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

I am very pleased to be following the member for Batman in this debate. It is fair to say that the member for Batman has been a fierce advocate for Australian industry and for jobs in Australia and that he understands the transport sector better than any other person in this place. It is not surprising that he would make a contribution along the lines that he just has.

I will be addressing principally the matters contained in the second reading amendment just moved by the member for Batman and seconded by me. Let me refer at the outset to the part of the second reading amendment dealing with the Australian Commission for Law Enforcement Integrity, ACLEI. When ACLEI was created, my colleague in the Senate Senator Ludwig made the point that Labor regards it as a very important addition to the framework of Australian government. We also made it clear that we think all bodies that have law enforcement type activities should be subject to the oversight of ACLEI, not just a narrow group of law enforcement agencies. At the time, reference was made to Customs, and it is that point which is picked up in this second reading amendment. As has been noted, Customs officers are now often armed. They undertake quasi law enforcement activities, not just in airports but more broadly. We have armed Customs officers on vessels in waters around Australia. We think it is appropriate that the government review the operation of ACLEI and ensure that those agencies who in the normal course of their activities behave in a law enforcement way are also subject to the oversight of that law enforcement integrity body.

I am particularly concerned at the fact that this government has been slow to act in providing adequate security for the Australian aviation industry in the aftermath of 9-11. After 11 September 2001, it took the government some four years before they finally decided to bring in someone from overseas to address security issues and to do a full review of the situation. The Australian people could be well justified in asking, firstly, why it took four years for a major review like that undertaken by Sir John Wheeler to occur and, secondly, why it was that we needed to get someone from overseas to come and do the job in the first place.

The government have defined, redefined and rearranged the role of the Inspector of Transport Security. Different ministers have ascribed different tasks to it. We know that the position is filled on a temporary basis. Indeed, it is very temporary; the number of days for which that person has been engaged was put on the public record during Senate estimates. Last time I looked—and I have to confess the figures I saw were for 12 months ago—it was somewhere in the order of about a day a week.

The government spent four years with an Inspector of Transport Security who was well qualified to do the task—a person well suited to the job. There is a significant amount of expertise within the Office of Transport Security, yet four years after the 11 September tragedy there were still major shortcomings in Australian aviation security—so much so that, when Sir John Wheeler delivered his report, it was a chronicle of what is wrong, not what is right.

The government have for some time been claiming that all of the recommendations of the Wheeler report have been implemented. There are statements from ministers going back well into last year where they asserted that. Of course, that is not true. In fact, the existence of this legislation demonstrates that it is not true. More importantly, there are major flaws in our security which were highlighted by Sir John Wheeler in his report but which this government, to this day, have failed to deal with. I want to mention a couple of those. They are serious matters, which Labor has commented on inside and outside this parliament on many occasions, and yet they continue to go unaddressed by this government.

The Wheeler report, in the executive summary, on page xiv, said:

... 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.

Elsewhere in the report, at page 50, Sir John Wheeler noted:

... 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.

It could not be clearer. Two years ago, in two separate parts of the report, Sir John Wheeler told the government what they should have known four years earlier: that it is not a good idea to have people who have never been screened, carrying baggage that has never been screened, hopping off in Sydney, Melbourne and other counterterrorism first response airports—at least the major capital city airports—with no effort being made to determine what they have on their bodies or what they have in their cabin luggage. They could have weapons, explosives or a range of things. No effort is made to check what they are carrying if they happen to arrive on a propeller flight from regional Australia unless there happens to have been a jet plane on the tarmac being loaded at the time they were being loaded.

There are something like 900 flights every week that fit that category. There are about 900 flights a week from regional Australia directly to our capital cities, where passengers get off a flight without having been screened. The screening equipment in most cases is actually at the airport; it is just not used for those passengers. It is not a problem of capital infrastructure. It is not a problem of lack of staff trained for the purpose. It exists in those airports. You can go to Dubbo, Wagga Wagga or Ballina and see that there is equipment in those airports to screen passengers, but the government just do not bother doing it. They do not put in place the requirement that it be done.

Sir John Wheeler told the government two years ago that he thinks this is a problem and that the government should have a close look at it, but as we stand here today it is not being addressed. There is no excuse for that. That is poor management. That is poor leadership. That is incompetence. That is dereliction of duty. The simple fact is that, when it comes to so many of these areas of security, as I commented on a bill before the House just a while ago, the government behave as a picture of panic in slow motion. It is all abuzz, it is all important, but nothing happens. It moves at a snail’s pace. I commented once before in relation to a security matter that the government moved like snails on Mogadon in trying to fix the problem—and this is just another example of it. Why, at the end of 2007, are we even having a debate about the need to fix a problem which Sir John Wheeler said two years ago required some attention?

I have a related concern that mystifies people in the industry as well as the Australian public. The government quite sensibly and properly decided to distribute hand-held metal detection wands to a large number of airports around Australia and ensured that there were some people in those airports trained to use them. That is a good thing. That was something we supported. People have been trained to use them. Yet the government put in place a regulation that makes it illegal for airport operators or airlines to use those hand-held wands unless there is a specific instruction from the head of the transport department to do it. So the wands are kept under lock and key in cupboards in the airports while passengers hop on to planes, carrying bags, without anybody even checking them. If someone goes to the cupboard and gets the wand out, they are breaking the law unless they have an instruction from the secretary of the department to do it. We have raised this in the parliament. I asked a question of the former minister in question time about it, and still that problem exists. When I talk to people in the community about this, they just shake their head with disbelief that such a situation could prevail—but it does. I would be interested in the minister’s response in this debate as to why these things occur. Indeed, the minister might like to tell us why at his own home airport in Taree they do not screen.

There are inexplicable holes. Just recently in the budget the government announced a quite significant cost rollout for checked baggage screening at a lot of regional airports. Why would you do that—and I have no problem with the government doing that—and then allow people to hop on a plane leaving the same airport without necessarily checking their luggage? The government seem to have the view that criminals, terrorists and people who want to do nasty things only fly on jet planes. I seem to remember a few years ago that they thought terrorists did not come on planes at all; they thought they came on leaky boats and pretended to be refugees. Now they think the opposite of that: they do not come as refugees on leaky boats; they come on jet planes only. Most people in Australia have a different view about that and it is time those things were properly addressed.

The industry wants these things addressed because the cost to industry, when these systems fail, is substantial. At the end of last year—if memory serves me correctly, it was around the middle of November—there was a flight from Wagga Wagga to Sydney. The plane was one of those propeller aircrafts for which passengers were not screened. The proper process required them to get off at the tarmac in Sydney—mind you, they could have been carrying weapons, explosives or anything else while they were on the tarmac and could have done what they wanted to do—and be marshalled to a section of the airport where they would go through a screening gate and up into the secure part of the terminal. But a mistake was made and they went through the wrong door. It was realised after they had gone through the wrong door that there were all these people who had never been screened roaming around the secure side of the airport. That resulted in that part of the airport having to be completely evacuated and everybody having to go back through the screening process. I know that the cost of that one incident to one airline was in the vicinity of a quarter of a million dollars. There is a cost to industry because of these poor practices, and there is no excuse for the poor practices.

Very shortly Australia will be playing host to APEC. We already are. There are lead-up activities to the APEC forum on now. Sydney will be host to that. Sydney airport is our major airport. These problems I am describing have occurred at Sydney airport and they continue to occur. There is another problem that occurs at Sydney airport, and it was recognised by Sir John Wheeler too. We had an incident last year at Sydney airport where two vehicles went through a boom gate checkpoint when only one was authorised to do so. The travelling public in Sydney airport were very fortunate because the incident was not a terrorist or serious criminal activity; it was an act of road rage. The first vehicle had a pass and authorisation to go through. The second vehicle, in an act of road rage, followed it. Thankfully, it was only road rage, but you get the point: it could have been something more serious.

This was foreseeable. Not only was it foreseeable, it was something Sir John Wheeler identified. Sir John Wheeler’s report specifically makes mention of the problems of vehicles being able to tailgate through perimeter security at airports. At our largest airport, supposedly our most secure airport, the only thing stopping vehicles entering at the key entry points is a single boom gate, and, like most boom gates, it stays up long enough for more than one vehicle to travel through.

It is nothing like we have here at Parliament House. When it came to protecting precious us in this Parliament House and looking at how we were going to restrict vehicle access to the House of Representatives entrance, the Senate entrance and the ministerial entrance, we did not put in a boom gate that allowed multiple vehicles to enter. We put in bollards that ensured that only one vehicle at a time can pass the security checkpoint. But when it comes to the high-profile area of aviation security, target of choice for terrorists for some years, we do not bother imposing the same sort of security, even when the government’s own security expert Sir John Wheeler puts it in his report as one of the problems that needs to be addressed.

There are other examples I could give of issues that Sir John Wheeler raised in his report that needed review that have not been attended to, but time is up for excuses. Time is up for saying, ‘We have implemented all the recommendations’ when clearly you have not. The government have got to take a reality check on this and fess up to the fact that they have not addressed the concerns that Sir John Wheeler identified. Instead of making excuses or hoping that political spin will see them through, the government need to implement the sensible, practical measures that make the aviation industry safer and more secure. Sadly, they have failed to do that for six years since the world aviation industry started to focus at a new, heightened level on these problems.

Having been in the position of shadow minister for homeland security for a few years now, I take no comfort repeating here today the very problems I have raised inside and outside of this parliament on a number of occasions. I get seriously worried about an incident happening and, for the life of me, I do not know why these things are not fixed. With the best of security, with the best of effort and with the best of management none of us can guarantee that an incident will not occur, and we all understand that. What you can do is make sure that the known problems are addressed, particularly when the known problems can be addressed in a manner that does not impose any significant economic or other costs on the industry or people involved.

The examples I have given all fit that category. These are not issues that are hard to address; they just require a bit of focus. They require some decent management and they require some outcomes. It is time that those problems were fixed, and I would welcome a commitment from the minister that these issues will be addressed. I seriously hope that they have been addressed, at least in respect of Sydney airport over the next month or so while APEC is on. The prospect of somebody with weapons or explosives getting off one of those small aircraft from Wagga Wagga—or from one of the many other regional centres that fly aircraft directly into Sydney—and onto the tarmac on the secure side of the airport, with jet aircraft in the same airport and in the same vicinity carrying heads of government and other people, is alarming.

I would like to be assured that at least these problems have been addressed insofar as Sydney is concerned for the period of APEC. But we need to do better than that. We need to fix these problems systemically, and I strongly encourage the minister to do that. Sadly, the administration of some of these things has been wanting. I have raised in the parliament my concerns about the administration of ASICs. We know from testimony again—and this testimony is 12 months old, so I assume the figure is now substantially more—that around 380-odd ASICs that were lost are unaccounted for. The ASIC is the principal means by which people gain entry. There are things that you can do to ameliorate that, but it is not a good thing to have 300 or 400 of your principal security cards for access to an airport—in the order of 15,000 or 16,000 of them had been issued at the time—gone missing. That does not instil confidence in the community that these matters are being properly addressed.

I remember referring in this parliament to the experiences of one of the private pilots who, from memory, was vice-president of the association at the time and who, when he went to get his aviation security identification card here in Canberra, was left alone in an office and told, ‘Here’s the box; find yours.’ So he picked his out and, as he wrote in the aviation journal at the time, he could have picked up anybody’s or any number. That is the high-security card that pilots, ground crews and others use to get access to the secure side of airports.

This has not been world’s best practice aviation security implementation by this government. It has been appalling. There has been a combination of good luck and good management. I should in fairness say that there have been a number of changes made which have improved security and which the opposition supports. I do not want to paint a picture that people have been sitting on their hands; that is not true. A lot of good things have happened, but there have been inexplicable failures and it is time that the government addressed those failures and gave up the pretence of saying, ‘We’ve done all the things Sir John Wheeler said needed to be done,’ because clearly they have not. We should give up the pretence that political spin alone will see them through on this. This is more important than political spin. This is about people’s safety and security. So get it right, get it right now and please tell me that those things that I have raised are going to be addressed, at least in respect of Sydney, some time in the next week, if they have not already been done in recent days.

See this speech in context