Duncan Kerr (Denison, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

On behalf of the Parliamentary Joint Committee on the Australian Crime Commission, I present the committee’s report, incorporating additional comments, entitled Inquiry into the future impact of serious and organised crime on Australian society, together with evidence received by the committee.

Ordered that the report be made a parliamentary paper.

by leave—Again I have the pleasure of acknowledging, at the outset, that this report is the product of a bipartisan committee—in this instance, one on which members of the Senate also served. The chair of the committee, I understand, will be tabling this report shortly in the other chamber.

This report is a substantial reflection on one of the key responsibilities that any community has—that is, effective law enforcement. The breadth of the committee’s report reflects its nature. It is the report of an inquiry into the future impact of serious and organised crime on Australian society. Inevitably, it can give only a generalised and limited window into the workings of the agencies that this committee examines. It took evidence broadly across Australia, and I would hope that its recommendations are taken into account by future governments.

I will focus on four principal recommendations, although I should not dismiss the importance of the balance of the 22 recommendations that are made in the report. The first recommendation that I would draw the House’s attention to is recommendation 15, in which the committee acknowledges and recognises that the Australian Crime Commission has prepared a public version of the Picture of criminality in Australia report. The public version is an unclassified version of the report that is prepared for the commission and for ministers to enable there to be information upon which judgements can be made about the proper resourcing of law enforcement in Australia.

It has always struck the committee that we have a less informed knowledge base in one of the most important areas of social and public policy in Australia—that is, law enforcement—than in almost any other area. In the analogous area of national security, defence, the government and the department regularly publish white papers. Those papers enable baselines to be set and public debate to be focused on issues of large priorities and different strategic settings for our defence structure. For example, you have to identify threats and challenges: you look at whether the Defence Force structure is one which should be highly mobile or whether it should involve heavy armour, whether it should involve submarines or frigates. You look at what tasks it is going to undertake; you look at the threats it faces.

In law enforcement, the debates tend to be much less well focused. It is not to say that there are not public debates at almost every election, particularly at state level. There are sometimes hysteric debates about law and order. But we do not have national benchmarking enabling the community to make intelligent, strategic, long-term judgements about the threats that face the law enforcement environment and about the kinds of policy decisions that ought to be taken strategically to make certain that our law enforcement expenditure is best matched to those challenges. One of the tasks that have been undertaken by the Australian Crime Commission in taking over the role that was rolled into the new structure from the Office of Strategic Crime Assessment, which was a previous stand-alone agency in the department of the Minister for Justice and Customs, is to provide that strategic oversight advice.

It is the view of the Australian Crime Commission that an unclassified version of the classified report should be made available to the public so that there can be an intelligent, focused, strategic discussion in Australia about the very real challenges that law enforcement faces, how state and federal law enforcement can meet those challenges most effectively and where resources need to be applied. It is matter of great regret that, for whatever reason might be behind it, a record of the report has not yet been made available. We re-emphasise a recommendation that we made earlier that a non-classified version should be produced to enable there to be sensible debate. If we go in to the next federal election without that framework, we would be likely to be presented with various arguments about expenditure, priorities and strategic settings in law enforcement, without the baselines being informed by the best possible strategic advice from the agency charged with that responsibility by this parliament and by the nation.

The second recommendation, recommendation 11, fits into the first:

Recommendation 11

7.46 The committee recommends that the Productivity Commission inquire into the cost effectiveness and benchmarking of law enforcement bodies and current national arrangements to address serious and organised crime.

We need the white paper to enable us to make long-term, strategic decisions about resource allocations. We also need to treat our expenditure in law enforcement with the seriousness with which we treat expenditure across all other areas. It is not the case in law enforcement, nor is it in any other area of public policy, that an extra dollar spent in one area will necessarily produce outcomes as effective as those produced by spending in another area. In some areas, if you produce more staff and expend more money you will be rewarded by very effectively enhanced outcomes. Law enforcement capabilities may be massively increased by small increases in expenditure in particularly important areas. In other areas, you will have a law of diminishing returns, where each extra dollar does not provide any substantial increases in output or efficiency.

We need to develop effective measuring devices in law enforcement that enable us to make better judgements about where limited resources should be applied. We have made large increases in the resourcing of law enforcement quite naturally and quite properly as the challenges manifestly facing Australia have become more pressing. But where there are very large expenditures of public resources we need to be able to better distinguish between those areas which need further enhancement and those where we will face the law of diminishing returns.

Those two issues are ones of public policy setting and they are, I think, the most important of the recommendations of the committee. But there are two other areas where deficiencies that were identified by the committee ought to be brought to the attention of the House. Recommendations 21 and 22 address the problems of exchange of information between various jurisdictions. Recommendation 21 is that we provide funding for a feasibility study into the development of a single national case management system and recommendation 22 is that the national Ministerial Council for Police and Emergency Management - Police give consideration and support to the development of a single national case management system.

The evidence shouts out for such a recommendation. For example, in his evidence, Mr Burgess from the Police Federation of Australia offered the following evidence as an example of the consequences of inadequate national case management data not being readily available:

... the shooting of offender William Watkins at Karratha in Western Australia in early 2006 ... Watkins had three days earlier murdered sisters Colleen and Laura Irwin in Melbourne. He had then driven 5½ thousand kilometres in those three days to Western Australia, where he came under the notice of Senior Constable Shane Gray at Karratha for failing to pay for petrol. When Gray did a check on Watkins via the Western Australian police computer system he was not shown as wanted or a suspect on the system. Unfortunately, of course, he was on the Victorian police system, but that was not accessible through the Western Australian system. Watkins attacked Gray and tried to get hold of his firearm. Gray, the senior constable, was seriously injured in the incident, and Watkins was eventually shot and killed.

Plainly this highlights the fact that failure to have coordination between the case management systems is a serious issue. It is crucial that we fix it.

The last matter I raise is that the report draws attention to the fact that Queensland still does not have a capacity for the Queensland Police Service and the Queensland Crime and Misconduct Commission to intercept telecommunications. It is inevitable that, in an area where there has essentially been a stand-off between the Commonwealth and the state, various people will make political points about the matter. I do not understand why it has not been within the capacity of the Commonwealth to permit the state to utilise the public interest monitor, which they wish to integrate into the use of interception devices, in the Commonwealth scheme.

There has been a very long period where both the Queensland government and the Commonwealth government have said that they want to be able to exercise at a state level the same intercept powers that are exercised in every other state jurisdiction. Queensland, however, say that they want to have the extra civil liberties safeguard of the involvement of a public interest monitor. As a matter of policy from the point of view of the Commonwealth, I see no reason why that could not have been facilitated. Nonetheless, that stand-off is still occurring and whatever political stance one takes—whether one wishes to blame Queensland or the Commonwealth—it is an issue that needs to be resolved. It is a matter that needs attention. I thank the House for its extended tolerance of these remarks. I commend the work of the committee and I acknowledge the work of the chairman, Senator Ian Macdonald, who is tabling this report in the other place. I commend the report for the attention of the next parliament.

Jason Wood (La Trobe, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

by leave—I would like to speak in support of the report on the Inquiry into the future impact of serious and organised crime on Australian society by the Parliamentary Joint Committee on the Australian Crime Commission. I would first like to congratulate the member for Denison on the way he conducted himself as deputy chair. I also congratulate the other members on the way they conducted themselves throughout the inquiry and I extend special thanks to Senator Ian Macdonald.

First of all, I would like to take up a point with the member for Denison. We had a point of difference at the start on the Queensland telephone interception issue. The Queens-land state government asked for a public interest monitor but no other state in the country has it. To me there is no need for it. It is an amazing situation that, in 2007, we have a state in Australia where the police and law enforcement agencies do not have the ability to intercept criminals’ telephones. I would like to see that situation resolved urgently.

In my maiden speech to parliament I spoke on the lack of interoperability of police databases across this country, which is an issue that I am very passionate about. It is something that has been crying out for attention. The member for Denison talked about the tragic murder and rape by Watkins of the two Irwin sisters in Victoria. He was subsequently intercepted in Western Australia. He drove off without paying for petrol and the police officer who intercepted him did not realise that he was wanted for a double murder. There is an inquiry going on at the moment and there is evidence that the police were not aware of that information because it was not on the nationwide police system. Even if it had been, the Western Australian policeman would not have been able to access the Victorian database. We must ensure that this is urgently and quickly resolved.

As I stated in my maiden speech, in order to take intelligence efforts up to the next level I would recommend the establishment of a national database which would record details of people who have access to specific chemical, biological and radiological substances. Additionally, the database could record details of applicants applying for legitimate training courses or licences where the technical skills taught could be used for terror-ist related activities. Ideally, it would record the details of applicants for flight and underwater diving courses, explosives training courses and people who hold licences for ammonium nitrate fertilisers at the time of the newly proposed ammonium nitrate fertiliser legislation. The ability to determine potential links between terror suspects and to identify trends or patterns of suspicious activities, coupled with ASIO checks on these individuals, will serve to strengthen our intelligence efforts. This will go a long way to pro-viding for a consistent and robust approach to fighting terrorism.

I congratulate this inquiry on taking a very serious look at the way the police databases across the country do not link up. We have heard about the incident of Watkins. We have had previous incidents such as that with Cornelia Rau. She was a missing person reported in one state and, even if her correct details had been put in the police database, she would not have been picked up. Explosives licences are held in the states by the departments. If a police officer looking at a terror suspect put that suspect’s name in the computer and that person had a licence to possess explosives, they would not be aware that he actually had a licence. With aviation identification cards, we had a situation with terror suspect Bilal Khazal, a baggage handler for Qantas. Again, if the authorities had put his name in the computer, they would have had no idea that he had access to the aviation industry. We now have the aviation identification card—something which needs to be on the centralised database. We also have chemicals, high-consequence dangerous goods, which are actually rolling out in Victoria as we speak.

You may wonder why we need the licence holders of chemicals to be on the database. We just have to go back to Jordan in 2004 when terrorists purchased 20 tonnes of chemicals and explosives using false identification. They loaded these onto three vehicles, again purchased with false identification. They purchased chemicals with the intention of mounting an attack which, if it had been carried out, would have killed over a hundred thousand people.

My thoughts have been shared with a number of law enforcement agency experts across the country, and I would like to quote a few comments from the report:

Deputy Commissioner John Lawler, National Security, Australian Federal Police, noted that the vulnerability of present databases lies wherever two jurisdictions cannot easily retrieve relevant information from each  other, and this is the central and most important issue identified concerning the question of adequacy of Australia’s law enforcement databases.

This is a state government responsibility. All the states have completely failed. We have state Labor governments and there is talk of having a federal Labor government. If the state Labor governments cannot work this out, I cannot see what a federal Labor government would actually add to this. The report states:

Assistant Commissioner Wayne Gregson, Portfolio Head, Specialist Crime Portfolio, Western Australia Police, highlighted the implications of this:

… different states have different databases designed around their different legislation, which means that law enforcement tends to be a secondary consideration of information holdings ... [consequently there] is a large number of disparate databases holding different tranches of information.

The report further states:

Mark Burgess, Chief Executive Officer, Police Federation of Australia, supported this view—

and this is the crux of what I was saying in my maiden speech in parliament, the need to have the centralised database; and that database which has come out very strongly in the inquiry and throughout the research is CrimTrac, which has been established—

saying:

… a real opportunity now exists for CrimTrac to play a more significant and meaningful role … providing information sharing solutions for law enforcement right across the country… CrimTrac should be fully developed to become the key hub for exchanges of law enforcement information between Australia’s police jurisdictions and broader law enforcement.

Chief Commissioner Nixon from Victoria—and I congratulate her on a new role as the head of CrimTrac—was quoted in the report:

… Chief Commissioner Nixon noted that CrimTrac has already contributed to the inter-juris-dictional capacity for information sharing:

What we have started to see...is the growth of a system to...help us share information... [CrimTrac] has gone some distance towards helping develop these national systems in...local police offices …

The report also states:

One of the most important CrimTrac systems from the operational policing perspective is the Minimum Nation-wide Person Profile (MNPP). The MNPP is intended to allow the sharing of information about persons of interest between all Australian police jurisdictions. It is currently being rolled out nationally to replace the National Names Index.

It will be accessed via computers. The report goes on:

• access information about a person of interest from another jurisdiction; and
• perform nation-wide searches using name and/or other identifying information.

We come back again to the tragic situation of the murder of the Irwin sisters and how that information could have helped arrest the suspect Watkins in Western Australia. Recommendation 17 relates to the database—and I congratulate the committee and the secretariat because this was actually fairly complex to get your head around—and it states:

The committee recommends that CrimTrac be funded to examine the legislative, administrative and technical aspects to allow the inclusion of additional datasets to the Minimum Nation-wide Persons Profile; particular consideration should be given to Aviation Security Identification Cards, Maritime Security Identification Cards, explosives licences and ammonium nitrate licences.

I would also like to see high-consequence dangerous goods listed.

CrimTrac was initially established by this government with a $50 million capital injection by the Commonwealth. We would like to see the state governments do the heavy lifting also and contribute to this. The report states:

… Commissioner Keelty noted that some of CrimTrac’s work is, and should continue to be supported from the proceeds of crime.

Recommendation 18 saw the committee recommend:

... that the Commonwealth Government review CrimTrac’s current funding model in order to provide it with a greater level of funding certainty.

Another area that the committee looked at was national automotive numberplate recognition. The advantage of this would be that, as a car went past a camera, the police could automatically check to see if the person was wanted; it may be a stolen car. That method is used effectively in the UK for terrorism. Another aspect was the concerns by law enforcement agencies about the cost of obtaining telecommunications data from the providers. In Victoria, Detective Superintendent Mark Porter said that this year they have already spent $500,000 of the police budget. In New South Wales in 2006 it was $1.63 million. That places a very heavy burden on law enforcement agencies and needs to be addressed.

Another concern was that there is no requirement to produce identification for people getting SIM cards. We heard from experts across the country how criminals—from minor criminals to major criminal organisations—are changing their SIM cards up to five times a day, making it impossible for police to track them. Requiring a 100-point ID check is being looked at. Obviously this is something that needs a bit more work. Finally, we had a quick look at racketeering laws and a way of targeting outlaw motorcycle gangs. The committee agreed that more research needs to be done into this.

I congratulate the committee and the secretariat. I look forward in particular to the database issue being addressed throughout this country to make the jobs of law enforcement agencies a lot easier and better. Not having one hand tied behind their back will make a great difference when dealing with terrorism and serious crime.