David Johnston (WA, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I am quite gratified by the responsible attitude that Senator Xenophon has taken to what is a very, very important piece of legislation, the Migration Amendment (Strengthening Biometrics Integrity) Bill 2015. In the last 10 to 15 years, Australia has been confronted with a very multifaceted threat, and that is ingress to and egress from our country by a very broad range of people with differing ethnic and socioeconomic backgrounds. What we seek to do in this piece of legislation is to use current technologies with respect to biometrics to answer the challenge that the threat that I have just mentioned brings to the personal safety and security of Australians. Current technology being what it is, we can identify individuals through what we call personal identifiers, store that information reliably and access that information almost instantly in identifying people who traverse across the threshold of our borders.

The predominant personal identifier will be fingerprints, but there are other biometrics—the iris, facial image recognition and so on. The focus of successful law enforcement around the world has been through the very contemporary, instantaneous use of fingerprints. Algorithmic computer power delivering data to the fingertips of the person conducting the analysis mean that, almost immediately upon setting foot in the Customs hall, we can quite reliably identify the person or persons with the necessary fingerprint data once stored and accumulated.

Having said that, at the moment we have a number of gaps in the reliability of the biometric data that we use to identify people coming into our country. This bill assists in filling of those gaps and giving people with the important responsibility of protecting our borders and identifying people who would be otherwise not welcome in Australia the best opportunity of identifying them. We know that we have had a number of individuals both coming into Australia and leaving Australia where it has been very difficult for the department to make the necessary adjudications in the time frame they have for a person entering or leaving Australia.

This provides a framework to enable manual fingerprint-based checks to be carried out using mobile handheld devices. This is phenomenal technology. This is computer power doing a lot of very good work in giving officers at the border the capacity to make a very reliable, almost instantaneous decision as to the identity of particular people coming and particular people going. These checks will be conducted at airports, seaports and anywhere else where it is very important that Australia have reliable data on a person's identity from a security perspective.

We have a very large number of points of entry. Not many Australian citizens understand all the points of entry: each coal terminal where international ships collect our minerals, be it up the North Queensland coast or in the Northern Territory; oil and gas ships up the north-west of Western Australia; iron ore ships; or wheat being exported from South Australia, Western Australia or New South Wales. All of these points of entry or exit for our exportable goods and for the live export of sheep and cattle mean that we have people coming into Australia whose identity we should know of. We should be able to very quickly, securely and reliably identify who is setting foot in Australia.

The problem we have at the moment is, firstly, all of these various sites need to be connected to the network. Then we have the problem of having the necessary computer capacity and reception at those sites to be able to access databases, and we need to train our officers at those points to completely understand and fully utilise the information technology that we are presenting them. The specific measures in the bill will introduce a broad power to collect biometrics for the purposes of the Migration Act and regulations, including to assist in identifying persons who may be a security concern to Australia. I think that is almost a motherhood statement in terms of its importance and the necessary authorities, laws and regulations that we would want our officers to have in collecting such biometric data. It will provide the flexibility to require biometrics in some circumstances—for example, in visa applications from persons who are part of an identified high-risk cohort—or to not require biometrics in some other cases. The flexibility to make decisions at the point of authorising entry is going to be in the legislation. It will allow biometrics to be collected multiple times where required.

Again, I emphasise physical characteristics will be used as personal identifiers. We have facial imaging—digital photography—to get a biometric facial image. I have focused on fingerprints and, of course, there is digitally recorded iris images. These will provide a very reliable and quite flexible and contemporary analysis of individuals so that we can readily identify them from the database.

The bill will not mean that biometrics will be collected from the majority of non-citizens who apply for a visa to travel to Australia. It does not introduce a universal biometric collection policy. There is no one-size-fits-all and a blanket provision. It will provide flexibility to require biometrics from particular individuals or high-risk cohorts. All current circumstances under which the Migration Act authorises the collection of personal identifiers will continue to be authorised under the bill. These are, by way of example, in the granting of a visa to non-citizens and entering and departing Australia citizens and noncitizens. I should add that the criminal element will be catered for here. People who are on watch lists, people who are suspected of doing things which may in the medium to long term be in breach of the law will be able to be identified reliably to determine whether a non-citizen holds a valid visa. It will provide for reconciliation between the data provided in the visa application and the point of using that visa, as well as providing for detention decision making for non-citizens.

In addition:

… the department will selectively collect personal identifiers from particular individuals who have not previously provided their personal identifiers, but who have been identified as of concern after their arrival in Australia, or due to their behaviour while living in the Australian community.

I actually think and commend that aspect to the Senate. I think it is a very, very important thing, given that I think we are on the verge of taking our refugee reception to about 18,000 people per annum. This is a very important measure, and I must say I am very gratified by the measures in this legislation. The information:

… provides greater integrity to the immigration system, protection against the spread of terrorism and human trafficking and will assist in resolving the current asylum seeker caseload.

I pause to say that human trafficking is a very, very nasty blight on the movement of individuals between sovereign nations. Any use of technology that enhances the integrity of identifying individuals who may be being trafficked against their will, particuarly children, has got to be a very good thing.

The amendments in the bill include the removal of the current age restrictions and parental consent to collect biometrics. I think that is very, very laudable and important. Somebody needs to take responsibility in the fight against child trafficking and, if these measures go down the path of providing officers with greater integrity in being able to identify any person, be it a minor or an adult, who is being trafficked, it has got to be a good thing. The age restriction amendments are primarily, as I have said, a child protection measure aimed at preventing child trafficking and/or smuggling, particularly with respect to what we all know happens around the expression 'child brides'.

I strongly commend these measures to the Senate. I think they are very, very sound, logical and strong, and I actually have no qualms about the civil liberties aspect underlying these matters. I think the mischief that is sought to be prevented here is ever so much greater than the inhibition of any civil liberties.

Collecting personal identifiers, particularly fingerprints, from children will permit a higher level of integrity in identifying minors overseas where known cases of child smuggling and trafficking reveal higher risk.

I think that is self-evident and a very important aspect of this legislation which the wider community, I would expect, would welcome.

Fingerprints provide a unique capability to accurately identify individuals that is not possible using a facial image, particularly if the person is a minor.

Obviously, facial imaging, digital facial imaging with respect to children who grow very quickly is a problem, so fingerprints are a relatively stable personal identifier throughout a person's lifetime.

In addition, the age restriction amendments address situations 'where a parent, guardian or independent person may seek to frustrate the collection of personal identifiers by leaving a room where an identification test is to take place'. I think that also is self-evidently an integrity-enhancing measure.

Recent border and terrorism-related events in Australia and worldwide illustrate the need for measures to strengthen community protection outcomes.

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The measures in this bill will strengthen the department's capacity to collect biometrics to check identity and to do other checks to detect individuals of concern. Again, I say laudable, appropriate, logical in a society such as ours. Vigilance comes at a price. Having high-integrity biometric assessment of individual identity means that we have greater capacity to more effectively in a short space of time make adjudications at our borders, which, as I say, are laden with integrity and are reliable.

… recent examples of Australians leaving to participate in foreign conflicts have highlighted the need for additional actions to detect such persons at the border. The example of convicted terrorist Khaled Sharrouf who in December 2013 used his brother's passport to leave Australia to participate in terrorist related activities illustrates the need for fingerprint-based checks.

Again, I say this is very, very logical. If we can get technology to step into the place where human error—and human error, I think, is very likely when we know the level and the number of people who are going through our borders on any given day, any given night. My experience has been at Perth Airport with four or five planes landing between midnight and 5 am. It is huge burden for Customs officers to deal with in an expedient, cost-effect way, and so technology stepping up to the plate to assist in that adjudication has got to be a very good thing, and this legislation does exactly that.

The collection measures in this bill provide the tools to stop people like Sharrouf at the border due to the higher level of accuracy in identifying individuals provided by fingerprint verification.

The digitalisation of this data means that it is instantaneously accessible and the officer has the capacity and the technology at his fingertips to make an enhanced adjudication of high integrity and reliability. This has got to be a very, very good thing.

Having said that to you, we know that, having touched on the issues of child trafficking, of child bride smuggling and of all of the things that we can see around the world where people are making money out of nefarious practices in the breach of human rights of others, the one particularly strong deterrent is high technology, personal identifiers, using high-powered computers to provide instant answers on a digital basis through data analysis, is a very good antidote to this growing problem.

This legislation takes our border security, our border protection and the officers who administer the rules, the regulations and the law to a higher level of integrity I want to commend this bill to the Senate and say that as time goes by and technology improves we must in this place be on the front foot in assisting our officers with this technology, such that they can do their job to a high degree of integrity. I think this is very, very important not only for the security of our country but for the expeditious treatment of people at the borders.

I spent five hours at Heathrow airport on one occasion, as a senator of Australia. The queue just went up and down, up and down, and I got to a sign that said, 'You are two hours from the front.' That is because they did not use the technology. They had individuals making a rough guess as to who's who in the zoo as they came through. We want to avoid that. We want to have a high degree of integrity and a high degree of cost-effectiveness, and we want to move people reliably through our borders quickly, particularly law-abiding citizens. That is the consideration here: we can pick the bad apples out very quickly and reliably, and we can let law-abiding citizens move through very quickly.

I think this legislation—and I want to commend it, as I said, to the Senate—is a very strong piece of initiative by the government to get on board with current technology. There is no excuse for us not to utilise the high degree of developed, high-integrity, personal identification—digital personal identifiers—in processing people through our borders. We should be doing it and we must be doing it, and this legislation assists in expeditiously providing our officers with greater and more reliable capacity to do what we want them to do.