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

There was an interjection from one of the members saying, 'More than you did when you were in government.' He clearly was not listening. I will repeat that: 60 per cent of cargo was inspected when it arrived at our airports under the Howard government and less than 10 per cent is now inspected when it arrives in Australia—because of the savage cuts that have been made to Customs by the Labor Party. This means that criminals have a better chance of bringing in drugs, guns and other things that we do not want to see enter our country.

These cuts have happened in a climate where the volume of cargo entering Australia has increased significantly. This sort of failure is evident when we see crimes being committed such as the one that was uncovered at the Sylvania Waters post office by the New South Wales Police Force—not by federal law enforcement authorities—when 220 Glock pistols were imported from Germany. As the New South Wales Premier pointed out yesterday, the New South Wales police were the agency that exposed these embarrassing gaps as a result of the cuts that have been made by the Labor Party. He said:

… we have a federal government that seems to look the other way with the illegal importation of guns into this country.

At a time when we see escalating gun violence throughout the community, the Labor Party has been slashing funding and personnel from the very agencies that we expect to help protect Australians from being the victim of such crime. If an agency is not funded properly and not staffed properly then it is left vulnerable to penetration by criminal syndicates. As I said, we have seen that in the extensive revelations of corruption at Sydney Airport.

These are some of the failures that have led the Australian people to rightly conclude that Labor cannot be trusted to protect our borders. If they cannot stop the boats then they certainly cannot stop the guns or the drugs or the other things that we want to see kept from our communities and kept off our streets.

Further to the budgetary cuts that I outlined for cargo inspection, Labor has cut staff and budget from passenger facilitation. This means that Customs has been hit with a $34 million cut to its passenger facilitation program. Labor has axed a further $10.4 million from the program at a time when passenger numbers are expected to increase from approximately 32 million to 38 million over just four years. This significant hit that Customs has taken has led to a reduction of 70 staff across the primary lines at our eight major international airports in the past financial year alone. This further funding cut will only serve to make waiting times at our major airports worse, and of course it makes it more difficult for Customs to intercept the people whom it should be intercepting before they leave our airports and go into the community.

The Australian Airports Association wrote, in their Customs and border protection discussion paper 2011, that Labor's cuts have resulted in an increase of up to 24 minutes for inbound processing at Sydney, Brisbane, Melbourne and Perth at peak times. Estimates by Customs show that international visitors to Australia will increase by more than 150 per cent and international departures will increase by more than 500 per cent over the next two decades, yet Customs staff and resources have not been increased in line with these passenger numbers. Indeed, as I have outlined, they have actually been cut. This puts further pressure on Customs and is causing frustration for the travelling public.

I wanted to outline those very significant challenges that have been faced by Customs, not by the circumstances they find themselves in but by the deliberate policies that have been pursued by the Labor Party since they have come to office. We welcome this bill. It generally just enhances the administration of Customs by making amendments to the Customs Act 1901, but it also brings in a new offence—that of bringing into Australia a new category of goods known as restricted goods. These goods will be proscribed by regulation and will be prohibited imports. According to the bill's explanatory memorandum, initially this new category will be limited to child pornography and child abuse material, but in future this could be extended to give effect to international agreements or to address matters of international concern.

It is important to note that there is a caveat within the legislation that goods of this type can be imported into Australia with the written permission of the minister if they are to be used for law enforcement purposes. An example of that would be child abuse material contained on a computer overseas; if the Australian Federal Police would like to import that hard drive then the minister can rightly give them permission to do so for it to be used in prosecutions of the person who had committed that offence.

The bill also makes a series of technical amendments that enhance the ability of Customs to do its job, and those amendments are welcomed by the opposition. Sadly, over their term in office, the federal Labor Party have demonstrated that they cannot manage the budget, and Customs have been a significant victim of that. It is unfortunate that the hardworking men and women of Customs and Border Protection, Australia's premier border protection agency, have been on the chopping block at budget time—

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