Tony Windsor (New England, Independent) Share this | Hansard source

The member for Mallee says there is no risk at Tamworth. I suppose he would say to the people in America, where some of the aircraft that carried out the September 11 atrocity came from some regional airports, that there was no risk to them. I sincerely hope—and I have a great respect for the member for Mallee—that those words that there is no risk at regional airports do not come back to haunt him.

The process, as I said, in my view is very illogical. Why is Sydney airport at risk when Tamworth and Wagga and other airports are not at risk? Who has determined that? And I think the member for La Trobe gave an inkling of the answer, as I said, today. It is not about risk assessment or potential risk. Obviously, a terrorist with half a brain, when he or she views the Australian scene and sees a number of airports with Dash 8 aircraft will see that some are screened and others are not. If that were the choice of weapon, obviously they would probably avail themselves of a hire car and drive to one of those places.

There seems to be this logic that it is only the big aircraft that can do damage. I do not believe that and I think history says that that is not necessarily the case. But it also says to me that these people, these murderers that are carrying on their activities around the world, will make choices based on the ease of access to ways and means of destroying Australian people and various pieces of infrastructure. They are probably more intelligent—more intelligent than some of us would think—than that they would all blunder into Sydney or Melbourne airports and be detected by some form of detection there and not even consider a regional airport. As the member for Mallee says, there is no risk, apparently, at regional airports! I sincerely hope it is on page 8 of the al-Qaeda handbook on terrorist attacks that regional airports are not at risk.

I think the government really has to look at this issue. The member for La Trobe talked about the money issue—that it would cost $400 million to secure our airports. Since the government has been in power—and I respect the government’s economic management, and the way in which it has been able to create surplus budgets et cetera—something like $33 billion has been returned to the taxpayer through tax cuts alone since 2001.

It is not a matter of whether there is enough money to be able to secure the airports. There are decisions made, on this very airy-fairy definition of risk assessment, that are in a sense financial decisions. It is expensive to do that. Everybody would agree with that; I would agree with that. But if it is expensive, why protect Sydney airport? If there is no risk, why protect Sydney airport? Why not have every airport in Australia treated the same? If we are going to protect some airports from terrorism, and if terrorism is deemed by the government to be a threat to this nation and the people who live within it and who we need to protect—and we heard the debate today about a gate left open and all the semantics that went on about whether that gate was open or not open—

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