Michael Danby (Melbourne Ports, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

As the very capable member for Gorton said, ‘He had the business cards,’ and he is a good man. But, if the public assumed that he was on the job full time, they were wrong. In fact, Mr Palmer has only been acting in the position, on a temporary appointment, in the Department of Transport and Regional Services. He has no permanent role and no independence. And of course he has been distracted by other things, such as trying to sort out the mess in the Department of Immigration and Multicultural Affairs under this government. He had a minor investigation—the Cornelia Rau affair—that took nine months of his time, and the disgraceful treatment of mentally disturbed people in our correctional facilities. That might have distracted him a little from the very grave matters of transport security that one would have thought the government would be fully seized of post September 11.

So now are we going to get what we really need: a full-time Inspector of Transport Security, with full statutory powers to go where he wants, investigate what he wants, report on what he wants and make recommendations independently of the supervision of the minister? No, we are not. This bill provides for only a part-time inspector and restricts his ability to conduct investigations. The inspector will only be able to inspect what the minister asks or allows him to inspect.

This is not good enough. Australia needs a full-time Inspector of Transport Security, just as it needs a full-time minister for homeland security. It needs an inspector with full statutory independence, able to act on his own initiative, with full powers of inspection and investigation. No minister is going to say, ‘Please investigate the fact that I left a security gate open at Mascot airport and report on what an incompetent dill I am.’ No minister will allow the inspector to investigate his own failures.

We have here a Potemkin village bill—a facade of national security, behind which we see the same old National Party slackness, cronyism and incompetence. I do not think the National Party really want rigorous security measures at regional airports, because they fear they will get blamed for the inevitable queues and delays that rigorous security entails—things that those of us in metropolitan areas have had to get used to.

I remind the National Party and the more serious people in the government that the whole incident of 9-11 began in Portland, Maine. The whole idea of the hijackers was to get to the secure side of airport security at Logan airport. How did they do it? Very simply, they boarded at a feeder regional airport that did not have the kind of security that exists at Logan, LAX or O’Hare airports or any of the big airports in the United States. They got into Logan and were able to hijack all of the aircraft from Boston, with the terrible results that occurred.

Yet we still have all kinds of incidents here in Australia—some of them were pointed out very capably by the former member for Braddon, Sid Sidebottom—such as the lack of ability to check things at regional airports like Burnie. The whole point of what occurred on 9-11 should be starkly clear, particularly to people in the National Party. In the end, do they want to be blamed for a similar incident happening here—it would be a disaster for Australia—because of their failure to introduce proper screening at regional airports?

I think the current Minister for Transport and Regional Services would prefer to have unexamined baggage on flights from Wagga Wagga rather than risk upsetting his constituents. But the member for Chisholm recited a litany of potentially security threatening events we have had—the camel incident, the tailgating of cars through security points, the bomb squad being called and local unionists having to deal with a matter for which they had no instructions. A few weeks ago on a Sunday night I was at Salamanca Place in Hobart walking with my daughter to dinner. Right down the end there was a big gate with barbed wire at the top with big letters that said: ‘Maritime Security—This gate must be closed at any time the port is not being used.’ Both gates were wide open. Both Laura and I walked through. She is 15. She was very annoyed with me that I did not have a camera in my phone to take a picture of this obvious violation of security.

The other deplorable aspect of the Inspector of Transport Security Bill 2006 that I want to examine is the fact that there is no bipartisan accountability. When the Director-General of ASIO makes a report, the Leader of the Opposition is briefed on the report on a confidential basis. Moreover, to the credit of this parliament, we now have a parliamentary intelligence committee whose members are also briefed on security matters. My friend the member for Holt, who is the soul of discretion, is the deputy chair of that committee. Many is the time that members on this side are not even aware that he is on that committee and what he is doing, he is so discreet. There is no possibility and no suspicion that the security services these days are being used for partisan purposes, as there were in the days of the Cold War. That is a good thing. We have very capable people in all of the security agencies and it is precisely because we have that trust of them in the parliament that I think they are able to act with such efficiency.

There is no such provision in this bill. The Inspector of Transport Security will report to the minister in secrecy. The opposition, like everyone else, will be kept in the dark. I accept of course that the Inspector of Transport Security will be reporting on sensitive matters about which confidentiality is necessary. But that occurs with ASIO, ASIS and the other agencies and they manage to do it. Obviously, they appear before responsible people; they report on the opposition side to the Leader of the Opposition and sometimes the shadow foreign affairs spokesman. These people, whatever political party is in government, are bound to take their duties very seriously. But a provision for the Leader of the Opposition to have access to the reports of the Inspector of Transport Security on a confidential basis seems to me to be a very reasonable safeguard against any suspicion of cover-ups. I would have thought the government would welcome that, but apparently not.

These concerns that I have mentioned are reflected in the amendment moved by the honourable member for Brisbane. The amendment notes:

... the failure of the Howard government to appoint a person as Inspector of Transport Security until one year after the announcement of the position;

... the slowness with which the Howard government dealt with the important role of Inspector of Transport Security,

... the Howard government’s dismissive use of the Inspector of Transport Security who has been engaged on an average of just one day a week in spite of repeated failures in security in the Australian transport sector ...

And finally:

... the Howard government’s failure to engage the Inspector of Transport Security in a full time capacity.

I commend the amendment to the House. I also support the bill, as does the opposition.

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