; its failure to ensure that all baggage is screened, a year after the Wheeler review and nearly five years after September 11; its failure to properly upgrade security at regional airports; and its failure to establish adequate security arrangements for charter flights.

The first part of the bill amends the Aviation Transport Security Act 2004 to improve the regulatory arrangements for airport security by creating event zones that may be used when an airport conducts an activity that is not part of its usual transport business such as the welcoming of a head of state, an air show or a commercial or public event.

The second part of the bill deals with the process of how cargo is to be examined to ensure that it is safe to be carried on aircraft and how cargo is to be cleared for air carriage. The bill allows for the creation of two separate classes of cargo businesses—regulated air cargo agents and accredited air cargo agents. These two classes of cargo agents will be subject to regulations to be designed in consultation with industry so that cargo that might pose a threat to aviation can be detected and intercepted before it is loaded onto an aircraft.

The third part of the bill allows the secretary to approve alterations to existing transport security programs. This new alteration process will operate as a less formal alternative to the existing process by which a program can only be changed by means of a formal revision. The intention of this section is to make it easier for an aviation company to make changes to its operational practice so as to conform to the requirements of the regulatory framework.

These are all appropriate and sensible measures, which is why we are supporting them. We always support genuine security measures when they are properly explained to this House. I do not think it is appropriate that the security bills become a matter of partisan debate, and that is a view widely shared in the opposition. But it is the duty of the opposition to hold the government to account, and that is why I again make the point that it is surprisingly disappointing to find that, nearly five years after September 11, this government is still trying to get a law relating to aviation security right. It is still introducing measures which should and could have been introduced years ago, and it is still failing to take the further necessary steps referred to in the opposition amendment.

Let me turn to the amendments relating to cargo. In its submission to the Wheeler review, Labor suggested a series of improvements, but now we find that cargo is still not appropriately screened in Australia. These amendments are a belated recognition of the weakness of the Aviation Transport Security Act 2004. Nevertheless, this bill does offer some improvements to aviation security. We agree that the one-size-fits-all approach, which imposes the same degree of regulatory burden on all companies regardless of size and without taking into account their role in the handling of cargo, is a problem. The creation of two separate classes of cargo businesses—regulated air cargo agents and accredited air cargo agents—is an improvement to the security regime and will make it easier for small companies to comply with the law. We also agree—and, in fact, have argued in the past—that screening of cargo at airports is not practical and creates an incentive for companies to try to evade screening. The existing act treats cargo as if it were the same as passengers, another sign that the original act was rushed through this House by a complacent government without fully thinking through the security implications of this problem in aviation security revealed in both Australia and other countries.

The amendment moved by the honourable member for Brisbane refers to, amongst other things, the government’s mismanagement of the aviation security identity card. There are serious problems with this system. In April this year a constituent wrote to me and to the minister describing the long delays in making these cards available and the effect this was having on the ability of people to earn a living in the aviation industry. Let me read some of the points made in this letter by my constituent so that people will therefore get an understanding of how it affects people individually:

I am a free lance pilot.

In august of last year I applied for an ASIC card ... which is essential for me to work, as I will be required to fly into aerodromes where holding an ASIC card is mandatory.

As a result of administrative failures these cards have been very slow in coming and many pilots have still to receive their cards. I have made over twenty enquiries by phone and e-mail with regard to the progress of my application. I received two letters prior to the deadline for implementation of the AS1C requirement, telling me that my application was being processed but have had no mail, e-mail or phone calls informing me of progress since then.

Finally as a result of persistently telephoning to CASA, last week I found that my application had been refused. I was told that I should have received a letter informing me of the reason. The person I was dealing with could not tell me why I had been refused but said that they would contact someone and call me back with details of a contact person who I could discuss it with. They also said that I could appeal the decision. Despite a multitude of attempts since, 1 have not been unable to contact anyone by telephone nor e-mail nor have I been able to find information on the websites as to how to proceed. The web sites are circular. You find a reference to appeals and follow it and end up at the initial page of the web site.

If the appeal process mirrors the application process I will have another 8 months to wait, to most likely be met by a refusal of the appeal as a result of either bureaucratic timidity or the blunt instrument nature of the regulations and the requirements.

It is chaos and my livelihood depends on it being resolved.

This is not good enough. I understand that the appeal process to CASA is very difficult for people like this constituent to get through. I believe that he had a minor infraction of the law some 15 years previous to that. But there should have been, as then minister for transport, Mr Anderson, promised at the time, an ability for people to make commonsense appeals on the basis of having no major criminal record, it being their livelihood and having demonstrated a record of safe operations in the aviation sphere. The fact that this has not happened in the case of this person is very regrettable.

Let me return to the amendment moved by the honourable member for Brisbane. Let us just go back to the ‘mismanagement of the ASIC system’. The mismanagement of this aviation security identity card by the transport minister, Warren Truss, is a clear-cut example of what we regard as incompetence. When the minister for transport set an arbitrary date for the ID card applications of 31 December 2005, he failed to take into account the time taken for pilots to pay for and receive police checks. That had the potential to create massive holes in this crucial defence in the war on terror. I have given you an example of precisely how one individual has been adversely affected.

The second part of the amendment of the honourable member for Brisbane deals with the ‘failure to ensure all baggage is screened’. Almost one year after the Wheeler review and nearly five years after September 11, the government still does not screen all cargo and baggage on passenger aircraft where passengers’ checked baggage is screened. I believe this is toying with the lives of the Australian people. Cargo checked onto passenger aircraft ought to be screened in the same way that passengers are screened.

The next part of the honourable member for Brisbane’s amendment concerns the ‘failure to properly upgrade security at regional airports’. A large number of regional airports with more than 50,000 passenger movements a day are still not required to have passenger and ground staff screening facilities. Passengers travelling to regional centres from major airports such as Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane are subject to screening. However, when flying out of key regional airports, passengers are not screened.

Let me remind you where the events of September 11 started. They started in a small regional airport in Portland, Maine. The infamous vision of the hijackers going on to the planes was actually filmed in Portland airport, on the CCTVs. I do appreciate the earnest hard work that many private and public people in protective agencies do at major airports and regional airports. We all have to go through the inconvenience of taking off belts and having explosive checks when we are just about to miss a flight, but millions of people put up with that. But the government does not pay sufficient attention to the pattern of how people have practised international terrorism previously, including the major events of September 11 which sparked incredible international concern and which began at a regional airport, as I said, in a small American state. The hijackers flew from there to a major airport, in Boston, to commence their dreadful flights into the twin towers. That is something that ought to be borne in mind by all of the Australian public, and we ought to have our regional airports upgraded.

The other part of the amendment moved by the honourable member for Brisbane concerns the ‘failure to establish adequate security measures for charter flights’. The government’s failure to hold any real investigation into secure cockpit arrangements of certain classes of charter planes is, I believe, playing with the lives of Australian people, just as the member for Brisbane suggested.

I want to conclude by referring to one other area that I believe the Australian government, Qantas and other people should be looking into in airline security, and that is the eventual necessity to place on Australian aircraft, particularly major Australian aircraft flying through regional hubs where there is evidence of the activity of such nefarious groups as Jemaah Islamiah, the kinds of devices to deflect shoulder-fired missiles that are being placed on British civilian aircraft. These missiles are referred to as MANPADS. Some international airlines are having anti-MANPAD devices deployed on all important civilian aircraft that they fly. Remember that in November 2002 terrorists associated with al-Qaeda fired two shoulder-launched missiles at an aircraft leaving Mombasa, Kenya. The attack was claimed by al-Qaeda. It was, fortunately, unsuccessful. Only in May of this year a major antiterrorist operation was launched in Switzerland when Swiss agents discovered another al-Qaeda plan to down an aircraft. That airline had ceased flying to Geneva for a whole week in December last year. The story was given that it was for technical reasons, but it was in fact because of good intelligence that an attack using shoulder-fired missiles was planned on an aircraft.

Internationally, the cost of these missiles is coming down more and more. I believe we have to be very open-minded, particularly with regard to major Qantas jumbos landing in Bangkok, Jakarta and Bali. These are the kinds of arrangements that a far-sighted government would be talking to Qantas about and subsidising. When I first raised this issue a couple of years ago the Prime Minister wobbled the day afterwards and suggested that the government might be speaking to Qantas about introducing deflection devices. After what I regard as overconfident reassurances from Qantas, the government backed down. I believe it is certainly something that, given the constantly lowering price of this technology, the Australian people should look at and demand of their government and their major international airline, Qantas.

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