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

The Aviation Transport Security Amendment (Additional Screening Measures) Bill 2007 seeks to implement an initiative of the International Civil Aviation Organisation, ICAO, of which Australia is a member country. I think it is worth recalling that the Chicago convention, which established ICAO, was signed by Australia in December 1944 by the then Labor government of John Curtin. So we on this side of the House—as I am sure those on the other side do—regard the regulation of international aviation as an important matter.

The bill amends the Aviation Transport Security Act 2004 by enhancing screening measures to limit the amount of liquids, aerosols and gels that can be taken through an international screening point by people flying to or from Australia and by introducing a new section with general powers for frisk searches. This initiative is intended to allow an additional capacity for screening officers to ask persons passing through a screening point to agree to undergo a frisk search beyond what is currently empowered under section 95B. The ICAO led this initiative after an attempted terrorist incident on 10 August 2006 in the United Kingdom. On that day, security services interrupted an attack involving planned attacks against aviation targets. Analysis of the failed plot revealed an enduring vulnerability in the technical capacity of aviation security screening points with respect to liquid explosives detection.

Security officials at the UK’s Department for Transport said on 24 August that the alleged plot at Heathrow Airport to blow up several US bound planes on 10 August had exposed gaps in the ability of scanning machines to distinguish between ordinary liquids and those that could be used as a bomb. The identified danger has since prompted the United States, Canada and the EU to introduce restrictions on the amount of liquids, aerosols and gels that can be carried on board international outbound and domestic flights.

The International Civil Aviation Organisation, a UN specialised agency, is the global forum for civil aviation. ICAO works to achieve its vision of safe, secure and sustainable development of civil aviation through cooperation among its member states. On 22 November 2006, ICAO considered the report of the 18th meeting of the aviation security panel and agreed that security control guidelines for screening liquids, gels, aerosols and the like should be recommended to states for their implementation no later than 1 March 2007. ICAO journal No. 6 of 2006 says:

In the wake of the planned terrorist plot to sabotage several airliners over the North Atlantic, unveiled by U.K. authorities in mid-August 2006, ICAO has developed security guidelines for screening liquids, gels and aerosol products to be carried in the passenger cabin, and the ICAO Council has recommended that member States implement these guidelines no later than 1 March 2007.

You should remember that date: 1 March 2007. That was the declared compliance date for the ICAO recommendations. ICAO said ‘no later than 1 March’. The bill before the parliament today provides that these provisions will come into force no earlier than the end of March.

When the Howard government wants to fast-track legislation through this parliament, it certainly does not hesitate. In 2005, the government announced its intention to rush through the major antiterrorism bill in one day. It listed the bill for debate in this parliament in the House of Representatives on Melbourne Cup day of 2005. So it not only intended to restrict debate to one day but intended to have that debate on a day when most Australians would be focused on the Melbourne Cup—the day that Australia stops. The Howard government also announced a quickie Senate inquiry into that bill that was restricted to just a one-day hearing.

That was for a bill dealing with a raft of important antiterrorism matters that were complex and had serious issues of privacy and human rights involved. But the government were prepared to rush that through in a one-day debate in the House of Representatives on Melbourne Cup day and give the Senate just one day for a Senate inquiry. In the end, pressure from Labor forced a rethink. That was a very technical, detailed and sensitive piece of legislation. When the government want to act quickly to protect their own political hide, they certainly do it. When they need to act quickly to protect the travelling public, they move with the speed of a sloth.

I welcome this bill. The government’s delay in implementing the ICAO recommendations, though, is a case of serious jet lag. I understand that the threat posed by liquid explosives is real and serious. I also understand that we need affordable solutions to reduce or remove those dangers. On the Howard government’s watch, though, we have seen three drunken men breach security at Perth Airport, wander through the perimeter fence, walk across the tarmac and board a Qantas jet at the international terminal before they were identified and apprehended. More recently, in Sydney at our largest and busiest airport unauthorised vehicles tailgated one another through the boom gates and entered the runway area. Thankfully, they were not terrorists; they were a couple of people involved in an incident of road rage. But that identifies a major flaw in the security of our major airport.

Also at Sydney (Kingsford Smith) Airport, our largest airport, an area under development was secured by nothing more than a loose piece of timber sitting in the tracks on the public side of a sliding door. All someone had to do was lift up that loose piece of timber and the door would open and the person would then have access to the tarmac and the restricted area of the airport. The government, when we raised that in the parliament last year, tried to deny it—until we produced the pictures of the offending door that appeared in the Sydney newspaper. And members and the public will recall the famous ‘camel suit’ incident at Sydney airport in which staff of Qantas managed to help themselves to the baggage and parade around in the camel suit that had been in the luggage of one of the travelling public.

In yet another incident at Sydney airport, an unauthorised person with a backpack wandered across the tarmac until they were challenged not by security staff but by a baggage handler. Thankfully, the baggage handler had his own mobile phone with him. The baggage handler had to ring security to say that there was an unauthorised person with a backpack on wandering across the tarmac in a supposedly secure area. These events occurred last year. In fact, I have raised a long list of problems of this kind over the last 18 months, both inside this parliament and outside it.

Many airport dangers, like the tailgating problem to which I have referred, were also the subject of findings by Sir John Wheeler, the United Kingdom expert appointed by this government to review aviation security. It is difficult to understand how a government that was focused on the problems of aviation security could oversee a continuation of such basic errors. Indeed, we can ask why it took until 2005—four years after the September 11 disaster—for the government to seek a review of airport security. As I have asked in this place before, why is it that the Inspector of Transport Security was not able to do it? Why did we have to get someone from overseas in any event? Labor is yet to receive a rational response from the government on that issue and the others that we have raised. Of particular concern to me, though, has been the failure to scan passengers and cabin baggage on regular flights from regional centres to major airports—also a weakness identified by Sir John Wheeler. Two such examples of dangers from regional aviation were raised in this parliament last year.

Passengers in Ballina and Dubbo are not screened with any metal detectors before entering the tarmac and boarding the aircraft—unless it is a jet—even though their flight is a direct flight to Australia’s largest airport, Sydney airport. In 2006 I tabled photographs showing that secure areas at Ballina airport were left open and unguarded whilst the passenger and baggage screening area was closed. At Dubbo airport photos showed an old farm gate that was part of the security fence, which had been left open and unguarded, giving not just pedestrian access but vehicle access to the runway for anyone who wanted to take it. And Dubbo airport is a major regional airport that has regular flights directly to Sydney.

We have the absurd situation where the government’s aviation regulations actually prevent hand-held metal detectors being used at many regional airports, even if they have the equipment and they want to use it. We have the absurd situation where taxpayers’ funds have quite sensibly provided many regional airports with hand-held metal detectors—the wands that we are all familiar with—with staff at those airports trained in their use, but the government has in place a regulation that prohibits their use. That makes it unlawful for the people in those airports to actually use those hand-held detectors and check passengers before they get on the plane. So these hand-held wands literally sit in cupboards in airports, locked away—unable to be used because, having been bought by the taxpayer, having been paid for by the government and the taxpayer, the government has then put in place a regulation that says staff are not allowed to use them unless they get a specific instruction from the department to use the things. That would be like closing the gate after the horse has bolted, because the explanation the government has given is that they would only use them in a period of high risk. That is fine, but that is after the event has happened! What a stupid, absurd position that the government has followed in relation to that screening procedure.

The failure to screen passengers at those regional airports has caused problems in recent times. A failure of those procedures following a flight from Wagga Wagga to Sydney at the very end of 2006 resulted in part of Sydney airport being evacuated so that everyone could be properly screened again. But still the government fiddle at the edges whilst failing to address the real dangers. The Howard government’s indifference and lack of competence has placed travellers at an increased risk. The Wheeler review is clear about this. It says:

... 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.

The Wheeler report also said:

... the Review noted the vulnerability of current arrangements as they relate to  unscreened passengers on some regional regular public transport aircraft arriving at major airports such as Sydney and Melbourne with access to the apron and parked jet aircraft prior to screening.

The government have been warned by their own expert that they brought over here from the UK, they have been warned by Labor for years about this problem—and yet they fail to act to ensure that passengers involved in flights directly to our major capital city airports and our major counterterrorism first-response airports have any screening done whatsoever. The simple truth is that anybody could hop onto one of those aircraft with a weapon, with a bomb, and they would never be checked. They would never be screened. And when they hopped off in the secure side of Sydney airport they would then present a serious danger. Sir John Wheeler knew that. He made reference to it in a couple of places in his report. And here we are, a couple of years later and still the government fail to do anything about it. The public are entitled to ask why these basic mistakes continue to occur five years after 9-11 and a year after the Heathrow incident. Is this really the aviation security system that Australia needs and deserves?

After the 2006 Heathrow incident Michael Chertoff, the US Department of Homeland Security chief, said the plot had the hallmarks of an operation planned by al-Qaeda, the terrorist group behind the September 11 attacks in the United States. He said:

We believe that these arrests (in London) have significantly disrupted the threat, but we cannot be sure that the threat has been entirely eliminated or the plot completely thwarted ...

I know that the government want to talk tough about aviation security, but the truth is that they are flapping wildly away on airport runways and taking far too long to do far too little. It is all show and no result, as with so many things—as with the bill that was just before the parliament and the comments I made in relation to that. We see a government that readily wraps itself in the flag, ministers who seek every opportunity to have a photo shoot with members of the Australian Defence Force around them and government machinery that tries to put a political spin on issues of national security for their political benefit, when in fact the basic security decisions that need to be taken by the government to protect the Australian travelling public have been overlooked. Those decisions have been overlooked in an environment in which it is not just the Labor Party that has been raising concerns about these matters, and not just the industry that has been raising concerns about these matters; the government’s own expert, Sir John Wheeler, has told them that they need to take action, and yet they continue to fail to take that action.

Labor supports this bill because it goes some way to improving security and it is in line with the ICAO recommendations arising from the incident in London, to which I referred, involving liquid explosives. But the government’s record in these areas is appalling. For those reasons I move:

That all words after “That” be omitted with a view to substituting the following words: “whilst not declining to give the bill a second reading, the House condemns the Government for its failure to provide necessary air-security and protect Australians, including:

(1)

failure to meet the implementation timelines for counter-terrorism protections against liquid explosives as recommended by the International Civil Aviation Organisation;

(2)

mismanagement of the Aviation Security Identification Card (ASIC) system;

(3)

failure to properly upgrade security at regional airports;

(4)

failure to establish adequate security measures for charter flights; and

(5)

the Government’s insistence on splitting security, intelligence and border protection functions over a number of departments inviting overlap, wastage, confusion and missed opportunities”.

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