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

The opposition might have liked the AFP to stay in New Guinea and not enjoy the immunity that we would insist upon our people having when they are serving in dangerous situations. We had to withdraw as a result of the decision in PNG. We had allocated substantial funding and staffing for that task. Because of an unexpected court decision, we had to withdraw in the interests of our own personnel. We did it—and we did it very quickly—because of the issue of immunity.

That brings with it funding aspects and staffing targets, which I mentioned in my last answer. There had been funding allocated which had left funding in place for accommodation and the like in case we could return to Papua New Guinea in the near future. If we had withdrawn that, it could well have been more costly to return to PNG if we were able to renegotiate the Enhanced Cooperation Program. That one aspect provided for an area of unspent funding. There were other areas in relation to the surplus. Of course, one that was explained to the committee last night was in relation to operations by the International Deployment Group.

The opposition do not understanding this, of course, but with policing, when you have deployments of this nature and size and you get a change in strategy which is beyond your control, such as the PNG deployment—and in relation to other aspects where you have a very substantial amount of money, such as the aviation security initiative, which requires a whole-of-government approach; and I say ‘whole of government’ deliberately, because you need the state and territory governments on board—then you have a situation where you cannot just deploy federal agents overnight and have that money expended overnight. It takes time to implement those programs, especially when we have had the announcements of the nature that we have enunciated, such as the deployments overseas, aviation security and of course our IDG announcement of just under half a billion dollars. We have never said that would happen in two weeks. That would be totally unrealistic. It happens over a period of time. That is what we have done with our other initiatives.

The commissioner explained clearly last night how those receivables came about. They are giving a breakdown to Senator Ludwig. This is just a shameful beat-up by the opposition. In fact, as I understand it, the commissioner last night endorsed the comments I made in relation to AFP recruitment.