Craig Kelly (Hughes, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I am pleased to rise to speak on the Crimes Legislation Amendment (Powers, Offences and Other Measures) Bill 2015. I would like to start with some figures released by the Australian Bureau of Statistics about a fortnight ago. They showed how our state governments, our federal government, our Federal Police force and our state police forces are actually being quite successful at reducing crime. Some of the numbers published are very noteworthy.

We have actually seen major reductions in almost every level of crime over the last 12 months. I will just run through a few. Armed robberies were down 14 per cent—from 5,631 in 2013, down 776, to 4,855 in 2014. Unarmed robberies had an even more impressive decline of 17 per cent in just 12 months—down from 6,076 to 5,033. There was a decline of over 1,043 unarmed robberies across the nation in 2014. Again these are impressive numbers. Unlawful entry with intent was down from 194,000 to 181,000, a decline of 12,000 or 6.5 per cent. Motor vehicle theft is still way too high in this country. The last number for 2014 shows that there were 50,000 motor vehicle thefts and that was down 4.4 per cent on the previous year. Kidnapping and abductions are also down eight per cent.

So over the last 12 months the Australian Bureau of Statistics record that we have been successful in making significant reductions in most of the major categories of crime. Even though there are reductions these numbers are still way too high and there is a lot more work to do. That is why the measures in this bill are so important. They are practical measures. At their heart they send the message to those who wish to break the law, those who wish to engage in criminal activities, that this government takes law enforcement seriously, in complete contrast to the previous Labor government.

In 2009, when the previous Labor government had money to spend on everything else and were prepared to run deficits in the tens of billions of dollars, they decided it was wise to cut Customs screenings by $58 million. There was a $58 million cut in Customs screenings. What happened? This led to a 75 per cent reduction in air cargo inspections and a 25 per cent reduction in sea cargo inspections. Then in 2011, when Labor still had all this money to spend and throw around like confetti, their cuts resulted in mail inspections being reduced by 30 per cent and we saw 20 million packages come into the country uninspected.

What happens when you do this in our society? It sends the message to those who wish to get involved in unlawful activity and import illegal firearms and import illegal drugs that the holes in the net are bigger and that they have a greater chance of getting their illegal contraband through the security net that we put up at our borders. That is exactly what happened. Across the border from my electorate in Sylvania 150 Glock pistols were imported into this country through a post office. Thankfully the police have done a good job and have found many of those guns and bought many of those people before the courts, but there are still at least 80 of those Glock pistols out there, mainly in Western Sydney, in many parts of my electorate.

There is another reason why we need to crack down on those who seek to import illegal firearms. In June 2009 a Canberra truck driver was driving along Milperra Road in my electorate. He had done his day's work. He had left Canberra early in the morning and was driving back to Canberra in the evening. He was driving along Milperra Road, like tens of thousands of other motorists do after their typical day at work, and across the road a criminal gang decided that they would have a gunfight in the carpark of the KFC. One of those bullets, just a random shot from that criminal gang, went across the road, went through the guy's cabin and struck him in the head and he died. An innocent civilian, an innocent worker—someone just going about their everyday business—lost their life because of gun crime.

We in this parliament owe it to the citizens of this nation to crack down on this activity. We are going to put strict laws in place to crack down and say this is unacceptable in our society. That is exactly what this bill does. We say it is unacceptable to seek to import firearms and to traffic firearms in this country. This bill introduces a minimum mandatory five-year sentence for firearm trafficking offences. We owe that to the people of our society. Those who go about their lawful business, who go about their everyday work, should be free from these criminal gangs shooting guns and having access to guns.

The other provisions in this bill include taking action on the growing problem of methamphetamine, or crystal meth as ice. Over the past week during our parliamentary break, one of the things I did as chair of the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Law Enforcement is hold hearings in Melbourne, Sydney, down in South Australia and Brisbane. We heard heartbreaking stories of the destruction that this drug is doing to people, the destruction that it is doing to families and the deaths it is causing. There is no magic bullet for the solution to the problem of methamphetamine use in this country, but this bill takes one more step to close the gap. The measures in this bill will make recklessness the fault element for attempted offences and will remove the intent to manufacture element from offences relating to the importation of border controlled precursors. This will send a strong message that we are taking action against those who seek to import the ingredients to manufacture methamphetamine in this country.

The other issue in this bill is tackling the problem of forced marriages. I have raised this in our parliament before. I have cited cases of girls as young as 12 being forced into marriage, becoming pregnant and having miscarriages. We need to send a very clear and strong message that forced marriage in this country is completely unacceptable. That is what we need to do because, unfortunately, there are some people in this country who think it is just another multicultural practice. We need to send the message that the rights of young girls in this country are predominant, and that is what this bill does. We are increasing the maximum penalties, which are currently four years' imprisonment for a base offence and seven years' imprisonment for an aggravated offence, to seven years and nine years respectively. We are changing the definition of what a forced marriage is to make that definition stronger so that there can be no escape for those who engage in this most abhorrent practice.

In this bill, there are some other steps and some other schedules that are minor, but those three things—the issue of serious drug importation, the issue of firearms importation and the issue of forced marriage—are scourges in our society and we are taking strong steps and we are sending a clear message to those who are engaged in those practices: the government is coming after them. We are strengthening the penalties and we are giving our law enforcement authorities the ability to chase these people, prosecute them, bring them before our courts and put them behind bars where they belong. As I said earlier, our law enforcement officials, our Federal Police and our state police, have done made an absolutely fantastic effort over the last 12 months. The reduction in crime that we have seen over the last 12 months is something that we should celebrate in this nation as a great success, but there is still a lot more work to be done. The bill takes those steps and I commend it to the House.

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