Duncan Kerr (Denison, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

This is the tag team, love-in of counsel on the Labor backbench on the Law Enforcement Integrity Commissioner Bill 2006, the Law Enforcement Integrity Commissioner (Consequential Amendments) Bill 2006, and the Law Enforcement (AFP Professional Standards and Related Measures) Bill 2006. I firstly acknowledge the contribution of the member for Banks. It was, as always, an independently minded contribution and this parliament ought to value very much the goodwill those members who are not part of the executive of either party bring to bear on serious debates of this kind. The honourable member has, I think very correctly, pointed out that Australia is fortunate to have law enforcement agencies which broadly have been immune from structural corruption. I have been a minister and a shadow minister in this area and I am a very interested observer as a member of the Parliamentary Joint Committee on the Australian Crime Commission and the former Parliamentary Joint Committee on the National Crime Authority. During my period of time in this parliament, I have been a careful observer of the law enforcement agencies of the Commonwealth. I do not believe that there has been institutionalised or entrenched corruption in those agencies. That sets them aside from some of the law enforcement agencies of the states where corruption has been endemic from time to time and has presented a problem that has required the establishment of royal commissions with special methods to get to the problems and, of course, the lamentable and very unfortunate circumstances of seeing senior persons in positions of trust in the law enforcement profession—including, in Queensland’s case, the commissioner himself—disgraced as a result of those processes.

In the federal sphere, we have been very lucky. Certainly, those commissioners I have known in the nearly 20 years that I have been a member of this parliament—Commissioner McAuley, Commissioner Palmer and Commissioner Keelty—are three persons whose personal integrity I think is beyond question. We should not pretend that within the AFP there are not going to be instances where individuals succumb to the temptation of corruption. I remember very clearly a conversation I had with Commissioner Palmer about a year after his appointment in which he said to me that you could not make rules that would be secure enough to give you an assurance that corruption would not occur within the AFP; you had to try and build a system of moral authority so that when temptation presented itself it would generally be resisted. He also said, ‘At some time, at some place in Australia, there is going to be a young 25-year-old constable confronting a person who is involved in the criminal world who may have, for example, on the back seat of a car a bag with $100,000 in used banknotes and some large amount of drugs and, in exchange for allowing that car to drive off, the constable will get more than he would be paid in two years of salary.’ We can imagine such circumstances arising from time to time and it would be foolish for us to believe, in an environment where temptation and the possibility of large reward for giving into that temptation exists, that will not sometimes be a motivating factor for those who should be giving their professional responsibility to law enforcement but are tempted—if I might use a corny phrase—by the dark side.

Of course, once a person becomes a victim of their own greed, and becomes known to those in the criminal world, then they are repeatedly used to benefit that underworld. I know from my experience as a minister at a time when New South Wales had a law enforcement agency infected by corruption that it meant that there were instances where law enforcement cooperation was difficult with the state agencies because the AFP believed that information that was passed to certain persons within New South Wales would automatically be transmitted to corrupt law enforcement officials and then to those engaged in crime. So we do have a reason to put in place mechanisms to deal with the possibility of corruption.

I well remember—and this is to counterbalance the point of caution made by the member for Banks—the circumstances that faced me when complaints were made by a Mr Skrijel that his investigation by members of the National Crime Authority had been corrupt and that he had been essentially framed. There was a series of complaints preceding my becoming Minister for Justice and, upon becoming minister, I was provided with briefs from my department to the effect that there were suspicious circumstances—I can put it no higher than that—that two seconded members of the NCA may have been responsible for conduct which was detrimental to Mr Skrijel and potentially corrupt. I was invited by Mr Skrijel to appoint a royal commission to investigate that particular complaint. On the advice of my department, I took the view that the establishment of a royal commission, with all the consequences and costs, would not be an appropriate use of resources but that the matter needed to be investigated. Again on the advice of my department, I sought out a prominent South Australian barrister, Mr Quick QC, to conduct a review of the Skrijel matter and to report to me. That report revealed matters that confirmed that there were issues that required further investigation and it was in due course referred to the Deputy Ombudsman of Victoria, from where the officers of the National Crime Authority involved were originally posted, as they had disciplinary responsibility over them. Ultimately, a review was held by the Deputy Ombudsman. Mr Skrijel remained a disappointed complainant and, in part, blamed me for what was ultimately an outcome which he was dissatisfied with.

Although I was, in a sense, put in a position where Mr Skrijel took the view that, in some manner, I had not pursued his complaint vigorously and he pursued me vigorously in consequence, making very serious allegations about my own propriety, what it did reveal was that we did not have an effective process for independent complaints resolution for the National Crime Authority at that time. It strengthened, in my mind, the case that there does need to be a process that is robust, that the public can have confidence in, that extends to Commonwealth law enforcement across the board and that is able not only to receive and investigate complaints and to deal fairly with those complaints, from the point of view of a person who believes that they have been dealt with improperly by law enforcement officials, but also to protect the interests of Commonwealth that law enforcement is operating properly and in accordance with our expectations that it be immune from institutional corruption.

Therefore, I am pleased to see these bills come forward. I think they are a long time in the making. It has been a longstanding request of the committees on which I have served that there be a strengthened complaints resolution process. I do not believe that it is in anybody’s interest in the Commonwealth to not put in place the belt and braces to make certain that our confidence in the integrity of the law enforcement agencies that we have benefited from is preserved as those agencies expand and become a much more central component of Australian law enforcement. It is trite to recall that, from a relatively modest base, the Australian Federal Police and the National Crime Authority, now the Australian Crime Commission, have come to be very significant in dealing with serious and organised crime. Not merely do they have a strengthened and enhanced reputation over the years due to their effectiveness but also they have increased numbers, increased responsibilities and a higher profile.

The management styles and structures that are appropriate for such organisations as they have grown have to change. The Australian Federal Police was originally almost a quasi-military organisation—the first commissioner, indeed, being a former military officer. That was not an appropriate framework to operate within but, as we have moved, we have become much more professional in the management styles that have been evolving. We have shifted away from command and control. The language used in law enforcement at a federal level has shifted towards federal agent away from various ranked positions. We have become a central component of law enforcement in Australia. That carries with it responsibilities of making certain that the agency does not ever become a victim of institutionalised corruption such that some of the states have from time to time had to deal with. Were it to do so, we would lose something very fundamental in our capacity as a national parliament and the community would legitimately look upon us with great scorn.

That said, the reservations of the member for Banks do need to be borne in mind. We need to be fair to law enforcement personnel. These procedures that we are putting in place give great powers to investigative agencies or the commissioner and those powers will be available to investigate the conduct of law enforcement personnel. They may, naturally, feel that this is an intrusive process. We have to be aware that there are interests of fairness and natural justice that also extend to those working in law enforcement, and we have to make certain that the interests of their industrial organisations and their professional associations are borne in mind as this is worked through and put into practice. It is important that the processes be fair to complainants, to the general public and to law enforcement personnel themselves. Of course, one of the jobs of the parliamentary oversight committee established in the legislation will be, I would hope, to make certain that in zeal these organisations do not overstep the bounds that are appropriate for the carriage of the large responsibility that we are entrusting with them.

One of the concerns that the honourable member for Banks did raise, namely the concern that the organisation might have a large impact—that is, he referred to the conduct of a former Premier of New South Wales—is not warranted. This is a very narrowly focused integrity commission, focused on law enforcement. It is not focused upon persons outside of that scope.

I think there is a bit of a lost opportunity in not establishing a single oversight body to deal with the various issues and responsibility under the law enforcement umbrella. There is currently a Parliamentary Joint Committee on the Australian Crime Commission. I am the deputy chair of that committee, which is vigorous in its pursuit of its responsibilities, and often it has drawn attention to the fact that its oversight capacity of the Australian Crime Commission is really examining the tail rather than the dog. We look through the wrong end of the telescope at the law enforcement community. The ACC is an important agency, but it is a small component of Commonwealth law enforcement when it is balanced against the larger resources that are committed to the Australian Federal Police.

There is still no parliamentary oversight agency created to look at the overall positioning of law enforcement in Australia. Any examination of that, from this parliament’s point of view, will still have to be done through the Parliamentary Joint Committee on the Australian Crime Commission. There is no establishment in this bill or in any other measures that I see connected with it that will establish a comprehensive oversight of the actions of Commonwealth law enforcement agencies by this parliament, and I think that is a great mistake. It is a lost opportunity. We have comprehensive oversight of all intelligence agencies, for example. Every intelligence agency has been brought under the reporting obligations of the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security. It used to be called the Parliamentary Joint Committee on ASIO, ASIS and DSD. As it has picked up all the other intelligence agencies, it is now simply called the Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security.

Similarly, there should be a parliamentary joint committee on law enforcement and it should have within its remit the tasks that are given in this bill to the oversight of the integrity commission. Instead of consolidation, we create a further joint committee. We establish a joint committee on the Australian Commission for Law Enforcement Integrity, with powers to examine and to report on the various matters that the integrity commission will be dealing with. But, again, it will be a fragmented examination and not within an overarching oversight responsibility for law enforcement. That is what we really need in this area. We need this parliament to be confident that one of its standing agencies has an oversight responsibility for law enforcement in this community at a Commonwealth level. Without that, one key area of Commonwealth involvement which we all rely on to work well and effectively is not subject to the kind of scrutiny that I imagine most members of the community believe it is already subject to. We will have examination of the Australian Crime Commission, we will have examination of the integrity commission, but we will not have any overall examination of where law enforcement is going—what its objectives are, what its structures should be or how it should be positioned. We have no proper examination of the role of the Australian Federal Police, the largest of those agencies. There is a simple omission.

Might I conclude by addressing the last point the member for Banks raised, about Customs. I understand his concern that the organisation should learn to crawl before it walks, let alone runs, but I think that probably—even through its crawling and early walking stages—it would have done no harm to have included Customs. The same temptations to corruption exist for those who are on the front line in Customs. In fact, Customs often receives information in relation to matters which, if misused, could be of enormous financial benefit to organised crime. Any Customs officer in that position may be subject to the same temptations as members of the law enforcement fraternity, the AFP or the Australian Crime Commission potentially are, and I do not think it would have done any harm to put those of Customs—who have a direct, front-line law enforcement responsibility—under this oversight regime.

The last point I will make before I sit down is that I will be interested to see how this works out with the secondments from state agencies to the Australian Crime Commission. That has always been a difficult area. I am not certain whether the Commonwealth’s constitutional powers cover this sufficiently or whether the bills do. I still have some doubts in my mind as to whether or not, where a complaint is made against seconded officers who have gone back to their state agencies, this will enable that to be followed through properly. That is the sort of issue that confronted me when Mr Skrijel was making his complaints. I hope they can be dealt with effectively through this process, but it is a matter that I will keep my eye on because I am not certain that it will be properly dealt with. On balance, I think these bills deserve support and I support also the amendment that the shadow Attorney-General has put forward.

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