Bernie Ripoll (Oxley, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Industry, Infrastructure and Industrial Relations) Share this | Hansard source

No, it is not unwise. In fact, we oppose it for good reason. Labor’s position on this bill is very clear. We do oppose the measures being put forward and we believe that the introduction of a new aviation regulatory regime, in the absence of an assessment of the likely safety and economic outcomes, is not a sound approach to this area of critical public policy. The minister would be wise, I think, rather than criticising the Labor Party, to look at two critical issues: the issue of security and the issue of safety. Everything that is done in terms of civil aviation should be couched within that framework. That should be the basis and the starting point. That has not been the case in terms of this bill. The absence of that assessment which I referred to could have safety, economic and security outcomes. We certainly do not believe it is a sound approach for the government to be taking in this critical policy area.

Australians do expect and demand the most rigorous approach to aviation policy in terms of safety and security. That is very much a front-of-mind issue because of terrorism and activities around the world, and also because the government makes it a front-of-mind issue. That is okay with me, but if the government is going to do that then it must take the necessary steps and precautions, make assessments and make any changes to legislation in line with those proper assessments.

It seems that the Howard government does not do this. If it did, it would understand that the measures being proposed may have serious consequences for safety in our skies, and they may cost Australian jobs as well. As Labor’s shadow transport minister has said in the other place, Labor’s principal objection to this bill is that we believe it has the potential to undermine aviation safety standards in this country. This is not something that is done lightly. This is not something said lightly. This is something that is very important, and it should be something that the government looks at very carefully if it is serious about not just the rhetoric and facade of aviation security and safety but its practical implementation as well.

I will talk about this a little more in a moment, but I want to say right now that the government has a very poor track record on aviation security and safety. While it has talked about a lot of things since the events that occurred on 11 September 2001—and the anniversary of that tragic incident is only a few days away now—the government has done very little to act and has acted only very recently in addressing some of those concerns that were raised in late 2001 and early 2002 by members of the public as well as by members of parliament and other authorities.

This bill substantially replicates the provisions of the Civil Aviation Legislation Amendment (Mutual Recognition with New Zealand and Other Matters) Bill 2003, which related to the mutual recognition of certain aviation related safety certifications. The proposed amendments will mean that the holder of an air operators certificate, an AOC, for operation of an aircraft of more than 30 seats or 15,000 kilograms, issued in New Zealand, will be able to conduct operations in Australia without having to obtain an equivalent AOC issued in Australia, and vice versa.

This in itself should be enough to highlight the obvious gap in safety measures and sound alarm bells within the office of the Minister for Transport and Regional Services that this legislation is deficient. I do not think that in an ever-increasing environment of safety and security concerns and terrorism we should relax the measures and barriers to a point where it just becomes easier and easier for pilots to be able to access different regimes.

The Howard government first attempted to legislate for mutual recognition of AOCs through the Civil Aviation Legislation Amendment (Mutual Recognition with New Zealand and Other Matters) Bill 2003, which was introduced into the House in June 2003. As we now know, the introduction of this bill led to a Senate Rural and Regional Affairs and Transport Legislation Committee inquiry, and the committee’s final report was never responded to. I think it is a poor indictment of the minister and his office that that report was not either responded to or acted on.

The government has not responded to concerns raised in the course of the previous committee inquiry, with the exception of its decision to omit provisions providing for the extension of mutual recognition by regulation. Outstanding concerns related to this bill are many. They include such things as the absence of a comparative assessment of safety systems operating in Australia and New Zealand. I think making that assessment as to what can be transferred across and what cannot be would be an important starting point—what has a matching principle in Australia and New Zealand. I do not think it is acceptable that this bill does not do that and that the government has not looked at this. I assess that if the travelling public were to understand it they would have concerns. They would say, ‘Hang on, if we’ve got those rules here in Australia then why isn’t a proper assessment made between the Australian standards and the New Zealand standards?’ It seems obvious to me that this is an area that the government could move into to ensure that there is compliance between the two regimes.

The other area of concern, of course, is direct safety related to lower cabin crew ratios in New Zealand, which in fact is one cabin crew member per 50 seats compared to Australia’s one cabin crew member per 36 seats or passengers. Again, if Australia has a standard whereby it is determined that the proper safety cabin crew ratio ought to be one to 36 then it ought to be one to 36 as a standard. It should not be relegated to the lowest common denominator—that being the ratio used in New Zealand of one to 50.

Another area of concern is direct safety related to the prohibition of sky marshals on aircraft operating under a New Zealand AOC. This one is obviously something the government should look at. What I suspect will happen—and I have a couple more concerns—is that the government, after using its strength in numbers in both houses, will pass this legislation and then be forced to come back to the table and the parliament with further amendments and changes to make amends for the things that it has not done properly in the first instance, which is always a disappointment, given the length of time that the government takes to act on safety and security concerns in the civil aviation area, unlike the speed with which it acts in pushing through legislation in other areas.

Another area which concerns the ALP is the absence of a regulatory analysis of the two systems. Without question the government needs to look at the two regulatory environments. Just like a comparative assessment of safety systems, I think it is imperative that we look at where there may be some overlap, omissions or contradictions within the regulatory environments between the Australian and New Zealand systems. We are also concerned at the absence of a cost-benefit analysis, including the impact on the economy from a shift of airline operators, including through subsidiary operations from Australia to New Zealand. Our aviation industry is under a lot of pressure, as is our economy. It would be prudent for the government and for the department involved to do a cost-benefit analysis looking at the impact this will have on industry and the economy and then to report back to the parliament as to what that assessment is.

Understanding the history of the Howard government’s approach to aviation security reveals why there are so many deficiencies in this bill. This is not a reference to this bill, but there is this desire to rush bills through at the end when they have already been sitting on the table for years not being acted on. They may have had committee reports and inquiries where extensive efforts and work have been done by members and senators, only to be ignored. Years can go by and then there are these rushed bills which get rammed through this parliament in a less than sound manner without proper scrutiny or proper analysis.

We should also have a very close look at the issue of security at regional airports. I could not speak on a bill such as this without making a big issue of regional airport security. It is one of the greater concerns that I have in all of our airports in Australia. There are some 66,707 regional flights a year which go unchecked at regional airports right around the country. That is a lot of flights. That is a lot of air time, a lot of passengers, a lot of aircraft, a lot of different pilots and a lot of air movements.

In the five years—almost to the day, as I said—since the tragic incidents of September 11, 2001, the Howard government has refused to take airport security seriously. While we see in some cases even over-the-top security at Sydney, Brisbane or other major capital city airports, we hear very little about what is going on at regional airports. There has been a lot of talk from the government about airport security, but we have seen very little action. We have seen fridge magnets and PR campaigns but we have not seen the sort of action on the ground that the flying public deserve.

The Howard government’s failure to implement the expert recommendations of the Wheeler report in regional airports is leaving more than 3.9 million passengers a year at serious risk. The Minister for Transport and Regional Services has admitted that no baggage screening—that is right, none whatsoever—was done at major regional airports such as Launceston, Townsville, Maroochydore and Alice Springs. It poses the question, certainly in my mind: is it the view of the minister that these airports are somehow less valued or less worthy or that the passengers who fly from these regional airports are less valued or less worthy than passengers from major airports around the country?

An even more serious question for the minister would be a very simple one about those who want to do harm to us. As security tightens up at our major airports, wouldn’t it be normal to make an assessment that people who want to do harm to us, people such as terrorists, will look at easy targets, easy pickings? You cannot find any easier than our regional airports. That is the unfortunate outcome of this. As we tighten up security ever more at Brisbane, Sydney and Melbourne airports, we are finding our regional airports have got huge gaping vacuums of security, where people can literally walk in with anything they like. Their baggage is not checked at all.

If an aircraft takes off from Sydney and flies over Sydney, we know that the aircraft is clean, that it has been fully screened and checked, but an aircraft coming from a regional airport and flying into Sydney airport has not been screened. It is flying over the same city and could have some device or dangerous person on board. It could be the subject of a hijacking. The possibilities are there. If we are serious about airport and aviation safety and security then without doubt all of our airports must be included and not just our capital city airports.

Last year tens of thousands of passengers travelled from 11 regional airports around the country directly into Sydney with unscreened bags. This is not good enough. If planes are taking off from Sydney and they are fully screened because we believe that is the right thing to do for security—for the passengers on board, for the people on the ground, for safe skies—then surely a plane coming from a regional airport and landing in Sydney must have the same rules applied to it. It does not make sense that the government would have one rule for a major city airport and not apply it for a regional one.

I would be very happy to hear a full explanation from the minister—and I know he will be reading this—as to why he values the life of passengers on aircraft travelling from Sydney airport more than he does the life of passengers travelling to Sydney, because their bags are not screened. In fact, the people on board would not have any screening either. When Sir John Wheeler reviewed Australian airport security last year, he said:

Regional and smaller airports demand more attention.

They demand more attention because they are not getting any. There is no investment in their security from this government. I suspect—only a little bit, but I suspect—it is because they are not front of mind; they are back of mind. They are hidden away in regional Australia. They are almost insignificant. This is what the government must be thinking to itself. This is not part of its PR campaign to keep winning elections and keep people frightened.

Government members might not like to this, but I cannot find any other plausible reasons why the government would travel down this path. If these regional airports were somehow front of mind, in the media, right up there and were the very public face of this government’s electoral concerns, I think we would see a different scenario. If the government is serious about security—and it claims to be the great protector and all of these things—then why is it not doing something about regional security? The questions must be asked.

Government members must ask themselves the question: if somebody were going to do harm to an aircraft, to passengers on an aircraft or to a building—to do something with an aircraft—why would they choose to do it out of Sydney airport? Why would they not just choose to do it out of a regional airport? They could still target Sydney but do it on the way into Sydney, not on the way out of Sydney. It seems pretty obvious to me. I am not a security expert but I am sure security experts have looked at this, and they would be very concerned. I am sure that just as security experts would have looked at this, so would people who mean to do us harm.

The figures are evidence that the Prime Minister is misleading people in this arena when he claims that his government is doing everything it can to protect the travelling public. The figures do not bear that out; it is just not the truth. The truth is that we have security at major airports but we do not have security or screening at regional airports. At a whole range of major regional airports there is no baggage screening at all. I have personally travelled through regional airports—and I am sure other members of this House have—and I was frightened because I was not checked at all. It left me with an absolutely uneasy feeling that I managed to get on an aircraft with all of my hand luggage—no in-aircraft baggage, just hand luggage—without being screened, checked, asked a question or anything at all.

I checked in, I got on the aircraft and I could not help but think that in this current environment of terrorism and all those things that frighten all of us that that aircraft was heading into Sydney. If somebody had wanted to do harm on that aircraft, to the people on board, or to make a statement to people living in Sydney or to Sydney airport or whatever—a multitude of things could happen—then that would have been the perfect avenue to do it. I did not feel comfortable on that aircraft because of the potential that somebody else on that aircraft could have been carrying something that should not have been on there.

So when the Prime Minister talks about these issues, I think he has very little credibility. And when the minister talks about these issues, I think he has no credibility. If this government is serious about protecting the travelling public then it ought to get serious in practice rather than just in rhetoric. Millions of Australian citizens are moving around our country in aircraft that are carrying unscreened baggage. I think I have made this point clear, but I cannot stress it enough to the government. It is an extremely dangerous mistake for the government to make in the current climate, and one that a Labor government would immediately rectify. That is part of our policy and part of something that we believe should be at the forefront.

It may not be so attractive and it may not have all the bells and whistles and the PR campaigns that the Prime Minister might so desire in an election. Nonetheless, it is important if we are to be serious about national security. This shows that the Prime Minister cannot look Australians in the eye and tell them he is doing everything he can to protect them from terrorism. He is only doing some things he can to protect us from terrorism—those things which are the most electorally attractive.

Whenever I speak about this in public arenas or if I am ever asked about this, I say, ‘You do not have to go very far beyond just a fridge magnet to show you that it is all about PR and glossy pamphlets.’ With the fridge magnet and all the rest, you can throw good money after bad. I am sure the fridge magnets are still around on some fridges holding up kids’ school results. They have come to great use. I think that is what they do in my house. I cannot see them being of too much other use.

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