Ms Anna Burke (Chisholm, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I want to thank the member for O’Connor for his contribution to the debate on the Inspector of Transport Security Bill 2006, although I am not sure that he ever actually got around to speaking on the bill. He is the only member of the government to speak on it, so he at least gets brownie points for having done that. What a sad indictment of the government: we have a very important bill before the House today, one for which we have been waiting a very long time, and we have got one contribution from the member for O’Connor, who I think spent about five minutes of his entire speech actually on the bill, and as for the rest of it I am not quite sure where he was at.

I want to correct him on a couple of points. He criticised the Transport Workers Union members at Sydney (Kingsford Smith) Airport for saying that they were concerned about being watched while they were rifling through bags. I have had the absolute pleasure of meeting with some of those baggage handlers at Sydney airport and you could not meet a more reputable bunch of guys anywhere. They are out there asserting the integrity of their profession and looking after the security of the passengers flying on our aeroplanes. They are the ones who are on the front line. You need to remember that every time there is a terrorist attack it is, without fail, transport workers who are killed in that attack. On the airlines, on the trains, on the buses—it is always the transport workers who are at the front line and who are risking their lives.

These people at Sydney airport, down in the baggage-handling area, are the ones who, nine times out of 10, are bringing the issues to the attention of management. We were recently told about an incident where a very suspicious package arrived at the end of the queue. The guys were told to put it on. They looked at it and said, ‘There is something very odd with this package. There are wires coming out of it. Perhaps something should be done.’ Nobody knew what was to be done. They themselves ended up calling the bomb squad to come down. How inappropriate! They all felt incredibly frustrated that there was no chain of command, that there was no instance of how they could progress this issue. They are the ones out there putting themselves at risk in part of their job. They recognise that and understand it. So should this parliament and so should the members getting up to speak on the bill.

While I welcome the bill, I also endorse wholeheartedly the amendment moved by the member for Brisbane. This bill is too little and way too late. The government has patted itself on the back because we have not had an incident. That is more down to good luck than down to good management. Finally we have a framework in which the Inspector of Transport Security can operate, but he is still only going to operate part time, if and when he is released from the other duties he is performing. It is now five years since the September 11 bombings, four years since the first Bali blast, two years since the Madrid bombing, one year since the second Bali bombing and one year since the London bombing, and finally we are putting in place legislation to govern how the Inspector of Transport Security will operate in this country. We have seen by the pattern of these bombs that they are predominantly targeted at transport areas.

The Labor Party recognised last year that one of the areas this government has been failing in is transport and maritime security, and we established our own task force. I have had the pleasure of chairing the task force and I have been to some very interesting places around the country and visited some very interesting things which a girl from Melbourne would usually never get to see. I got to go to Karratha’s port, one of the most important ports in this country and one of the most essential to our economy. It was fascinating being up there. The day we arrived, the boom gate had been constructed. They were actually tarmacking the road as we were driving over it because the gate had not been put there. But I do want to commend all the port authorities. These people are doing a sterling job. We were highly impressed by all the port authorities we met and we were highly impressed by the port authority security committees.

Having also been to Sydney airport and seen the baggage handling, I now know that airports do not cater for passengers but cater for bags. Bags are far more important at airports, I have discovered, having been in the bowels of Sydney airport and seen the check bag screening going on. That is for international; domestic will come online next year. There is a huge process in the bowels of the airport which these bags go through—again, highly professional individuals running a very good system. Probably the only criticism I have of the airport is that it does not now mirror the port security committees system that is in place. I would recommend that there be a rethink about security committees at airports that incorporate all the people at the airport, most particularly the unions. Union representatives sit on the port security committees, and that has been found to be very beneficial.

Finally we have legislation which outlines how the inspector will conduct independent inquiries and recommendations in relation to transport security and offshore security matters, upon the Minister for Transport and Regional Services authorising an inquiry. The flaw in this legislation is that the Inspector of Transport Security cannot actually go out and say, ‘I think I need to conduct an inquiry into this.’ It must be authorised by the minister. When the position was created in 2003—let me repeat: 2003—the government said:

The government will provide $1.6 million over four years to support the establishment within the Department of Transport and Regional Services of an Inspector of Transport Security. The inspector will investigate major incidents and systematic transport security weaknesses to ensure security vulnerabilities are identified and addressed.

The position has been up and running now for three years without enabling legislation for that to take place, and that is a sad indictment of the government. The Minister for Transport and Regional Services at the time, John Anderson, said on 23 May 2005:

Mr Palmer has temporarily stood aside to conduct an inquiry into the Cornelia Rau case, and it is expected he will resume his duties in the near future.

Seven months he took to do that inquiry. A very detailed inquiry it was and very important work, but he already had a very important job to do. The minister went on to say:

There have been no matters which have arisen that would have required Mr Palmer to be recalled or to have someone else appointed to the role on a temporary basis.

Again—more good luck than good management. What if there had been an incident? Surely we have seen, from what has recently occurred in London, that you want to stop these incidents before they happen. Today in the Main Committee we are having a migration debate triggered by fear of the Islamic religion. In stopping people from taking out citizenship, we need to remember that in the latest London incidents they were home-grown terrorists; they were people who were born and bred in London. Where is somebody conducting security—looking at our transport security system overall—ensuring that we have the intelligence and the systems in place so that we do not have a London bombing? I do not know that we have anybody. That is one of the biggest flaws with this legislation.

The minister promised in 2003 that there would be enabling legislation put into place. It is now 2006 and we finally have the legislation, but it is still only a part-time position. It has taken three years to get there. On 23 May 2005 the then transport minister, John Anderson, promised that Mr Palmer’s position, Inspector of Transport Security, would have legislation to underpin it and define its powers. Today we are seeing that being delivered. So we have gone on and on and on. The government has previously said that Mr Palmer will be recalled to his position if something goes wrong in transport security—not good enough. But when appropriating funds for the position the government informed the parliament that the role of the inspector included the investigation of systematic transport security weaknesses ‘to ensure security vulnerabilities are identified and addressed’. How can you do that if you are only going to recall someone if there is an incident?

It is clear that Mr Palmer cannot do the core job of identifying systematic weaknesses in the system to prevent security incidents occurring on train, tram and bus systems. On the one-year anniversary of the London bombing, it is worrying that the government has not installed a person in this position who has this as their sole focus. Finally, we have seen the legislation promised to give the inspector real teeth, but, as indicated by the amendments, we think that somehow the legislation has failed to give the minister the real teeth.

In the last two or three years, in Sydney airport alone, we have had the following incidents. There was the camel incident. There was the suspicious device on an international flight into Sydney. On that flight, the baggage handlers had taken the bags off before anyone told them that there was a suspicious device on the plane. Two cars tailgated a van through the security gates at the airport without proper security checks. They got to what is known as the sterile area. Passengers from a regional unscreened flight from Wagga Wagga entered a secure area. The entire area involved in the breach had to be evacuated. Everyone had to be re-screened. As I mentioned before, a device spotted by baggage handlers resulted in ground staff calling the bomb squad themselves. A passenger with suspected bird flu was removed from the plane. It subsequently turned out that there was probably another issue, but again the procedures for how to deal with that incident were not fully understood by the staff on the ground. If we had a full-time inspector, surely he would have been dealing with these incidents and they would not keep repeating.

The member for O’Connor kept mentioning the English gentleman who came out and did the report. The Wheeler report said that the area of regional airports was a gaping hole in security. If we had a full-time inspector—we have a part-time one who is eminently qualified—he could have conducted the inquiry and we could now be acting on those recommendations. But Wheeler was brought over. I had the pleasure of meeting him. He is a highly intelligent and very articulate man who knows his subject. But we have had this report and still some of the vital issues have not been acted on. If we had a full-time inspector we could be looking at the actual issues and strategic responses could be put in. As Wheeler said in his report:

… in the current environment, consideration should be given to more comprehensive security control over regional flight passengers when arriving at major airports such as Sydney because of the risk to larger aircraft and facilities when passengers disembark at the apron.

That is from the Wheeler review. As part of the task force that I have been chairing, we had the pleasure of going to quite a few regional airports. When you go into the regional airports down at Burnie and Devonport, there is a big sign that tells you ‘Don’t bring in fruit’. But you could probably bring in or take out anything else because nobody screens you. When you leave the terminal at Burnie you are not screened, but you get screened when you come into Melbourne. After you have been on the plane that has landed on the tarmac at Melbourne, they then put your bag through. It seems quite bizarre, but that is how it operates. These are airports that have large passenger movements.

But what about ports? Is anybody looking at ports? Yes, we have had the MSI card introduced, and Labor supported that. As I said, port security authorities and committees are up and running. I want to put onto the record my thanks to the following individuals who allowed the Labor task force to visit and hear firsthand how things are operating: Captain Vic Justice, the harbourmaster and port security officer at the port of Dampier, and members of the Port Dampier security committee; Mr Warren Fish, Woodside Dampier port operations; Mr Gary Webb, chief executive officer, and Mr Colin Norman, general manager operations, of the Newcastle Port Corporation; Mr Murray Fox, general manager environment and planning, Mr Peter Shepherd, manager port security, and Mr David Taylor, manager risk and dangerous goods, Sydney Ports Corporation; and Rod Gilmour and Ron Elliott at the Sydney Airport Corporation. They all took a great deal of time. There was also Rob Mason at RailCorp in Sydney, who took a great deal of time going over many of the operational procedures at these interfaces and these coalfaces. I want to say thank you very much for doing that.

When we were in Newcastle, we were highly impressed by the port authority and what they are doing on the ground in a day-to-day environment. The port of Newcastle is very interesting because it has the largest ammonium nitrate facility there. Orica has set up there. They actually produce on the site. From that site they use coastal shipping and rail to move ammonium nitrate around Australia and overseas. When we were there I was effusive in my praise for what the port authority was doing. However, I did draw to attention the fact that the Howard government, by virtue of lack of legislation, is exposing the port—and indeed the town of Newcastle—to a risk. This ammonium nitrate is not shipped on Australian vessels under Australian flags with Australian seafarers. No. It is shipped on flag of convenience vessels with foreign seafarers. We are not 100 per cent sure who the seafarers are and we cannot tell the authority or the ownership of the ship. There is a great danger there that the Howard government, with this legislation and with a part-time inspector, is not dealing with. The government is not really dealing with the nature of dangerous goods.

Just recently we had an incident where 400 kilograms of ammonium nitrate were taken off a freight train—just outside Newcastle, funnily enough, where all the ammonium nitrate is. Four hundred kilograms were taken. The freight train was in the yard. People managed to jemmy the container open and take out one of the ammonium nitrate bags. In Newcastle we got to see these ammonium nitrate bags. They are very big. It was a very small amount of ammonium nitrate that was used in the Oklahoma bombing and that caused so much devastation there. I think 162 lives were lost. Here we have an issue of very grave concern. We need someone full time to look at it and deal with it.

Then there was the incident down in Geelong: ‘Drunk sailor almost blew up our port’. Dealing with the Pos Auckland highlights the issue brilliantly. Who has actually reviewed this incident? Who has actually gone down there and done an analysis of what went on the day that this ship was under threat from the drunken sailor—the poor individual who had spent 11 months on the ship without shore leave and who then went on a drunken rampage and threatened to blow up the ship? Who has actually investigated what went on that day and reported back what should have taken place? Who has looked at the fact that the Geelong city council was not advised of the risk? Who looked at the fact that Displan was not put into action? Even if there was not a risk, who was actually assessing the risk on the day to make that assessment? Who was in contact with the master of the ship who raised the security level from the standard, security level 1, to the highest, security level 3—which resulted in a SWAT team turning up at the port to take away the poor sailor in question? Let me read from the Geelong Advertiser:

A DRUNK Filipino sailor on board a ship docked in Geelong threatened to blow up the vessel, which was packed with more than 30,000 tonnes of volatile fertiliser, the Maritime Union said yesterday.

The sailor attacked two crewmates on Wednesday morning before locking himself in the engine room, where he opened fuel valves and shoved raids into electrical equipment.

The emergency forced the captain of the vessel to issue a high-level security alert never before used in Australia, the union said.

The ship was docked near the Shell refinery, in the heart of an industrial area where millions of litres of flammable and dangerous substances are stored.

What they did not say is that the port is right in the middle of a residential area, right nearby a whole lot of people. On examination, there is probably a whole lot of stuff that was or was not happening out there, but who was actually reviewing it? Who was making those calls? Who has assessed the situation afterwards to ensure that we have the appropriate things in place? According to the following report from the Geelong Advertiser:

After 11 months’ continuous toil aboard the bulker, POS Auckland, tied up at Lascelles Wharf, drunken Filipino seafarer Allan Yordan, 45, snapped and attacked two of his colleagues with a knife and a hammer. He then locked himself in the engine room and made some wild threats that he could never have carried out before police coaxed him out and arrested him.

This might be, as the story says, the ‘end of a sad story’, but there were a whole range of incidents that were happening then that nobody knew the real risk assessment of at the time. It is all right in hindsight to say now, ‘Well, it didn’t happen and it couldn’t happen,’ but who actually knew? At the time, nobody knew that. At the time, there was a serious risk and threat happening on that wharf, and nobody was dealing with it. Nobody was there to actually ring to ask: ‘How do we deal with this situation?’ The poor individual has now been sentenced to six months in jail, but have we had an assessment? Have we had a review? It is, again, more good luck than good management that an incident has not happened.

As I said, a 400-kilogram bag of ammonium nitrate was recently taken from a train. I had the pleasure of visiting Sydney’s Central Station and was very impressed with the operations there; they are highly technologically advanced. But, again, there is no federal government coordination in respect of rail. There is nobody overseeing what is happening on the rail system. Again, it is more good luck than good management. The individual states are looking at it and taking action. At the Sydney RailCorp they have devised a device so that they can get security workers in and out in a timely manner if they are carrying breathing apparatuses. A breathing apparatus has about 20 minutes worth of oxygen. If you are actually walking with that, it uses up a lot of that oxygen. Based on what they learnt from the London experience, they have devised a little trolley to get in and out—but it is something they have done off their own bat. Surely we should be doing this in a coordinated fashion, sharing information and having a system across the board—something that a full-time inspector of transport would be doing and running.

I have not got time to go into road security but, again, there does not seem to be any harmonised approach. A recent COAG meeting said that all state ministers would harmonise the approach to the carrying of dangerous goods, but it is not happening. Companies like Orica are taking it into their own hands, but they are meeting with quite a deal of resistance when they have to deal with various jurisdictions. There was an agreement that it would be harmonised but there is nobody overseeing the process. Whilst this bill will finally go some way to actually implementing what the transport security officer is to do, it fails to ensure that he is there doing it full time for the security of our nation. (Time expired)

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