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

The Customs Legislation Amendment (Border Compliance and Other Measures) Bill 2006 has a number of aspects to it and previous speakers have outlined those. It has a number of schedules dealing with various areas such as the Australia-US Free Trade Agreement, the Accredited Client Program, the tightening up of security in relation to Customs controlled areas and a number of other aspects which need attention. From time to time, Customs legislation is presented in this form and we find that different areas of Customs responsibility are being dealt with. That has happened over time and it will continue to happen.

We have two bills before the Senate—we have this one and one to be debated later in the week. To answer those queries as to the timing of the bills: a decision was made that this bill needed to go before the other customs bill because of the items covered in this bill. The citizenship bill which is to follow was regarded as an important one, and so a decision was made on order of priority, if you like. But I will take on board Senator Murray’s comments in relation to trying to deal with these bills as much as possible in a cognate fashion, and I have discussed this with Customs.

But I have to make this very clear to those listening: security is a work in progress. As Senator Ian Macdonald quite rightly pointed out, we would not be doing our job if we did not address issues as they arose from time to time. And in an area of operational activity like Customs—and you just have to see the Border Security series to realise the wide area of responsibilities that Customs does have—you are going to come up with matters that need addressing in legislative amendments and, as a responsible government, we have to deal with them. As these items arise, we try to package them in a bill and deal with them together.

I appreciate the Senate’s wish to deal with these bills as cognately as possible, and that is something that we are attempting to address. But I totally reject any notion that we are in some way wrong in dealing with these as we go along and that there is some sort of oversight. It is very much the scrutiny that we carry out that has resulted in this legislative amendment. And some of that is demonstrated very clearly in the Customs controlled areas. What we are doing there is giving Customs powers which, we have recognised, need to be given to Customs in this security environment. Senator Macdonald, quite rightly, mentioned the great work that the men and women of the Australian Customs Service are doing. They cannot carry out effective border control for this country unless we, as a responsible parliament, give them the authority to do just that. And so, with this one aspect of the bill which deals with the Customs controlled area—that is, the section 234AA place, as we call it, for want of a better description—we give Customs the ability to deal with situations where people who may be entitled to be in an area because of an aviation security identification card or a visitor identification card are overstepping that boundary.

I will, for the Senate’s benefit, run through that amendment, because it is an important one. This amendment will give Customs greater control over those people who access Customs controlled areas. It is as simple as that. When you go to a port or an airport you will often see a sign on a fence which says, ‘This is a Customs controlled area,’ and various security arrangements apply, and if you breach that you are subject to prosecution—and quite rightly so. This amendment will allow a Customs officer to restrict the access of aviation security identification card holders and visitor identification card holders to Customs controlled places, ships, aircraft and wharves. The Customs Act provides for Customs to define certain places as Customs controlled areas. The act sets out the purposes under which a person may enter these areas, including for the purposes of their employment.

A security identification card does not by itself designate the holder of the card as being entitled to be in the Customs controlled area. I think that is an important point to remember. It is not necessarily a carte blanche entree into that area. An ASIC card merely indicates to Customs that the person holding the card has undergone a security clearance. Questioning of ASIC holders to determine the reason for their presence in the area may be necessary to ensure sterility of the environment. It may well be that that card holder is there for other purposes, quite different from their employment. It could be out-of-hours access which is not appropriate. So this amendment is to give Customs that authority to deal with the controlled areas that I have mentioned.

The written direction is a real-time instrument to ensure the sterility of a Customs controlled area. It can only be issued for reasons stipulated in the Customs legislation, not for purposes of other government agencies present at the airport. The direction will be issued when the Customs officer cannot establish the bona fides of the party who is the subject of the direction, and when that party cannot show legitimate cause—that is, a reason linked to their employment—for their presence in the area. And that, after all, is really common sense.

The direction will be issued by the Collector of Customs as defined in the act—that is, the officer on duty at the time of the incident. In circumstances where a passenger or crew member who has been detained by Customs is in need of assistance that is not otherwise available from Customs staff, such as that of a doctor or translator, Customs requests the provision of such assistance and provides escorted access for that person to the controlled area so that they can carry out their essential task.

The Senate Legal and Constitutional Legislation Committee in its first amendment dealt with this, and it proposed that the amendment be limited to circumstances where an immediate criminal or security threat or emergency is present in a Customs controlled place. This subsection is on the power of a Collector of Customs, as I say, to issue a written notice directing the holder of a security identification card not to enter into or be on a Customs controlled place. Customs responsibilities—at airports, for example—extend well beyond criminality and aviation security. By limiting the power to immediate circumstances of criminal or aviation security threats or emergencies, Customs’ ability to ensure the sterility of the Customs controlled area for purposes of processing, examining and questioning passengers would be directly affected. That is, we need a wider power for Customs. You cannot limit it to something which may be extreme or critical at the time. It may be for the good running of the airport and in an indirect way may well affect security. But to limit it to only something which is of a critical nature or of a present and clear danger is too narrow. Customs needs that ability.

For those reasons, the government is not persuaded by that first recommendation of the Senate Legal and Constitutional Legislation Committee. I want to thank that committee for the work it has done. It does a very good job in the Senate looking at government legislation, and not infrequently we adopt the recommendations of that committee, but in this case we cannot for those operational reasons that I have outlined.

The other aspect which was mentioned by the Senate Legal and Constitutional Legislation Committee is the Accredited Client Program. The recommendation of the committee was that an independent cost-benefit analysis of the Accredited Client Program be undertaken to take into account the removal of the duty deferral mechanism from the proposed program. Other senators have outlined the operation of that duty deferral aspect. The government has looked at this very carefully—I have spoken to stakeholders in industry about this over a period of time—and after careful consideration the government has announced its decision that duty deferral will not comprise part of the Accredited Client Program. The fact that the program will now be less attractive to industry is understood. It is considered a poor use of public money to fund a cost-benefit analysis of the revised Accredited Client Program when the outcome is already known and, on that basis, we reject the recommendation by the Senate legal and constitutional committee.

I will give some background to the Accredited Client Program because I think that in itself does offer benefits to industry. It is an initiative offering streamlined cargo reporting requirements for highly compliant importers and exporters, thereby recognising those that do the right thing and giving them a more streamlined approach in relation to importing and exporting goods. This bill amends the Customs Act to:

... implement an Accredited Client Program that would enable importers meeting the accreditation requirements to utilise a streamlined entry, reporting and duty payment procedure for the importation of goods ...

Provisions relating to the entry and reporting of imported goods under the Accredited Client Program are already in the Customs Act. This bill inserts the provisions relating to the payment of a duty estimate and import duty on imported goods entered and reported under the program. The amendments also align the payment of processing charges associated with the Accredited Client Program with the payment of import duty. There are a number of benefits to this and it remains an attractive program for industry, notwithstanding that duty deferral has not been included in that. It was a decision government took after careful consideration.

This bill, as I say, has a number of aspects to it. I have singled out those two in particular because they were the subject of recommendations by the Senate Legal and Constitutional Legislation Committee. There are amendments to be addressed in the committee stage, and we will deal with those in turn, but I re-emphasise that security is a work in progress and anyone who says that the government should get it right in one piece of legislation, or that we should rule a line in the sand at a point in time and say, ‘We will do no more; that is enough,’ seriously misunderstands how you deal with risks and the security environment that we find ourselves in.

I dare say, and I say with confidence, that we will have further customs bills and further bills amending all sorts of things to do with security—and so we should. Human affairs never stand still, time does not stand still and, in the area of security, I can assure everyone here that the threats we face are ever present and changing. It is for that very reason that from time to time legislative amendments will be necessary, and the fact that they are is a fact of life. The fact that we respond to them demonstrates our responsibility as a government. I commend this bill to the Senate.

Question put:

That the amendment (Senator Hurley’s) be agreed to.