Stephen Conroy (Victoria, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I move:

That this bill be now read a second time.

I seek leave to have the second reading speech incorporated in Hansard.

Leave granted.

The speech read as follows—

CUSTOMS AND AUSCHECK LEGISLATION AMENDMENT (ORGANISED CRIME AND OTHER MEASURES) BILL

In July 2010 the Government established Taskforce Polaris - a joint law enforcement taskforce targeting organised crime in the cargo system in Sydney.

It is made up of officers from the:

It was set up by this Government, funded by this Government and it has been very successful.

To date, it has made 36 arrests, laid 171 charges and seized over 12 tonnes of illicit substances and pre-cursor chemicals.

It has also provided me with advice on further action to strengthen security in the cargo system.

Based on this advice, last year I announced the work of Taskforce Polaris would be expanded to Melbourne and Brisbane.

I also announced major reforms to make it harder for organised crime to infiltrate and exploit the cargo system.

This bill implements a number of these reforms.

Expansion of Taskforce Polaris

Taskforce Polaris shows how effective State and Federal law enforcement agencies can be when they work together.

Given its success, and the threats it has identified, we are going to replicate this model right across the eastern seaboard.

In Melbourne it is called Taskforce Trident. It has now been established and has around thirty members, including officers from:

In Brisbane it will be called Taskforce Jericho. Officers from the Australian Federal Police and Customs and Border Protection have begun setting it up and it will roll out in the middle of this year.

Non legislative reforms

A number of non-legislative reforms have also been implemented to harden the cargo supply chain against infiltration by criminal groups.

This includes:

This is backed by the new offences in this bill which make it an offence to obtain and use restricted information, including information from the Integrated Cargo System and for unlawfully disclosing that restricted information.

These patrols have increasingly been targeted using intelligence provided by both task force intelligence units and normal Customs and Border Protection intelligence areas. This intelligence has also been used to more effectively coordinate the use of overt uniformed presence and covert activities such as CCTV monitoring, static surveillance posts and mobile surveillance teams.

For example, from 1 July last year Customs and Border Protection has imposed the following conditions on all broker licences:

Security clearance procedures and access have been tightened for external service providers assisting the Container Examination Facilities. Customs and Border Protection is also implementing a range of other measures including enhancing CCTV coverage and security signage.

ASIC and MSIC Scheme Discussion Paper

The Government is also updating the list of offences that lead to the refusal or cancellation of an ASIC or MSIC.

The Department of Infrastructure and Transport released a Discussion Paper on this in December last year.

It proposes better and more consistent offence categories across the ASIC and MSIC lists. It also proposes including a number of offence categories that are not currently on either list, including organised crime, currency violations and harbouring of criminals, and a number that are not on the ASIC list, such as unlawful activity relating to firearms.

I understand that, following on from the Discussion Paper, the Department of Infrastructure and Transport is now preparing an Options Paper in consultation with other relevant Departments. The Options Paper will provide a more detailed proposal for Government and stakeholder comment.

Legislative Reforms

This bill implements four further important reforms.

First, it places new obligations on cargo terminal operators and people who load and unload cargo, which are similar to those that the Customs Act imposes on holders of depot and warehouse licences.

These obligations include mandatory reporting of unlawful activity to ensure the physical security of relevant premises and cargo.

They also include fit and proper person checks at the request of Customs and Border Protection Service.

Non compliance with these obligations will attract criminal or administrative sanctions.

Second, it creates new offences for obtaining and using restricted information, including information from the Integrated Cargo System, to commit an offence, and for unlawfully disclosing that restricted information. The offences will be punishable by a maximum of 2 years imprisonment, a fine of up to 120 penalty units, or both.

Third, it gives the Chief Executive Officer of Customs and Border Protection the power to impose new licence conditions at any time, and makes it an offence to breach certain licence conditions. This brings the Customs broker licensing scheme into line with other customs licensing schemes.

The bill also adjusts a range of other controls and sanctions in the Customs Act, including increasing penalties for certain strict liability offences and improving the utility of the infringement notice scheme.

Fourth, the bill amends the AusCheck Act 2007 to enable an ASIC or MSIC to be suspended if the cardholder has been charged with a serious offence.

The current ASIC and MSIC regimes provide for the cancellation of an ASIC or MSIC where the holder is convicted of, and sentenced to imprisonment for, an aviation or maritime security relevant offence.

The bill introduces the capacity for AusCheck to suspend a person's ASIC or MSIC, or the processing of an application for an ASIC or MSIC, if the person is charged with a serious offence.

The list of serious offences will be prescribed by regulation. The list of offences will be developed by the Minister for Home Affairs and the Minister for Minister for Infrastructure and Transport.

Law enforcement agencies would be able to notify AusCheck when they charge the holder of, or applicant for, an ASIC or MSIC with a serious offence.

Holders and applicants for ASICs and MSICs will also be required to self-report when they are charged with a serious offence. The Regulations will make it an offence for a person to fail to self-report or to return a suspended card, punishable with a fine of up to 100 penalty units.

This measure has been developed instead of the proposed use of criminal threat assessments to refuse or revoke ASICs and MSICs.

This is based on advice from the Australian Federal Police that this is a better model.

The advice of the Australian Federal Police is that this measure will enhance the ability of Taskforces Polaris, Trident and Jericho to remove high risk individuals from sensitive aviation and maritime areas.

The Australian Federal Police have advised that they prefer this model to the use of criminal threat assessments because of uncertainty around the definition of what should constitute compelling criminal intelligence, what law enforcement should be required to disclose, and how the appeal process should work.

Amendment to the Law Enforcement Integrity Commission Act 2006

The bill also amends the Law Enforcement Integrity Commission Act 2006, which establishes the Parliamentary Joint Committee on the Australian Commission for Law Enforcement Integrity.

This bill repeals provisions which prevent the deputy presiding officers from being appointed to the Committee.

This amendment will provide Parliament with greater discretion when appointing members to this important Committee.

It will also make membership eligibility for the Committee consistent with Parliamentary committees with similar functions, including the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Law Enforcement and the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security.

Tackling organised crime

This legislation is part of broader action we are taking to tackle organised crime.

Two weeks ago the Prime Minister and I announced the establishment of a National Anti-Gang Taskforce. This includes:

The Taskforce will be made up of 70 members from the Australian Federal Police and State Police forces and will also include officers from the Australian Crime Commission, Customs and Border Protection, the Department of Immigration and Citizenship, the Australian Taxation Office and Centrelink.

The National Anti-Gang Taskforce will:

This approach is based on the same model as Joint Taskforce Polaris – the Commonwealth and States working together to tackle organised crime.

It is also based on the FBI's Violent Gang Taskforce – that has been very successful.

This is about State and Federal law enforcement agencies working together.

State and Federal politicians also have to work together to ensure our law enforcement agencies have the powers they need to tackle organised crime.

Criminals move from State to State. They have assets and associates in other states.

If you clamp on organised crime in one state it tends to move to another. We have seen evidence of this.

That's why we need national anti-gang laws – so there is no place to hide and no safe havens.

We also need national unexplained wealth laws.

We all know the story of the person driving around in a flash car with no job, who doesn't pay income tax.

National unexplained wealth laws mean that if you can't explain where the income comes from to buy the flash car and the big house those assets can be seized.

State and Federal police have called for these powers.

Labor and Liberal politicians from the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Law Enforcement have called for these powers.

They require the States to refer these powers to the Commonwealth.

I put this to State and Territory Attorneys-General last year—and they rejected it.

This is a mistake and I am prosecuting the case for these powers again.

The Prime Minister has put this on the agenda for COAG in April, along with a proposal to give law enforcement additional powers to search people who are subject to a Firearm Prohibition Order, as well as any vehicle or premises they are in, for the presence of a firearm without the need to demonstrate reasonable suspicion. South Australian law could be used to as a model.

I am also implementing a number of other reforms to harden the border.

Two weeks ago, the Prime Minister and I also announced the establishment of a $30 million National Border Targeting Centre to target high risk international passengers and cargo.

The National Border Targeting Centre will use an intelligence-led, risk-based approach to target high-risk international passengers and cargo.

The advice of Australian law enforcement agencies is that intelligence and targeting is the key to seizing drugs and other contraband on the streets and at the border.

85 per cent of seizures at the border are the result of intelligence developed by Customs and Border Protection and other law enforcement agencies in Australia and overseas.

The more intelligence that law enforcement agencies have, the more they can seize.

The National Border Targeting Centre is based on the model developed by the National Targeting Centre in the United States and the United Kingdom's National Border Targeting Centre.

It will provide the basis for co-locating agencies like:

The National Border Targeting Centre will also provide a basis for Customs and Border Protection to work more closely with the Department of Immigration and Citizenship.

The new Centre will be able to work alongside targeting centres in the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom and New Zealand.

This legislation and the establishment of a National Border Targeting Centre are part of the major reforms I am making to Customs and Border Protection.

I have made the point on a number of occasions that Customs and Border Protection requires major and comprehensive reform to improve its business systems, its law enforcement capability and its intelligence culture.

To drive this reform I have established the Customs Reform Board, made up of three distinguished Australians with expertise in law enforcement, corruption resistance and best practice business systems.

The members of the board are:

The Board has already met a number of times, held a number of site inspections and received a number of briefings, and will provide me with its first report by the middle of the year.

Conclusion

I have made it clear I am serious about making sure our law enforcement agencies have the powers and tools they need to target organised crime – at the border and on the street.

I am equally determined to weed out corruption.

The vast majority of law enforcement officers, public servants and private sector workers who work in the aviation and maritime industries and the cargo supply chain are good, honest, hardworking people.

However organised criminals do try to target and infiltrate ports, airports and the cargo system.

When they penetrate the system they can cause enormous damage.

The purpose of this bill and the other measures I have outlined are to give our law enforcement agencies the powers they have asked for and the powers they need to stop organised crime from penetrating the system.

This is a constant battle. More reform is required.

I hope that in the near future I will be able to bring forward national anti-gang legislation and national unexplained wealth legislation to give our law enforcement agencies even more power to target organised crime.

Gary Humphries (ACT, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Defence Materiel) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The Customs and AusCheck Legislation Amendment (Organised Crime and Other Measures) Bill 2013 provides for two very different measures. The first measure seeks to implement recommendations made by Taskforce Polaris and the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Law Enforcement in their report on the adequacy of aviation and maritime security measures to combat serious and organised crime. The second measure removes the prohibition on the Deputy Speaker of the House of Representatives and the Deputy President of the Senate being members of the Parliamentary Joint Committee on the Australian Commission for Law Enforcement Integrity.

Before I address these measures in detail, I remind the Senate of the seriousness of the issue of organised criminal activity on Australian wharves and in our ports. Unfortunately, the Commonwealth's law enforcement agencies have been subject to systematic erosion in almost every budget since this government came to office. If the Attorney-General, the Minister for Home Affairs and the Labor Party were serious about stopping organised crime, that would be reflected in the allocation of resources and support for the essential elements of the mission of those agencies. It is an unfortunate fact that the budget cuts the government has inflicted on our law and border enforcement agencies have improved criminals' chances of putting guns and drugs into Australian communities. The government has reduced funding and personnel for law enforcement agencies such as the ACC and the AFP. It has also savaged Customs, the agency tasked with stopping illicit goods from coming across our borders.

Tuesday's budget confirmed what we already knew—that the government is simply not pulling its weight in this area. Further, it is being urged in that direction by the union movement. A group of five unions made a joint submission to the 2011 inquiry by the then Parliamentary Joint Committee on the Australian Crime Commission into aviation and maritime security measures. The five unions were the Maritime Union of Australia; the Australian Workers' Union; the Rail, Tram and Bus Union; the Australian Maritime Officers Union; and the International Transport Workers Union. The submission said:

Unions are unaware that the incidence of criminal activity is more prevalent on the Australian waterfront than in other domestic workplaces. We have seen and read divisive and scurrilous reports, including newspaper headlines about organised crime being rampant on our waterfront but the articles lack substance while the social commentators' arguments are hardly compelling.

Both Australian Crime Commission maritime case studies included in their submission rely on allegations and suspicions. They suggest there is evidence of gangs of organised criminals operating and infiltrating the transport industries but the evidence is not included in the submission.

These unions have collectively donated $23.7 million to the Labor Party since they came to office. The MUA in particular has long denied there is a problem with criminality on the waterfront.

The government has accordingly been extremely reluctant to act on criminality on the waterfront. The coalition, conversely, has consistently brought this issue to the attention of the government since 2009. This government has finally resolved to act at five minutes to midnight—or, more precisely, four years after these reports were brought to their attention—on the very eve of an election.

Under the Howard government, funding was increased for the AFP and there was an increase in staff numbers from around 2,000 to more than 6,000. By contrast, the last three Labor budgets, including the one delivered on Tuesday, have axed an astonishing $309.7 million from AFP funding. In the 2012-13 budget, to help prop up its budgetary position, Labor froze the use of $58.3 million taken directly from criminals under the Proceeds of Crime Act. Before the 2007 election, Labor promised to increase AFP ranks by 500 operational AFP officers over five years from January 2008. This commitment has not been met. AFP numbers have not been boosted in real terms and there have been at least 249 AFP redundancies since Labor came to office. On Tuesday, the Treasurer informed the nation that its 2007 commitment would be deferred yet again.

We have heard anecdotal reports of various branches within the AFP being forced to find ways to make more cuts, even though there is no more meat on the bone. The coalition has heard that crime scene investigators are being asked to bring their own notepads and pens to take notes at crime scenes. This is a sorry state of affairs for an agency that was properly resourced under the Howard government. It is particularly galling in an environment where government spending has increased so dramatically over the last five years.

Organised crime is a problem all across the country. Even regional centres and remote communities are not immune from the activities of organised criminal syndicates. The task of combating it requires resources, expertise and cooperation, yet the Australian Crime Commission has been systematically undermined by the Labor government. Tuesday's budget revealed that, since this government came to office, it has cut $29.08 million from the ACC's budget and 198 staff, over 40 per cent of its personnel. Taking the fight to organised crime cannot be achieved when our most powerful crime-fighting agency is being systematically downsized and sidetracked from the main game.

The Australian Customs and Border Protection Service is an important partner of front-line law enforcement agencies. It has a vital role of stopping illegal goods such as drugs and guns, but Customs is not able to perform that role at peak efficiency. The service is plagued by instances of corruption and cuts to the Customs cargo-screening process to the tune of $58 million. It has become clear that organised criminal syndicates are taking advantage of these conditions. The government simply does not subscribe to the tenet of a strong law enforcement regime and strong border protection system.

This bill amends the Customs Act in a number of ways which I will not detain the Senate with. It also amends the AusCheck Act 2007 to allow a person's ASIC or MSIC, or their application for such a card, to be suspended if the person has been charged with a serious offence, and it enables the AusCheck scheme to make provisions for background checks to determine whether an individual has been charged with a serious offence or whether a charge of a serious offence has been resolved in relation to the individual. And I have mentioned that the Deputy Speaker and the Deputy President will legally become members of the parliamentary joint committee.

In conclusion, it is unfortunate that the process of implementing these measures has taken so long, particularly given the report that the joint committee on the Australian Crime Commission released in June 2011 and the recommendations that Taskforce Polaris handed down over a year ago. If the Attorney-General and the Minister for Home Affairs were serious about tackling organised criminal activity, they would have sought to protect their agencies from the damaging cuts this government has inflicted on them, particularly the cuts revealed by the Treasurer this week. Despite the failure of this government to protect the very agencies that this bill affects, the coalition does support measures to strengthen port and airport security, and for this reason I commend the bill to the Senate.

Question agreed to.

Bill read a second time.