Chris Ellison (WA, Liberal Party, Minister for Justice and Customs) Share this | Hansard source

Senator Evans is interjecting now. He should remember that in 1996-97 the funding for the Australian Federal Police was not even $200 million per annum. Under the Howard government, in 2006-07 it is over $846 million a year. That is the resourcing that we are giving to the AFP.

Let me look at the targeting of the Australian Federal Police. Of course, with deployments to Papua New Guinea, where we had a large number of police deployed—and that was part of our forecast—we had the Wenge decision which caused us to withdraw our police and change our complete approach to Papua New Guinea. In fact, it changed our forecasting. When you look at the figure that Senator Ludwig has mentioned, it relates to Papua New Guinea and the aviation sector. The vast majority of that 450-odd figure is in the aviation sector and Papua New Guinea, which did not go ahead because of the Wenge decision. In relation to the aviation sector, we are working with the states and territories to have policing at our airports. We have put in place the airport commanders. We have got our joint intelligence teams; we have got our intelligence groups with Customs and others—