Arch Bevis (Brisbane, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Aviation and Transport Security) Share this | Hansard source

The Law and Justice Legislation Amendment (Marking of Plastic Explosives) Bill 2006 seeks to give effect to the Convention on the Marking of Plastic Explosives for the Purpose of Detection, Montreal 1991. Importantly, the passing of this bill will enable Australia to accede to this convention. The marking of plastic explosives bill implements the obligations of the 1991 United Nations convention, which is the last of the 13 United Nations counter-terrorism conventions to which Australia is yet to be a party. In October 2004 the Howard government announced in its national security policy its intention to accede to the convention. As usual, the turnaround time between the Howard government saying they were going to fix a security problem and actually doing it has proven ridiculously slow and long. They seem to suffer from some permanent jet lag on security related legislation. However, this is a positive bill and the opposition was happy to facilitate its passage through the Main Committee so that it could be dealt with by the parliament before it rises, presumably at the end of this week.

The purpose of the marking of plastic explosives convention and this bill is to provide a means to improve the detection of explosives and to deter the misuse of explosives, by terrorists particularly, by requiring that more detection agent or odorant is incorporated into the manufacture of plastic explosives. The United Nations Security Council resolution 635 of 14 June 1989 and the United Nations General Assembly resolution 44/29 of 4 December 1989 urged the International Civil Aviation Organisation to intensify its work on devising an international regime for the marking of plastic or sheet explosives for the purpose of detection. This bill makes possible special machines or sniffer dogs to sense the odorant and make it easier to detect plastic explosives.

The danger with plastic explosives is that they are a very malleable product—easy to mould, for example, inside the lining of belts, shoes, bags and other devices. They are almost odourless. Typically, plastic explosives will not set off metal detectors and they are generally stable and resistant to temperature changes. That makes them a significant threat in the current environment.

This bill inserts a new subdivision B into division 72 of the Criminal Code and creates offences for trafficking in, manufacturing, possessing, importing or exporting unmarked plastic explosives. The bill gives the Australian manufacturers of explosives a total of 12 months in which to comply with the provisions of the bill. The bill has a six-month delayed commencement clause to allow Australian industry time to retool their manufacturing methods to comply with these new standards, and we think that is appropriate.

The convention and this bill arose as a consequence of the terrorist bombings on Pan Am flight 103 over Lockerbie in Scotland in December 1988. That attack killed 259 people on board that flight and 11 others on the ground. This, sadly, was not the first, nor has it been the last, incident in which plastic explosives have killed innocent people. Canada was one of the first countries to mark plastic explosives for the purpose of detection because of events in 1985. In 1985, two Air India 747 aircraft began flights from Canada. A plastic explosive device is suspected to have caused the crash of one flight in the Atlantic Ocean, south of the Republic of Ireland, killing everyone on board. A bomb in the luggage from the other flight detonated in the baggage-handling area of Narita airport, outside Tokyo in Japan.

In December 2001, passengers subdued a man on a flight from Paris to Miami in trying to stop him from igniting his shoe, which contained a bomb made from C4 plastic explosives. In the United States in 2003, undercover investigators for the Department of Homeland Security’s Office of Inspector General sneaked weapons and explosives past security at 15 airports. This serves as a reminder that the legal means to combat plastic explosives must be accompanied by the political will to implement detection equipment or to train and deploy sniffer dogs or other similar devices.

In August 2004, Russian officials said they detected traces of the RDX high explosive in the wreckage of one of two crashed jetliners. RDX is a common explosive. When it is in a raw powder form and mixed with compounds to a consistency of putty, it effectively becomes a plastic explosive. RDX is second in strength to nitroglycerine amongst the common explosive substances. Clearly, it is a very dangerous material. As part of a counter-terrorism exercise in 2004, French police randomly planted a plastic explosive in a passenger’s suitcase at Charles de Gaulle airport in Paris.

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