Glenn Sterle (WA, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Road Safety) Share this | Hansard source

He died. They found him in the conveyor belt when unloading—three deaths. Then they tried to get Captain Salas, but no-one could find Captain Salas. They were trying to charge him in Australian waters. They couldn't charge him over the Japanese death. Alerts were going out all round the world—where is Captain Salas?

I spoke to Owen Jacques, a reporter from the Sunshine Coast in Queensland, who was reporting on Captain Salas, who told me when the inquiry was going on down in Sydney, I think it was. He flew down to it, because he was reporting on it. They were talking there, the prosecutor, and no-one could find where captain Salas was—border protection didn't know, immigration didn't know, ASIO didn't know, AFP didn't know. No-one could find him so they were going to abandon the trial. I am not making this stuff up. I can't make this stuff up. I am not that damn fanatical about pretending things happened.

At the smoko break Owen Jacques walked up to the prosecutor and said, 'Dear prosecutor, I know where Captain Salas is.' You think I am making this up, don't you? It's hard to believe isn't it? They said, 'No-one else can find him'. He said: 'I know where he is. He is in Gladstone.' I have the name of the ship here—I can't remember. He was going out the next day. This is our intelligence network at work here. You wonder why I'm cranky. It's because I can't get answers. All of a sudden there was a flurry of activity and off they went. I think it was AFP that went up there, chucked him in a headlock, put handcuffs on him—whatever they did—and brought him down to trial.

At the trial he confessed to gun running—a confessed gun runner and money launderer. We know that there were two deaths on the ship coming into Australia and one on the way out. No-one knows nothing. Some reporters said he was selling guns to the crew. Are we to believe he was selling guns to the crew, the same ones he was killing and throwing overboard? It is getting worse all the time.

Here is a classic example of when our intelligence agencies or our government say: 'It's all right, bucko. It's all in hand. We've got full control. We know who's coming into this nation.' No, you don't. What you do know is you have a list of names provided by the company. What you will find out is there will be a passport and there will be a photograph—fine, great, not a bad start—but you don't know what they've done or what they're planning to do or what they've been tied up in unless they've been caught on the system you've got now. Someone tell me I've got it wrong. There's no way I've got it wrong. You haven't proved it to me yet.

I'll tell you what I'm dying to hear—and I would love the opportunity for this Senate to back me in giving the Rural and Regional Affairs and Transport References Committee, and all participating members, the opportunity to say, 'We're going to hold onto this bill for a month while the committee goes back to do its work that it set out to do in 2017.' And the minister responsible should pull in the jug heads from the bureaucracy and say, 'You will treat the Senate with the respect that it demands, you will treat the senators with the respect that they have earned and you will answer questions.' And if those questions go to national security the senators are grown up enough and mature enough to back the words that I will give them once again—as I do every damn time I have a hearing and as does every senator—the right to be heard in camera.