Gavin Pearce (Braddon, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Minister for Home Affairs. Will the minister please update the House on how our law enforcement and Border Force staff are working on our front line to keep our borders secure and Australians safe through the COVID-19 pandemic?

Karen Andrews (McPherson, Liberal Party, Minister for Home Affairs) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank the member for his question, and I'm delighted to be able to stand here today and congratulate the Australian Border Force, the Australian Federal Police, ASIO and many of the agencies that have been on the front line in this pandemic and have done an outstanding job.

At the start of the pandemic, this government took some very decisive action, took some very decisive steps, in relation to our border. Without a doubt, that has gone a long way to keeping us safe and secure here and to reducing the transmission of COVID-19 right across our community. But, of course, we here would all understand that managing our borders in these particularly difficult times is a major logistical effort. The brave men and women of the Australian Border Force and the Australian Federal Police in particular have done a fantastic job of not only managing people who are coming across our borders through our ports and our seaports but also managing the significant increases they've had to deal with in terms of the cargo. They've also done some fantastic things like facilitating the PPE that we needed very early in the COVID-19 pandemic. And they've also done work, particularly recently, making sure the vaccines are facilitated through our airports so they can get to where they need to be. So I thank them for their work.

As I said earlier, I congratulate and thank the AFP on their work, and I congratulate our intelligence agencies on the work that they have done. Whilst we are all dealing with the COVID pandemic, they continue to deal with some fairly serious threats, like terrorism, organised crime and extremism, and they have taken on new and different forms during the course of the pandemic. As a government, we are making sure they are being given the resources and the legislative backing they need to be able to do their jobs.

As we've seen recently, some ideologically motivated extremist groups are using the pandemic to whip up some community fear and spread a great deal of misinformation. We will, as a government, remain very vigilant to this and to the potential towards incitement to violence in any form of ideology, no matter where it sits on the political spectrum. Where necessary and appropriate, our law enforcement agencies will take appropriate action. And it was only recently that there was an incident where the Federal Police took very swift action in relation to particular individuals impersonating the AFP in an online video. So I thank them for their work; I thank the Australian Border Force, I thank the Australian Federal Police and I thank our intelligence agencies.