Michael Hatton (Blaxland, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

It will be my pleasure to listen to the member for Batman, as I have listened in the Main Committee and in the House previously, when the member for Batman as the relevant shadow minister and I as a backbench member have demanded this very action of the government time and time again. It is about time that we have this legislation. We support this piece of legislation.

Up until now this government have allowed in the order of 585,000 foreign crewmen a year to pass through Australian ports with what is effectively a global visa—‘You’re going to come through: here’s the ship; it’s got foreign crew and families on it as well. Here’s a temporary visa or a special purpose visa; that’ll cover everyone.’

Terrorism is worldwide. Terrorism is perpetrated in all Western countries; it is also perpetrated in Moslem countries. It is perpetrated in ports, in airports and against major buildings. You name it, they will do it. What the member for Batman and I have repeatedly said on this particular issue is that this is a fundamental hole in our national security and it has to be plugged, because, if you do not know who the crew are on a particular vessel and you do not know or you do not know early enough what the nature of the cargo is—and if you are not aware and prescient because of that foreknowledge—you cannot adequately take the steps that are necessary to forestall a potential terrorist incident.

As I have underlined in previous debates on bills associated with this and the maritime area, we have a simple, fundamental problem. Ammonium nitrate in tanker loads is brought to Australia by foreign crewed vessels. They enter our ports from one end of the country to the other. But ammonium nitrate is not only used as an agricultural fertiliser. It is used as a bomb in the mining industry. It has a massive explosive effect, and a ship laden with ammonium nitrate could be used to obliterate the whole CBD of Sydney. Because no-one has done it before does not mean that they will not do it if they have the opportunity.

I wish the MigrationAmendment (Maritime Crew) Bill 2007 would take effect before 1 July this year; it should have been in previously, we know. That is one of our criticisms: that the government announced this in 2005. The government does this; it is like vapourware, which is common in the IT industry, as the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Defence, who is at the table, will know. You announce a product that does not exist. Even Apple has done it with its last few products, but we hope they are actually coming down the chute. It is vapourware; it does not exist until it eventually gets into place.

The Anti-Money Laundering and Counter-Terrorism Financing Amendment Bill that we dealt with earlier today came five full years after the first steps were taken. This is not a government that is rushing to improve our national security. It is one that has to be whipped mercilessly into doing the right thing in defence of Australians. We need to ensure that we are not only vigilant but diligent in working our way through what is on those vessels and the people who are there, because having a global visa is no real help at all. So there is a shipful of people; we do not know who they are. We do not know if anyone has got a track record.

Putting this into place will be costly—$100 million over five years. But it is a necessary cost in a globalised world of globalised trade, in a world that has not just been like this since September 11 2001 but, if you look at the attacks on ships, has been like this since back in the early 1990s. There was the attack on the USS Cole that was perpetrated by al-Qaeda out of Yemen. And, if you look at a series of other attacks on our embassies and elsewhere, you see the attacks can come in any form and any shape. They are meant to be very flexible in how they approach it.

Previously, when we have discussed this, part of the argument people have put up is, ‘Well, we shouldn’t really be too worried about this because they haven’t done it yet.’ But that is the very point in relation to these terrorist organisations. They are not bound by a timetable and a scale of values or a scale that says, ‘Well, we can only do this if we have done it before and practised it enough.’ We know from what was discussed earlier today that dozens or up to 50 people were preparing to undertake the most massive attacks on aircraft that we have ever potentially seen and that thousands of people could have died in journeys to the United States from Britain if there had not been an active intervention by the British police and if they had not taken the people who were conspiring to take liquids, gaseous material and electronic material that, once put together on the plane, would be very effective bombs.

So we need to be aware, open, elastic, flexible and thoughtful about how we secure ourselves as a nation and how we ensure that we are not going to end up in the soup in this regard. I support the amendments. They are general in the points they are making. They underline the fact that this government really has to be pressed into these areas, but I simply underline the past history of argument with regard to this, and what the member for Batman, no doubt, while I am in the chair, will be banging on about—to use your phrase, Mr Deputy Speaker. This is fundamental to our security. The government just does not tend to think about port security at all because we have not had that major attack. The last thing you want to do is to be trapped in a mode where you are preparing against the previous attack, because you know the next one is going to be different. So, given your felicity on this, I thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker, and the member for Batman, and I will conclude my one brief speech for this day.

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