Christopher Pyne (Sturt, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Education, Apprenticeships and Training) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise on the adjournment on a very serious matter that is afflicting not just Adelaide but towns across Australia, and that is the illegal importation of weapons. This is an issue that the opposition raised in question time yesterday. It is very important in the adjournment that we explain that this problem, which occurred at Sylvania Waters Post Office—the arrival of illegally imported weapons and those weapons then being used in the street fighting in Sydney—is not only a Sydney issue. It is very much an issue in Adelaide and in the rest of the country. But, as a South Australian member, my remarks are going to be about South Australia.

Stephen Pallaras, the Director of Public Prosecutions in Adelaide, only recently was bemoaning the level of violence, the level of lawlessness, that exists on the streets of Adelaide. He said:

… the level of violence in terms of the bikie violence has been escalating to a point where we are losing our sensitivity to these events …

Unfortunately that is true. Over the last few months and in the last 12 months there have been at least 12 drive-by shootings in the city of Adelaide. But there have also been gunfights in the last two or three months in Adelaide. On 16 January, a gunfight broke out between members of rival bikie gangs in a crowded hotel, the Findon Hotel, in the western suburbs of Adelaide. On 18 December a gunfight broke out at Caffe Paesano—a noted eatery in North Adelaide, in O'Connell Street—filled as it was, after Carols by Candlelight, with families and innocent South Australians simply going about their business. The place was riddled with the bullets of two rival bikie gangs. Nobody was killed but others have been killed in this bikie war that is occurring in my city.

As recently as a month ago, one of my own constituents, Giovanni Focarelli, was murdered in a bikie gunfight in the north of the city, and his father was very badly wounded. In fact, his father has been wounded and hospitalised numerous times over recent months. While I certainly do not defend the Focarelli family, sadly, after that gunfight, nobody who was present at it was able to help the police in their inquiries with bringing the perpetrators of that murder to justice. Unfortunately, the streets of Adelaide are becoming more like the streets of Gotham City or the shoot-out at the OK Corral.

Today I bemoan the fact that there is a causal link between the policies of this government and the bikie wars that are occurring in South Australia and also the organised gangland warfare that is going on in other parts of the country. There is a direct causal link, because this government made the decision to cut the Customs budget by $60 million. It made the decision to get rid of 340 staff; they were axed from the Customs department. At the same time, the government has increased spending by at least $1 billion to stop boats with illegal arrivals coming to Australia. That money would never have been needed to be spent if the government had simply kept the policies of the Howard government in place, which had stopped the boats.

The government changed that policy in August 2008 and since that time there has been a massive blow-out in the immigration budget. The government has found some savings in the Customs budget to fill that hole by removing staff from Customs. So Customs and Border Protection have been unable to detect the incoming illegal weapons that are being used in the warfare that is occurring around Australia and in my city of Adelaide. So there is a direct causal link between this government's reprehensible policy decision-making process and the safety of Australians. South Australians are being placed at risk by this government's very bad decisions.

We know that the number of scannings of air cargo inspections have dropped by 75 per cent and the scannings of sea cargo inspections have dropped by 25 per cent since the government introduced those cuts. The government stands condemned. For the first time in my 19 years in parliament, constituents are coming to see me because they are concerned about their safety and that of their families due to the lawlessness that now infects the streets of Adelaide. Adelaide is too beautiful a place to have been placed in this position, and the government is responsible for part of it. (Time expired)