Sam Dastyari (NSW, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

Pursuant to order, I present the report of the Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade References Committee inquiry into Operation Sovereign Borders, together with the Hansard record of proceedings and documents presented to the committee.

Ordered that the report be printed.

by leave—I move:

That the Senate take note of the report.

We are here to briefly discuss the report—and I will try not to take all of my 10 minutes because I know there is a fair bit that we want to get through—of the public inquiry that was held on Friday, 21 March, into Operation Sovereign Borders, and in particular the transgressions that occurred when Australian vessels entered Indonesian waters.

To begin with, I want to thank the other senators who participated in the committee—particularly Senator Fawcett and the Greens senators, as well as the Labor senators—for their participation in the process. I also thank the Customs and Border Protection staff and the Australian Defence personnel—those broadly involved with Operation Sovereign Borders who very willingly made themselves available and tried to the best of their ability to answer questions and play a positive role in the inquiry. I think that the work of Defence and other personnel, as well as staff of Customs and the Public Service, should be acknowledged and recognised in what is a very difficult policy area. But I believe that they have been put in a very unenviable position and one that they did not ask to be put in.

What we are discussing here, and what the report is trying to get to the heart of, should be a very simple matter: why did it occur and how can we make sure it does not occur again? Why did these incursions happen? How did they happen? How did they happen more than once? Why was this a repeated pattern of behaviour? And, given the unprecedented lack of transparency, how can we be confident in the assurances that we are being given by the government and others that it will not happen again?

Frankly, what is disappointing and what being involved in this inquiry demonstrated was that the total secrecy with which this policy area has been shrouded has made what should be quite easy questions for us to answer unnecessarily difficult to answer. We, as a Senate committee, under some pretence of—and, I believe, misuse of—the public immunity rules, could not get answers to very simple questions such as: 'Do the vessels that are being used at the moment by Customs contain GPS equipment?' This is about basic GPS equipment—equipment that all of us have on our mobile phones and our watches and every other device, and in all our motor vehicles. The fact that basic questions cannot be answered makes the task very difficult. So we are looking at this big policy area, and we are looking at what has been an unprecedented action—us breaching the territorial waters of another nation—and, as the Australian Senate, because of this cloud of secrecy, we cannot even get basic information on how Navy and Customs equipment is being used.

So that is the first big question, and I think there is a big question here about secrecy and the lack of information that has been provided. Again, I do not hold the public servants and the Defence personnel responsible for that. I think they have been put in a very unenviable position, where they are carrying out instructions that have been determined by the government at a policy level. I think it is a fundamental policy failure in this area of Sovereign Borders, built around this idea of secrecy. Without transparency, you are not going to have a decent, open system. That is the first issue.

The second issue is around the whole notion of diplomatic relations. There is no hiding the fact that what happened in these breaches of territorial waters had a direct impact on the Australia-Indonesia relationship and a very detrimental impact. We were given advice by all those present that, understandably—just as we would treat any kind of incursion on our borders by the Indonesian government as such—it has strained an already strained relationship between Australia and Indonesia.

The big question was: what has been the impact of these incursions on our diplomatic relations with Indonesia? The express concern was the lack of transparency that we found in trying to get to the bottom of what actually happened, how it happened and the impact that these events had on our relationship with Indonesia. You cannot help but come to the conclusion that the potential to damage our relationships with our friends and allies comes out of these activities. But, at the same time, as an Australian Senate we were unable to get to the bottom of events.

Finally, the big question is one of precedent: is this going to happen again? We were given answer after answer by those involved in Sovereign Borders—be it at the customs level, at Defence level or at a department level—indicating that it will not occur again. But there is a complete lack of transparency in everything that is occurring in this policy area. One of the recommendations—and I think the lesson from all this—is that this is what happens when transparency is lacking at a policy level. The decision that has been made at a government level to not shine a light on this—to hide away—has had a direct impact on these actions. As the Australian public should rightly be able to ask themselves, it is one thing to be given assurances from government that it is not going to happen again—be that at every level—and I believe those assurances are given in good faith. But without transparency to know what is happening, without information being provided, without shining a light on this as a policy area, I do not believe the Australian public can be confident. That is a really big issue, and I think that is the fundamental issue that came out of this inquiry.

I just want to reiterate my thanks to the other senators who participated in the process. Those who read the report will see that there were different views that were expressed, and they expressed larger policy views. But, fundamentally, if there were one message I wanted to leave it is this whole idea of transparency: the greater the openness, the greater the transparency in this policy area, the better it will be for the Australian public.