David Coleman (Banks, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

It is very good have the opportunity to speak on the Australian Border Force Bill 2015 and the Customs and Other Legislation Amendment (Australian Border Force) Bill 2015, because they are quite historic in nature, in the important organisational reforms that they will bring to the border security of our nation. We have to start from the premise of: why do we have to constantly evolve our laws and processes in immigration and border security? We have to do that because we have to competently manage our borders. That is an absolutely fundamental obligation of any sensible government. And, of course, there is a massive contrast between the success of this government in this space and the abject failure of the former government.

There are two important areas that we need to consider. One is the border security in relation to immigration and the other is the flow of goods through Customs. They are interrelated areas, and this legislation will enable a more coordinated approach in confronting both of them. But what we certainly do not want to do and must never do is revert to the days of the previous Labor government, when both of these areas were managed with a complete lack of competence. The litany of disasters in border security is well known, but it is important to never forget just how bad those disasters were. There is an economic cost, there is a very real human cost and there is also a cost in a loss of confidence of the Australian people in the security of our borders, and that is something which must be avoided, because that can then lead to a loss of confidence in our immigration policies more generally.

The budget blow-out under the previous Labor government in the area of immigration control was $11 billion. There are about nine million households in Australia. If you take that $11 billion and you apply that across nine million households, it is about $1,300 per household. It is useful to reflect and to say, 'If the government had managed the borders effectively and therefore had not had a budget blow-out of $11 billion, what might that money, the $1,300 per household, have been spent on?' That could have been provided in tax relief to families. That could have been invested in important infrastructure like WestConnex, which is so important to my electorate of Banks. There are a whole range of things that could have been done with that money, but that was not possible because $11 billion was frittered away in this extraordinarily inept prosecution of border security.

The remarkable facet of this is that, when the previous government came into power, the borders were under control. The borders were secure. Things were working very well. So there was in fact no need to do to anything. It was not a really difficult organisational or intellectual challenge. All that the previous government had to do was nothing—simply continue with successful policies of the Howard government. Of course, what they decided was that these policies, which were working extremely well, had to be completely junked and done away with. In the process, they sent a very clear message to people smugglers that Australia was open once again.

There was an enormous human cost, of course, because we saw 50,000 people come to our shores. Tragically, we saw more than 1,000 people drown at sea. As the member for Swan touched on so eloquently a few moments ago, we saw a situation where people who were waiting in refugee camps in some of the most troubled places on earth were disadvantaged by this policy. The complementary protection visa program, a program which existed to assist people who were following the right process in trying to get into Australia, was pretty much done away with under the previous government because the flow of arrivals at the borders was so great that there were no spaces left for those people who were waiting to get a complementary protection visa in Australia. The number of those people who were allowed in under the previous government was down to about 500 per year. Under this government, because of the effective border security, the number of places under the complementary protection visa program has been increased to about 5,000 per year. That is good news because that is helping people who are in some of the most difficult situations on this planet and in search of a better life in Australia.

You would think that there could be no dispute about the success of this government's policies in this space. We have gone from a massive flow of unlawful arrivals to one boat in the last 12 months and, of course, none at all for many months—just an extraordinary turnaround. We did see in the last week or so that the Deputy Leader of the Opposition was very critical of the policy of turning boats around, but it is very clear that that policy has succeeded amongst a broad range of measures taken by both of our ministers for immigration and border protection. The policy of turning around boats clearly has played an important role in helping to secure the borders. One cannot ignore that. To suggest that that policy has failed or to suggest that that policy would not be continued with under the opposition is something that should give all Australians pause because, in telegraphing a problem with the policy of turning boats around, the Labor Party is once again telegraphing a weakness on border security, and that is something that should never be tolerated.

It was not only in the area of immigration that we saw such terrible problems under the previous government; it was also in customs. Customs is very important because, of course, we want to control the flow of goods into our nation. We want to know what is arriving, when it is arriving and under what circumstances it is arriving. We do not want illegal contraband; we do not want guns being run into our country; we do not want drugs entering our country. As a consequence, we need to have a strong hand on the wheel in the area of customs, but we saw many failures in the area of customs under the previous government. The previous government had an immense fondness for spending money and just sort of threw it around all over the place, but one of the very few places where they actually showed financial restraint, ironically, was in the customs security of Australia, where they reduced the amount of money that we were spending on customs, reduced the number of people working on customs and materially reduced the amount of goods that were being screened. This is a pretty scary statistic. Under the Labor government, we reached a situation where 0.5 per cent of sea cargo was physically examined. Basically, there was a one in 200 chance of sea cargo being examined. That sends a pretty clear message to people who would do us ill: go for it, because there is a very low chance of that sea cargo being examined. Two per cent of air cargo was examined, so there was a one in 50 chance of it being examined. And the list goes on. So they were spending money all over the place except in customs, where they cut funds, and a consequence of that was a reduction in the number of goods being screened.

In my own area of southern Sydney, just across the Georges River in the electorate of Cook, back in 2012 we saw a very concerning incident at the Sylvania Waters post office, with the discovery of various contraband. As the New South Wales police commissioner, Andrew Scipione, said at the time, this is not just a border security issue; it is a national security issue. We have to be super vigilant in protecting our borders from unlawful maritime arrivals but also from the unlawful arrival of goods. We need to ensure that the boats stop, which we have, and we also need to ensure that, to the greatest extent possible, the flow of illegal goods stops as well.

That is where this bill comes in. This is a very, very comprehensive and thoughtful response to the area of border coordination. Historically, you have a customs service and an immigration department. There are areas where they overlap and areas where they integrate, but to a large extent they are somewhat separate. As any good executive would tell you, if you have two groups of people doing somewhat different and somewhat interrelated things, there is the potential for things to slip through the cracks and the potential for things to go wrong. So this government is creating a unified and clear-cut organisational structure under the leadership of an Australian Border Force Commissioner. That Border Force Commissioner will have broad responsibility for everything that occurs at our borders, be it related to immigration or to customs issues. It will also have the responsibility as Comptroller-General of Customs.

What this means is instead of having a somewhat disconnected structure, we have a clear operational structure with the new commissioner sitting at the top for all matters related to Australia's borders, because it does not make sense to have one organisation managing issues relating to the flow of goods and another relating to the flow of people. That means a range of roles within these various departmental areas will be moved around and will be structured under the organisational leadership of the Border Force Commissioner. In taking that decision on operational grounds to more logically structure these areas, we also generate savings to the budget because it removes current examples of duplication and inefficiency and so on in the system and has a much more orderly structure that will be in place. Those savings are quite significant—$180 million over the forward estimates and it is estimated as much as $100 million per year after that.

In bringing this force together, another thing that the government is doing is sending a very clear message to people who work within the border force, to the broader law enforcement community and to the broader Australian community that the people in our border force are people who need to be of the highest integrity. They are professional officers who are highly trained and are required to uphold the very high standards. That is entirely appropriate. We would expect nothing less.

There are some important changes in the legislation requiring certain officers to take an oath of office, really underscoring the seriousness of this area. That happens in other areas of law enforcement. It is entirely appropriate that it happens here as well. It also gives the new Australian Border Force Commissioner the power to require mandatory reporting of any serious incidents of misconduct or criminal activity. Again, as part of this focus on operational professionalism within the border force, it is absolutely critical that we have people of the very highest integrity, of the highest standards, and it is entirely appropriate that, should people breach those standards, there are serious consequences. Particularly in the area of customs, it goes without saying that there are people out there both in this nation and overseas who would seek to do ill to our community—to bring in drugs, to bring in guns and other illegal material. So we have to have at our borders the absolute best and brightest to ensure that that is stopped as much as is humanly possible, and integrity goes with that absolutely.

We have learned from all of the failures of the previous Labor government. You could do an entire university course just based on the failures of the previous Labor government in this area.

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