Kim Wilkie (Swan, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I have recently been reading a fascinating book produced last year by the Commonwealth Department of the Environment and Heritage, called Great Southern Land, which examines the maritime exploration of Australia. There is an interesting section on the early protection of Australian sea routes, which outlines how the colonies initially felt comfortable under the protective shield of the British Army and the Royal Navy. It continues:

However, as the colonies developed their own economies, and as the demands of the empire changed, Britain began to demand joint funding of defence, then withdrew land forces altogether in 1870, and cut back on its naval presence. In response, the colonies started to build their own tiny navies. The protection of the major coaling stations located on the distant shipping routes at Thursday Island in Torres Strait and at Albany in King George Sound was a defence issue that concerned all colonies, and in 1890 they agreed to co-fund defensive fortifications at these places. Britain offered to provide the ordnance to arm them.

We do indeed have a rich maritime tradition. Indeed, our nation’s social history is positively linked with the ocean, from the arrival of the first Australians and the European excursions to our shores to the influx of new Australians by boat from Greece, Vietnam, the United Kingdom and eastern Europe. Unfortunately, the oceans and seas around Australia may also be the source of our most imminent threat. We have a vast coastline, and preventing terrorism in our region requires enhanced cooperation with our neighbours on maritime security. As the Leader of the Opposition has previously stated:

Australia is a maritime nation in a maritime region; the world’s largest island, next to the world’s largest archipelago. Increasingly, the problem of terrorism in south-east Asia is a maritime problem. From Jemaah Islamiyah’s bases in the southern Philippines, to the growing menace of piracy in the Malacca Straits, and through the traditional smuggling and piracy routes throughout the region, the threat is growing.

Since the attack on the French oil tanker the MV Limburg in Yemen in October 2000, the terrorist attacks of 11 September and the Bali bombings of 2002 and 2005, awareness about terrorism has increased. It is recognised that the maritime sector could be a target of terrorism or indeed a vehicle for terrorism. In the view of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development, OECD, the stakes are extremely high as any important break time in the maritime transport system would fundamentally cripple the world economy. The OECD has previously stated that the government and transport authorities must act to tighten security of the freight container industry in order to reduce the possibility of terrorist attack.

More than 80 per cent of goods traded worldwide are transported by sea, much of them in containers. This involves thousands of container vessels and more than 250 million container movements every year. In Western Australia one of the main container terminals used by rail and eventually sea is in my electorate, in Belmont at Kewdale. They move something like one million containers a year. When you consider the possible threat of terrorism in this industry, you realise how big the issue is and how big the problem is.

Of course, the vulnerability of cargo containers has been the focus of international policy since the attacks of September 11 in 2001. Although security on ships and at ports has been strengthened in recent years, little has been done to address inland security risks relating to cargo containers. The OECD report notes that security measures should not unduly slow down or block the flow of goods nationally or internationally. In fact, countries have many options. They can increase security and actually facilitate the free flow of trade. Better coordination between transport authorities, Customs officials and police forces can help. The report also advises governments to work closely with transport authorities when designing and implementing security measures.

As I said, some good measures have been implemented in this regard and this side of the House supports this bill, but we condemn the government for not going far enough. We condemn the government for its failure to conduct security checks on foreign crews, to ensure foreign ships provide manifestos of crew and cargo before arriving at an Australian port and, most critically, to create a department of homeland security and establish an Australian coastguard to patrol our coastline.

The dangers posed to the maritime industry in our region are revealed by the fact that insurance premiums are going through the roof. I refer to a recent report in the New York Times on 24 August. It says:

Malaysian commandos captured a freighter after a 17-hour sea chase in the Strait of Malacca, maritime authorities said Wednesday, an event that has sharpened a debate between insurers and shipowners over premiums on voyages throughout the waterway.

The commander of Malaysia’s maritime police said that special operations commandos and marine police had recovered a vessel early Tuesday that had disappeared nearly three years ago after being reported as hijacked. After the ship initially sailed on in defiance of orders to stop, the crew of 20 Chinese sailors surrendered without a fight when commandos boarded the freighter from police vessels, he said.

The incident comes as many insurers have begun charging extra premiums for ship passengers throughout the strait, one of the world’s busiest seaways, in response to fears of a possible terrorist attack. While the recovered ship was linked to piracy, not terrorism, the strength of radical Islamic groups in Southeast Asia is increasingly worrying insurers.

Neil Roberts, a technical manager at Lloyds Market Association in London, which helped prepare a list of risky regions that included the strait, said insurers wanted to be financially ready in case an attack occurred.

‘They’re preparing to fund a loss, they’re building up a reserve to fund a loss, if and when that occurs,’ he said.

Bombings in Indonesia over the last several years—in Bali and at the Australian Embassy and a Marriott hotel in Jakarta—have focused attention on the country’s radical groups.

The risk to insurers has been that terrorists might ally themselves with the many seasoned pirates in Indonesia who conduct attacks on commercial vessels for profit, robbing crew members and sometimes kidnapping them as well.

The Joint War Committee, which represents the London marine insurance industry and includes members of both the Lloyds Market Association and the International Underwriting Association, issued a new list of risky regions around the world in June. The main changes were to remove a dozen countries from the list, mainly in the Middle East and West Africa, and to add the Strait of Malacca, the southern Gulf of Thailand and parts of the southern Philippines.

Labor supports the general thrust of the bill, because Labor has been calling for urgent maritime security reform for some time. But, unfortunately, as I have said, it does not go far enough. More reforms are urgently needed to improve Australian maritime security. The concern remains that there is essentially no consistency in the federal government’s approach. Australia desperately needs a coordinated, consistent approach to all levels of transport and maritime security.

In April 2005, the Australian Strategic Policy Institute published the document Future unknown: the terrorist threat to Australian maritime security. The report states:

The basic problem in defence planning is determining how much defence is enough. Similarly, there’s a challenge in providing security against the threat of maritime terrorism: finding the right balance between assessments of risk on the one hand and realistic costs on the other. And there must also be contingency arrangements to deal with higher levels of threat within the assessed warning time.

The OTS and ASIO have assessed that there’s a terrorist threat to our shipping and ports, but it’s clear that our resources are quite inadequate to deal with higher levels of threat that could arise with only a short warning. The additional resources committed by the Australian Government have largely gone towards enhancing the infrastructure of its own agencies. Industry and state and local authorities are being expected to provide much of the capacity to deal with and prevent higher levels of threat, while also meeting their basic protection requirements. This is an unsatisfactory approach. Assuming that the Commonwealth accepts its own risk assessments, it must then be prepared to accept a greater part of the financial burden in countering the threat.

The report continues:

... there seems to be little testing of maritime security risk assessments and maritime counter-terrorism measures. They’re simply asserted by the Commonwealth, and the private sector and state authorities are expected to comply. This situation is unsatisfactory. There’s a need for greater transparency of the process to avoid excessive burdens being placed on industry and state governments.

I agree. Not only do we need greater transparency; we need a change of government to a government with the likes of the member for Brisbane, who understands what is required to best protect Australia’s maritime interests and ensure that those vessels entering Australia are not infiltrated with cargo or crew in the pay of Jemaah Islamiah or al-Qaeda.

Under Labor’s plan, a department of homeland security would be organised around two core responsibilities: border protection and protecting against terrorism attack within the border. Australia has a mainland border of some 36,000 kilometres. This figure is considerably higher if you include our various islands; although, I am not sure whether, under the current government, we include those islands in our calculations any longer. This is a government that has, of course, a Brisbane-line view of Australia’s security. Only Labor has a plan for Australia’s maritime and border security and integrity. I commend Labor’s view to the chamber.

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