Jason Wood (La Trobe, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Community Safety, Migrant Services and Multicultural Affairs) Share this | Hansard source

I congratulate the minister, too. I think it's very important that there is legislation like the Criminal Code Amendment (Protecting Commonwealth Frontline Workers) Bill 2024 to protect those who work for the Commonwealth in areas such as Centrelink, the Australian Taxation Office, passport offices, airports, the AEC and other government services across the country. There are over 100,000 staff working in places like Services Australia and the tax office et cetera.

Sadly, already this year there have been 9,000 incidents with aggressive customers when it comes to these Commonwealth workers. That's quite astounding when you think that among, roughly, over 100,000 workers, 9,000 have dealt with very aggressive customers. Last year, before the Voice referendum, AEC staff were subject to very high levels of cruelty online and were physically and mentally abused. This is just totally unfair when they're just doing their jobs to serve the government and serve the Australian people. In 2012 a Centrelink worker in Queensland was attacked by a woman who swung a chair and a bag at her desk. The worker ended up having a high level of mental illness history. This form of violence is totally unacceptable when people are going to work.

The legislation was born out of Services Australia's Security Risk Management Review. I congratulate the minister, Bill Shorten, for this review, as well for having someone like Graham Ashton on it. I worked under Graham for a short time when I was in Victoria Police. He was a fine chief commissioner of police and someone who very much puts the public first. This was the result of a worker, Joeanne, being attacked with a bladed weapon while working in the Airport West Services Australia centre in 2023. It seems quite outrageous that someone would think it's okay to come in and do that. Okay, you may have a grievance, but to get to the stage where you're actually assaulting and attacking someone like Joeanne is simply outrageous. I congratulate the minister on visiting her and making this commitment to her.

The bill amends existing offences for causing or threatening to cause harm to Commonwealth public officials in the Criminal Code. The bill creates a new category of Commonwealth official, called a Commonwealth frontline worker, whose primary function involves dealing with the public. As we heard the minister talk about before, this brings AFP staff or Australian Border Force staff into line—they are all now treated as equal. Back in my day in the Victorian police force, we saw offences increase when it came to aggravated assaults and assaults on women, and also when it came to law enforcement. I acknowledge the penalties have increased to a maximum of 13 years—but when governments increase penalties, the clear and simple message is to the courts in particular: the public expects to have higher penalties dished out when it comes to sentencing. For those who threaten to cause serious harm to Commonwealth frontline workers, the penalty rises from seven to nine years jail, which I support. But, again, we need the courts to take these very seriously and to make sure that those perpetrators who are responsible, when it comes to threatening behaviour, assaults et cetera, are harshly dealt with for their behaviour. That's because quite often when a person is going to a Centrelink office, there are other people there too, with children, and it not only affects the person who is serving them but also the public, who are quite often in a vulnerable situation themselves. A penalty must be strong penalty.

I note, too, that there are 278 additional guards in the bill, bringing the total to 513 guards. I very much welcome this, because quite often that's a deterrent. We call it 'waving the flag'. Someone walks in there and sees the security guard in the corner and thinks, 'Okay, I'm being watched here; if I do misbehave, I'll have the security guard, if not the police, being called to arrest me.' Five large service centres are to have additional security features, such as customer service check-in kiosks and enhanced IT security with greater security alerts. It's so important to make sure staff are trained in that. The 500 frontline staff will be trained when it comes to delivering advanced customer aggression training.

In all, I welcome this legislation, and I'm hoping that, when it comes to those working in these fields, they feel a bit more comfort and support from the government and the wider Australian community. For those who think it's okay to threaten and harm and attack, I'm hoping the courts dish out just punishments to them.

See this speech in context