Robert McClelland (Barton, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Defence) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to support the motion moved by my colleague the shadow minister for homeland security, the member for Brisbane, to amend the Maritime Transport and Offshore Facilities Security Amendment (Maritime Security Guards and Other Measures) Bill 2005. The bill is part of the current maritime security framework established initially by the Maritime Transport Security Bill 2003. Its stated purpose is to assist the maritime industry participants to police their maritime security zones. The bill would give maritime security guards—which are essentially private security guards—additional powers, including the ability to request a person found within a maritime security zone to provide identification and the reason for being in the zone. In that sense, the power is comparable, I suppose, to the powers given to Australian Protective Service officers at airports, who have been provided with similar legislative powers. The second power is the ability for the private security agents to request that a person move out of a security zone and, if that request is not complied with, to move the person out. The third gives the security guards the power to remove vessels or vehicles.

There are a couple of points to make in respect of the bill. The first is that it leaves primary responsibility for policing within ports to the states and territories, in this case facilitated with a network of private security guards. But the reality is that some states, because of their income or relatively unmanageable coastline, have been able or unable—depending on those criteria—to introduce effective policing measures. Clearly, it will be easier for New South Wales or Victoria, which have smaller coastlines and more substantial economies, to afford policing resources—both manpower and boats—for their ports than it would be for Western Australia or Queensland, which have substantially greater coastlines and less substantial economies. The point I would like to make is that security of ports in Australia should not be dependent upon the resources of individual states. We learn time and time again that terrorism tends to strike at the weakest link. Partial target hardening is not hardening at all; it is simply a direction to the weakest target for terrorists to attack. In summary, port security must be addressed on a national level, not with policing left to the states and territories.

I also note that the Senate Rural and Regional Affairs and Transport Legislation Committee, which examined the bill, was quite critical of the government for proceeding with legislation before appropriate regulations had been drafted and circulated to all industry participants and all governments and, clearly, that is a concern that should be recognised by the parliament. Australians are entitled to question at the end of the day whether the security of our ports should be based on, as the current legislation anticipates, a network of private security guards. For instance, in their submission to the Senate inquiry into the bill, the Association of Australian Ports and Maritime Authorities said:

Port authorities and facilities generally employ contractors as security guards ...

In relation to the level of training provided to those security guards, they said:

It is certainly nowhere near the level of that provided to law enforcement officers, yet MSGs—

maritime security guards—

are expected to carry out the duties set out in the Bill.

The previous speaker commented that a security guard will perhaps one day be guarding a council shopping centre and on another day be required to exercise these very important and now significant powers with respect to the policing of our ports. I question whether that is appropriate. Clearly, we have a network of Australian Protective Service officers at the very least supervised by the Australian Federal Police at our airports. One would think that at the very least that same regime should apply at our ports where, in many ways, a much more substantial infrastructure exists.

The other point I want to make is in respect of the government’s rhetoric on border security. A couple of weeks ago, on 16 August, the Minister for Defence, in answering a question without notice, referred to illegal foreign fishing vessels and mentioned an episode he saw on the TV program Border Security. He said:

We saw a Royal Australian Navy patrol boat coming alongside an ice boat, a foreign vessel fishing illegally in Australian waters. The first thing that this foreign fishing vessel met was a Navy vessel. The first thing the XO of the ship said over a megaphone, accompanied by another sailor holding a firearm, was, ‘This is an Australian warship.’ Following that, rounds were fired from a 50 calibre machine gun and a boarding party went aboard that foreign fishing vessel.

That statement was intended to convey the impression that our maritime borders are patrolled exclusively by the Australian Navy. That would be an acceptable proposition if it were in fact the case, but the reality is that our exclusive economic zone, which covers something like 16 million square kilometres—an area more than twice the landmass of continental Australia—as well as 37,000 kilometres of coastline, is patrolled by just 12 naval patrol vessels and eight Customs vessels. I grant that the government is supplementing that available resource by two minehunters, taking it up to 14 naval vessels. Nonetheless, eight Customs vessels are very much part of the available fleet. That is equivalent to about 50 police cars patrolling the entirety of Australia.

That is the guts of our maritime interdiction capacity. I accept that other surveillance resources—indeed, sophisticated electronic resources—are available for surveillance, but in terms of holds on the water to carry out actual policing work and interdiction, that is the guts of Australia’s, this nation’s, water protection capacity. It is not just Navy doing this but a combination of agencies. Indeed, that is the reality. No single agency has the core role of law enforcement and border protection in Australia’s maritime jurisdiction.

A number of agencies have an interest in maritime border security, including the Australian Fisheries Management Authority, the Australian Maritime Safety Authority, the Department of Immigration and Multicultural Affairs, the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, the Australian Quarantine and Inspection Service, Environment Australia, the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority, the Australian Federal Police and Australian Search and Rescue. They all bid, if you like, for a timeslot of those surveillance and interdiction resources. No border surveillance is undertaken or coordinated through the one legislatively authorised body. It is conducted by the Joint Offshore Protection Command, the head of which, although he is an admiral, as I understand the position, is nonetheless employed and paid under the portfolio of justice and customs and, ultimately, is under the direction of the secretary to the department of customs. It is far from the situation implied by the minister that our Navy is responsible for the coordination of patrolling our maritime zone.

The head of the Joint Offshore Protection Command has available to him the use of naval vessels and resources, but those vessels during their operation are under the control of the military. By way of example, if coercive authority is required on the part of those naval vessels and naval officers, they are required to do so in accordance, appropriately, with the naval rules of engagement as determined, ultimately, by the defence hierarchy. If, on the other hand, a Customs vessel and Customs officers are required to use coercive force, their authorisation and legal authority comes through separate legislation and, ultimately, under the direction of the secretary to the department of customs. We have quite evidently, even on that point, a fragmentation of the important use of coercive authority obviously used in the interdiction of vessels. In other words, there is no agency with the core role of, and thereby legislative authority for, overall law enforcement in our nation’s maritime jurisdiction. No single agency is given commanding responsibility in this vital area of national interest and potential security command.

I want to say a few more things about the Joint Offshore Protection Command in case it is suggested that it is anything akin to what Labor has proposed, and that is the establishment of a coastguard. Labor interrogated Customs officials during the Senate estimates procedure in respect of the ministerial arrangements applying to the Joint Offshore Protection Command and we were advised:

It is a fairly tricky set of ministerial responsibilities ...

That has to be an understatement. We were also advised that, in relation to the interdiction capacity of the Joint Offshore Protection Command, it is not empowered to do anything other than collect information that Customs officials, in fact, were already receiving prior to the establishment of the command. Specifically, when we asked whether the command would increase our ability to intercept and board suspect vessels, departmental officials responded that it is only concerned with:

... information rather than a power to actually do anything.

So the suggestion that there is an adequate degree of coordination of our border policing functions by this body is farcical.

Without legislation defining its role and powers, the effectiveness of the Joint Offshore Protection Command will remain inadequate. It is not sufficient that our coast watch capacity and interdiction is coordinated through mere administrative arrangements with different departments having responsibility, in particular for the use of coercive force. It has been pointed out time and again that the inherent difficulties with these interagency administrative arrangements will compromise the effectiveness of our maritime border protection. The risks apply not only to illegal immigration, fishing and smuggling of narcotics and, potentially, weapons but also to our economy should, for instance, an illegal fishing vessel land on our coastline, as they frequently do, without any customs or quarantine inspection having occurred.

The other point I want to make, with respect to an issue which has been topical, is that of asylum seekers potentially coming to Australia from West Papua. We recently saw what can only be described as a dramatic overreaction by the government when they effectively sought to excise from our immigration zone the entirety of Australia. That was a panic response from the government—a panic response that resulted from our limited ability to patrol the Torres Strait Islands, which these asylum seekers are likely to travel through on their way to Australia. The reality is that the substantial naval and Customs patrol vessels that we have are limited in their ability to patrol the Torres Strait, largely as a result of reefs to the south of the area and mudflats to the north. They have difficulty navigating through those areas—a fact which all foreign fishing vessels that come into the area recognise; hence they head for those areas in order to escape interdiction. Essentially, our vessels are limited to patrolling the east-west passage through the region. That is clearly something that needs to be addressed with additional resources.

An issue more specifically covered by the bill is port security. As I previously indicated, we have a situation in Australia where primary responsibility for policing ports remains with the states. I have commented that this is an entirely unsatisfactory situation. We have literally billions of dollars of infrastructure existing all along the Western Australian coast. Damage to that infrastructure could have potentially catastrophic effects on the national economy, yet we are saying the responsibility for port security in relevant ports along the Western Australian coastline falls to the Western Australian government. That simply cannot happen.

The previous speaker, the member for Lingiari, somewhat jocularly said to Deputy Speaker Kerr that he would experience a different approach when he visits the United States in the near future. That is most certainly the case. I had cause to visit the United States Coast Guard the year before last and was informed of and saw the program involving sea marshals. The role of the sea marshals in the United States is both to coordinate port security in coordination with specific task forces charged with that purpose and to board ships carrying dangerous substances, such as petrochemicals or ammonium nitrate, a distance away from the entry to the ports. Usually there are four sea marshals allocated—two will go to the bridge and two will go to the engine room after conducting relevant interviews and basic tests to detect possible radioactivity and the like. Their brief, if they detect anything untoward, is simply to stop that vessel through the control room of the bridge or, if necessary, by shutting down the engines pending the arrival of a task force to board the ship, most likely by helicopter or fast boat, to provide additional resources to apprehend the vessel. That is, they prevent a vessel carrying potentially dangerous substances from entering their ports.

Indeed, back in the time of the Second World War, Albert Einstein wrote to the President of the United States pointing out the potential danger of a nuclear device being smuggled into a port on board a cargo ship and the potential devastation it could cause. It has been known for over 60 years that this is a potential catastrophe that exists for modern economies. And what do we say? The Commonwealth does a Pontius Pilate: ‘It is not our responsibility; it is the responsibility of state and territory policing authorities.’

That is simply not good enough. There is no justification for not introducing sea marshals. We have air marshals that board international flights. There is clearly a program in place in the United States which is effective. That program should be implemented in Australia and those sea marshals should be given responsibility for supervising port security.

The final point I want to make in the brief time available to me also concerns the government’s promotion of the use of vessels under foreign flags of convenience plying their trade around our coastline. One would think that the greatest defence you can have against potential terrorism, piracy and so forth is Australian eyes and ears around our coastline. Yet the government has actually promoted foreign vessels.

If anyone is in doubt about the risks of that, I draw their attention to a question on notice that was answered on 12 May 2004 regarding the number of foreign seafarers who deserted their ships and have been at large in Australia. The number is considerably in excess of those who would seek to enter Australia as asylum seekers through our waterways. Those people have deserted their ships in ports all over Australia, from Townsville to Esperance, Wollongong, Hay Point, Dampier and Cairns as well as the major ports. The government must recognise the risk of these foreign flag vessels, and it is failing to do so.

In short, the government is big on rhetoric about border security but when you conduct a cursory analysis it is really pathetic in the context of the 21st century and the threats that this nation faces.

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