Michael Hatton (Blaxland, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I am happy to follow the members for Denison and Banks and the shadow Attorney-General in putting Labor’s case with regard to this series of bills. This is a cognate debate. There is the initial bill, the Law Enforcement Integrity Commissioner Bill 2006; the associated bill, the Law Enforcement Integrity Commissioner (Consequential Amendments) Bill 2006; and the Law Enforcement (AFP Professional Standards and Related Measures) Bill 2006. It is proper that there be a cognate debate on these bills, because the issues involved in all go to the questions of how the Australian Federal Police are organised, their professional conduct and changing that as a result of reports which have been previously been done. After waiting a considerable period of time—some might say seven and some might say 10 long years—for this government to act, we have finally got in the principal bill a series of recommendations to put before the parliament based on a number of reports over time.

Corruption within the Australian Federal Police and instances of that is not endemic. We are not dealing with what occurred in Queensland or in New South Wales, where reaction to systemic corruption within those forces was such that there were investigative agencies and commissions set up to look into and then to repair those police forces. We are not dealing here with corruption of the same order, value or significance. But it is deep enough to merit a second reading speech a bit longer than what is probably the Attorney-General’s shortest second reading speech. It was about three paragraphs in all. He simply said: ‘We’ve set it up. That’s it. We hope it will do its job. The integrity of the Australia’s federal police will be ensured by (1) setting up the commission and (2) providing the commissioner with adequate access to information and making a series of consequential amendments.’

This is an interesting bill. Once you go beyond the outlying skin of this onion of a bill and start to pull the elements of it apart, you find that it goes to a series of other government bills. It actually tells you a lot about the current operation not only of the criminal law but also of the exceptions, throughout a series of bills, that allow the Australian Federal Police—and, indeed, other agencies—to act in ways that would otherwise be unlawful, simply because to do otherwise than grant them those exceptions would mean that they could be hauled before the courts, could be hauled up for internal review by the Australian Federal Police or, once this bill becomes law, before the Australian Integrity Commissioner.

Just to give the House a flavour of what this means, there are secrecy provisions imposed on the Australian Federal Police Commissioner, the Deputy Commissioner and staff, but items 4 and 5 in this bill say that those normal secrecy provisions need to be put aside, because if they are made for the purpose of this act—the law enforcement integrity act—then they will be allowed to be made. The second element is where we are dealing with ASIO officers. The unauthorised communication of intelligence by those officers is a criminal offence. The exception to that relates to the Australian Crime Commission, but this bill says, ‘We’ll add one person and that is the Integrity Commissioner.’ You could go through and look at the Crimes Act of 1914, the Criminal Code of 1995, the Financial Transactions Reports Act 1988—there are 30 or more of them, I think.

Finally, I want to indicate just what is involved here on the question of assumed or false identities. This happens; it is reported from time to time. There are a number of agencies where, in order to take up any corruption activities or investigations, Commonwealth and state agencies, such as the Australian Federal Police, the ACC, ASIO and state police forces and anticorruption agencies, acquire and use assumed—that is, false—identities. If that is appropriately authorised, these agencies can request assumed identity documents from Commonwealth, state and territory agencies—passports, Medicare cards and so on. This bill says that the staff who are working for the Integrity Commission can have that same level or degree of powers.

Given the amount of time that it has taken to get to the point where we have the bill, and I have outlined that there are a number of bills that have had to have provisions attached for the commissioner to undertake his work, and given that there have been so many reviews—we had the initial review in 1996 and there was a further one in 1997; 2004 was the last time this should have been finalised—you would have to wonder why they were not more specific as to the agencies that should have been taken into account and why they were not more inclusive, by including the Australian Customs Service and, indeed, by including the Department of Immigration and Multicultural Affairs. Instead of keeping it isolated to the Australian Federal Police, Labor argues—and has argued in the amendment which I support—that it would have been not only sensible but also absolutely necessary to do that.

What is the reason for that? The core of this bill is about the Australian Federal Police. If you look at (1) the record of the AFP, (2) its mode of operations and (3) the opportunity for people to become involved in areas where corrupt conduct could be involved, you will see the very fact that they are not state police entities is one of the reasons there have been so few known cases of corrupt activity in the Australian Federal Police. It is the nature of the work that, in good part, determines whether or not the temptation is great enough for people to undertake corrupt activity. If you look at the specific responsibilities that agencies and the people working with those agencies have, then by going to the Customs Service and seeing how it operates and the environment it works in, particularly at Australia’s major airports, you will understand why this bill should apply to them. It is the nature of their business that underlines the fact that the operations of this bill should be extended to the vast number of goods moving in and out of Sydney (Kingsford Smith) Airport, for instance, one of the main security controlled airports in Australia. We have argued for that quite specifically in our amendment. For the benefit of the House and the Australian public, I will read out paragraph (3) of our amendment:

(3)

notes that, despite the fact that the Australian Customs Service officers have:

(a)

use of weapons including pistols and maritime deck mounted guns;

(b)

powers of arrest and detention;

(c)

powers of search and seizure;

(d)

ability to conduct controlled operations;

(e)

responsibility for collection of large amounts of border-related revenue

(f)

responsibility for storage of large amounts of contraband and dutiable goods like drugs, alcohol, tobacco, knives, guns and ammunition;

If that is so—and the minister needs to answer the charge put by us in this amendment—then one of the key areas that should be controlled has not been. Think about the operation, in practice, of the intersection between Customs, state police, the Australian Protective Service and the Australian Federal Police at our major airports. Think about the occasion for corrupt activity being undertaken. Think about the fact that there has been, over decades of experience within Sydney and Melbourne airports, a culture where not only drugs but also other illegal goods—for instance, guns—are traded from one end of the country to the other and where there has been, because the agencies have not been properly coordinated, no effective investigation of what has happened there.

The Wheeler report, which the government accepted in September 2005, indicated that the way in which those agencies interacted was entirely dysfunctional. They needed to be completely reorganised. He suggested there should be one single enforcement agency, one police force, put in place throughout Australia’s major security controlled airports and that it be responsible to one person. The reason he suggested that—it has not been done by the government—is that it is in the interstices of procedure, it is between the different agencies, that the greatest capacity for people to be able to do wrong and engage in corrupt conduct is available. Where you get an overlapping of functions and uncertainty in terms of who is supposed to do the job and who has a purview in what is a complex operation in any of these major airports, you have significant problems with Customs, state police, the Australian Protective Service and the Australian Federal Police, or the private security firms that have been given the job of doing a great deal of that.

Anyone in those agencies who is in a position to be bribed or brought into the criminal culture that exists within those entities could be under investigation by the Australian Integrity Commissioner, but only if it is specifically provided for in this bill. It is our view that that is not the case. It is our view that the minister may by exemption have created a situation where those who are least likely to be under the purview of the commissioner, the Australian Federal Police, because of the very nature of their job, are under the purview of this legislation. But those who are most likely in the Commonwealth government agencies are not taken into account in this bill. I would suggest to the minister that, if that is the case, they must be incorporated and that he should accept Labor’s amendment in this regard.

The amendment we have put up is pretty tough, particularly if you look at the way in which the government have dealt with these measures, but I think it is extremely significant. The first two parts go to the question of the timing. Let us look back to 1996. I was here in November 1996. I have been here for 10 years as of yesterday. I gave my first speech 10 years ago. In all of the 10 very long years that this government have been in action—they have been here but not necessarily in action—one of the fundamental problems we have had is the dilatoriness in taking up what should be seen as simply doing their job. The government, at the very start, 10 years ago, said: ‘Let’s have a look at what the Commonwealth government activity is. Let’s have a look at what the Commonwealth government should be doing.’ They produced a report from the National Commission of Audit, and the fundamental decision, the baseline for this government, was that the Commonwealth government should in fact provide no direct service at all to the Australian community and that their ultimate function is, effectively, to be a bystander; they would be auditors and benchmarkers.

This bill took so long in part because it is an active measure. It has benchmarking and auditing functions, but it goes to the question of the operation of Commonwealth entities—in this case, the AFP. That is matched by the associated bill in which there is an attempt to bring the standards in the AFP up to date to deal with complaints in a better way than in the past. We commend the fact that those steps have been taken. But they are on too small a scale and do not really get to the nub, to the core, of what this is, because if the Commonwealth could do so I am sure they would simply outsource everything they could. We know that they have sought to do that in Immigration and Multicultural Affairs, and we know what problems have been created as a result. We know that in securing Australia’s airports a lot of the security work is left up to private companies. Those private companies are not properly vetted. The government have had a number of attempts at doing that, but because criminal elements, and indeed terrorist elements, have been able to operate within the boundaries of cleaning services, baggage handlers and so on, stopping that by proper provision but also stopping it by accurately including government services that they still have not taken responsibility for is an important thing to do.

By contrast, the American government understand very fully that they have to take responsibility for historic or traditional government activities. They are not as ideological as this government is and they therefore take very seriously the charge they have to look to the welfare and conduct of their people when they are travelling and to ensure that the action they take in relation to their federal and state agencies is such that they can ensure that corruption is rooted out. They take direct responsibility for it, and that is why it is much safer to travel in the United States and into and out of it than virtually anywhere else in the world now, because they have seriously got the message. What this government seriously needs to get the message on is that, given that it has taken so long to produce, this legislation is too narrow in its scope. We need to have it more inclusive, particularly in Customs and DIMIA.

There are also other areas, and I will speak to these last two parts of our amendment, where the government needs to be brought to task. Point (4) of our amendment states:

(4)

notes that there are a range of other Commonwealth agencies with law enforcement style powers that should also receive oversight, such as the Department of Immigration, which under the Howard Government’s maladministration wrongly held 26 Australians in Immigration detention; and

See this speech in context