Michael Keenan (Stirling, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Justice, Customs and Border Protection) Share this | Hansard source

It is my pleasure to follow the member for Fowler in speaking on the Joint Committee on Law Enforcement's inquiry into the adequacy of aviation and maritime security measures to combat serious and organised crime. I endorse a lot of what he had to say. Even though I was not a participant on this committee from the outset like he was, I certainly was on the committee long enough to understand that serious and organised crime remains a substantial threat to our ports and to our airports. As he noted, the security environment around airports and ports has changed markedly since 11 September 2001 with those momentous events in New York and Washington. Subsequently, criminals managed to adapt to the new measures that governments took to more adequately protect our ports and our airports. So getting border security right remains on ongoing process.

Criminals seek to do harm to our society and I certainly agree with the government's assessment that organised criminality remains a very serious national security risk. They are constantly probing for weakness within our border security systems. Sadly, even though the government identifies the problem correctly, it has responded to it with budget cuts to our border protection agencies, which means that Australia remains seriously exposed to a lot of these ongoing threats. This has very serious ramifications for the way we experience law and order on our streets, because the Commonwealth itself is failing to do what it should do—that is, adequately police our borders. Our border protection crisis is far more than just people being smuggled here illegally via Indonesia; our border protection crisis also extends to the fact that there is now so little screening of cargo that is coming in through our ports and our airports because of substantial budget cuts by this government and also because of the lack of resourcing to Customs and Border Protection in particular.

I will just turn briefly to the report in the limited time that I have. I would like to thank all of the members and senators on the committee, who worked very closely together in preparing what is a bipartisan report. Some of that credit must go to the chairman of the committee, Senator Steve Hutchins, who is retiring, so I am sure he will not mind if I very briefly say something nice about him. He did do a wonderful job as chair. As Chair of the Joint Committee on Law Enforcement and its predecessor committee, he did have a history of bringing down reports that were supported by everybody on those committees. As we know, in this place that is not always that easy to do. It is a credit to his stewardship that this committee report was able to reflect that also. All members were prepared to put their stamp on this committee report and I think it makes recommendations that the opposition would certainly like to see the government seriously consider.

I will just turn briefly to a couple of them. Recommendation 7 is the one that seems to have received most of the publicity. It reads:

The committee recommends that it be made a legal requirement to provide photo identification confirming passenger identity immediately prior to boarding an aircraft.

This report does have the endorsement of all the members of the committee, although I must say that I do have some reservations about further inconveniencing passengers. I think it is always important to try to find ways that we can enhance border security and make it harder for the criminals without making it more difficult for passengers when they travel.

See this speech in context