Steve Irons (Swan, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the Customs Amendment Bill 2014 and follow on from the member for Kingsford Smith, and I thank him for his support for the bill. Every Australian has an inherent expectation to be safe and protected in their homes and in the community. We have this expectation, which ultimately goes hand in hand with our expectation that those who are tasked with or select the job of enabling this protection are being provided with the appropriate powers and mechanisms to do so effectively and efficiently. In our community this level of protection varies between a number of different tiers, from our volunteer Neighbourhood Watch to the different levels and organisations within our state and federal police forces. At our borders, however, we have a different organisation altogether—our Australian Customs and Border Protection Service officers—who are tasked with protecting the safety of every Australian from prohibited air and sea cargo, protecting us while we travel both domestically and internationally, and protecting personal luggage or cargo when people are trying to enter our country or travel within it with prohibited items.

Over the past year the coalition government has worked with the Department of Immigration and Border Protection to identify those areas where officers' powers need to be enhanced and legislative areas that need to be amended or have additional provisions inserted to support officers' ability to appropriately protect our borders and ensure everything that can be done is being done to protect the safety of every Australian. We have introduced vital amendments and new provisions in this place to effectively respond to the very real threat that Australia is facing to its national security both from home-grown terrorism and from those who seek to enter our country to harm us. We have also introduced a number of amendments and provisions with respect to Australia's Migration Act, which will work with many of the proposed measures in the bill before the House today to ensure that our borders are protected from illegal maritime and air arrivals. In many of these measures our Customs and Border Protection officers' powers have been reviewed, and in some cases expanded, to reflect concerns from officers and from the government that the current legislative provisions do not afford them with the powers they need to protect our borders to the best of their ability. Many of these proposed changes to date have been technical in nature to reflect the need to better streamline such things as reporting requirements or to expand officers' ability or the ability of the responsible minister to assess the risk that particular circumstances pose to the community and how these can be better responded to.

Every member in this place would understand the importance of our Customs and Border Protection officers' role and would understand that no person knows the areas where practices could be better streamlined or provisions enhanced than those who are on the ground responding to these instances. That is one of the reasons why I recently welcomed the opportunity to join with the Assistant Minister for Immigration and Border Protection, the Hon. Michaelia Cash, at Perth International Airport's Customs House to see firsthand how our Customs and Border Protection officers are working to keep every Australian safe and to understand the scope of prohibited items that organised crime syndicates in particular try to smuggle through our borders every day. I also note that that particularly Immigration and Border Protection office at Perth International Airport's Customs House is in my electorate of Swan.

From January to October this year alone, over 12 kilograms of methamphetamine, also known as ice; 1.5 tonnes of molasses tobacco and over 2,000 prohibited weapons, including firearms knuckledusters, automatic knives and laser pointers have been seized from air cargo by Perth's Customs officers. This is a significant achievement by officers, as many of these items were expertly concealed.

It is not, however, always our Customs officers who detect these prohibited items. Our officers and this government take great pride in the abilities of our detector dogs, who contributed to the detection of almost 2,379 illicit imports and exports in 2012-13. It is because the coalition government is one which recognises the importance of such programs and listens to our departments' views about those areas they believe to be lacking or in need or additional support that, in February this year, the government committed $88 million of additional funding to Australia's Customs and Border Protection measures.

This significant funding commitment was specifically focused on increasing screening of international mail and air and sea cargo, while an additional $8.5 million was also committed to expand our Detector Dog Program. In Perth alone, this funding boost has provided for an increase in inspections of 250,000 mail articles and 50,000 air-cargo consignments and has prevented a range of prohibited items from arriving on our streets and in our communities. It has also provided an additional 15 detector dog teams to support the increased inspection and examination of cargo across Australia, including three detector dog teams in my home town of Perth. They are now receiving world-class training.

In the 2014-15 budget, we also committed a further $480.5 million over a four year package to bolster the enforcement capabilities of Australia's Strategic Border Command, intelligence systems, trade and travel systems and workforce measures and training. By making these significant funding commitments and introducing legislative amendments in this place, the coalition is ensuring our Customs and Border Protection officers have the appropriate powers to do their jobs effectively. We are being proactive in responding to the ongoing threat to Australia's national security. We could turn away and hide our heads in the sand with the attitude that everything will be okay, but we are a government of reality and we are government which accepts and responds appropriately to our responsibility to protect every Australian and our assets.

The Customs Amendment Bill 2014, which is before the House today, seeks to amend the Customs Act 1901 to extend the powers of Customs officers, make technical amendments to better streamline the act's provisions and correct a technical error in the legislation. Key provisions will therefore be amended or added, with the focus of these measures being in regards to current differences between Customs officers examination powers in relation to domestic travellers on a flight or voyage to that of international travellers.

Before I highlight the proposed amendments to Customs powers, I will first outline a number of technical amendments that are proposed in the bill. The first technical amendment is in relation to the definition of an authorised officer. Currently, the act precludes authorisations by the chief executive officer of Customs applying to any offices or positions which come into existence after the authorisation to a class of offices is given. The proposed amendment seeks to amend this definition to extend such authorisations to an office or a position that comes into existence after the authorisation is given. While this amendment is largely technical in nature, a key proposed amendment in the bill before the House seeks to address an identified vulnerability in our Customs control for goods on ships and aircrafts.

Currently, all goods on board a ship or aircraft are subject to Customs control while the ship or aircraft is within the limits of any port or ship in Australia. There are, however, a number of incidences where a ship or aircraft may go to a place other than a port or airport, including when there is bad weather or permission has been granted. An example of an industry where this regularly occurs in Australia is for those industries involved in resource activities who request permission to bring vessels directly to an offshore installation. In these instances, the goods on the ship or aircraft are not subject to Customs control and can therefore not be examined by Customs officers. The bill before the House seeks to rectify this vulnerability in our Customs control orders by amending the definition of a 'designated place' to include a place where a ship or aircraft has been brought under stress by weather or other reasonable cause to ensure that Customs officers are able to exercise certain seizure, detention and personal search powers. Further amendments will also be made in relation to the reporting of goods on board these ships or aircraft.

Under the act's current provisions, an international ship that arrives in Australia must report the particulars of their arrival to Customs within 24 hours of the ship's arrival or before the issue of certificate of clearance, while an aircraft report must be made within three hours. These same time frames also apply to a ship's stores, an aircraft's stores and prohibited goods reports. These time frames are currently posing difficulties for Customs officers to effectively and efficiently process ships and aircraft when the particulars of their goods are not known.

As the bill's explanatory memorandum states, in most instances Customs Officers will conduct:

…physical boarding and intervention activities of ships and aircraft at the time of arrival at the first port or airport in Australia. However in some circumstances, it would be beneficial for ACBPS to be notified of particulars of the stores and prohibited goods including firearms, weapons and narcotics, before the arrival of the ship or aircraft.

To respond to these difficulties, the bill before the House proposes to amend the Customs Act by inserting additional provisions which allow the CEO to specify when a report must be made for certain ships or aircraft. This will effectively allow different reporting time frames to be provided for different circumstances and will enable Customs officers to appropriately assess the risk of such goods prior to their arrival in Australia.

Before a ship then departs, a certificate of clearance must be provided by the collector. Under the act's current provisions, an application must be made to the collector in writing and must contain a series of regulatory information that is outlined in the act. This method of reporting is, however, inconsistent with other application and reporting requirements. This bill seeks to rectify this by amending the provisions to ensure that reporting requirements are streamlined across this act.

A series of amendments will therefore be made, including (a) removing the requirement for the regulations to prescribe particulars for an application for the certificate of clearance; (b) requiring applications to be made in writing, in an approved form, contain such information as the form requires and be signed in the manner indicated in the form; and (c) allowing the CEO to approve different forms for applications to be made in different circumstances, by the different kinds of masters or owners of ships or pilots or owners of aircraft, or in respect of different kinds of ships or aircraft.

Further technical amendments will also be made with regard to the content requirements for goods to be unloaded or used before the departure of a ship or aircraft, to clarify when the consent must be sought from a collector and in what form. Under the proposed amendments, the application process will be standardised in line with the proposed changes to other reporting requirements, such as those I previously outlined with regard to applications for a certificate of clearance.

Similarly, the act does not currently contain any provisions which detail how to apply for permission to transfer goods between certain vessels and what form these applications must take. Again, the bill before the House will rectify the current lapse in the act and will streamline its provisions with other outlined application processes to ensure there is consistency, with the eventual aim of these permissions to be applied for online.

As mentioned earlier, although there are a number of technical amendments being made in this bill, there are also a number of key legislative changes, which will respond to the current vulnerabilities in Australia's customs and border protection measures.

As all members in this place would be aware from their own travels, domestic travellers often mix with international travellers prior to, during and after the domestic leg of a flight or voyage. An example of this would be when one plane, which is being used to travel from a country outside of Australia such as China, arrives in Melbourne and continues on to Perth. Under the act's current provisions, domestic cargo can be loaded and unloaded from this aircraft when it arrives in Melbourne without any authority or permission; however, this domestic cargo and the personal effects of domestic travellers are not currently subject to Customs control once they are loaded or unloaded. Only the goods of international passengers would fall under the control of Customs.

The bill before the House, therefore, seeks to amend the act to provide that domestic goods on international flights or voyages can be examined by an officer of Customs in the same manner as goods on a purely international flight and voyage with no domestic stop-overs. These additional examination powers would apply to goods which have been loaded onto a ship or aircraft, and those which have been unloaded. An additional measure will be inserted into the act in this regard to provide that the expense of any examination under these new powers is borne by the owner of the goods. As stated in the bill's explanatory memorandum, it is expected that this would 'mainly be applicable in the cargo environment as opposed to the traveller environment'.

As I stated earlier, this Customs Amendment Bill also seeks to correct a technical error in the legislation in relation to a new infringement notice scheme which commenced on 1 February this year. This scheme allows for the issuing of an infringement notice in relation to strict- or absolute-liability offences. The technical error that has been identified is in the interaction of this infringement notice with the claims process when dealing with prohibited imports. When an infringement notice is issued under this scheme, the person to whom the notice has been issued is given the option to pay the fine specified in the notice, or they may choose to have the offence heard by a court.

Under the provisions in the scheme, if a person opts to pay the fine and the infringement notice is not withdrawn, the prohibited goods are condemned as forfeited to the crown and, as a result, cannot be claimed. In these circumstances, where a claim can be made it must be made within 30 days of a seizure notice being issued. A problem, however, arises between these two requirements, in these instances, when a fine or penalty has been paid and the infringement notice is later withdrawn. An issue arises because the time frame for making this claim may have expired—it may be past the required 30 days. The proposed amendments will rectify this issue by inserting a provision that will allow a person to have 30 days after the withdrawal of an infringement notice to make a claim for their seized goods.

Although many of the amendments in this bill are technical in nature, this does not detract from their importance in bolstering Australia's overall customs and border protection measures and ensuring that every Australian is protected to the best of this government's and our agencies' abilities. They are important amendments and provisions to ensure appropriate powers are afforded to our Customs officers and identified vulnerabilities are swiftly responded to.

Again I acknowledge the support of the member for Kingsford Smith and the opposition for this bill. I commend this bill to the House.

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