Cameron Thompson (Blair, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

It is a pleasure to speak today on the Aviation Transport Security Amendment Bill 2006 and to follow the comments made by the member for Brisbane. This government has been vigilant in ensuring that our legislation and our forces are up to date and are able to deal quickly and effectively with terror threats, which are becoming an increasingly permanent part of the international landscape. As has been demonstrated in recent terror attacks, there are a range of different ways that terrorists can choose to strike and it is impossible to fully tabulate those and prepare for every contingency in advance. Consequently, the government has to be proactive in ensuring that our security measures are tight and effective across the board and that we do not fall into the trap, as outlined by the member for Brisbane, of merely confining our preparedness and our antiterror activities to the narrow band of contingencies that were exhibited, say, in the 9-11 attacks.

Our security forces and the government as a whole are much more creative than that and do have the proactive capacity to be able to plan more generally, to anticipate some of those potential contingencies and to make preparations for that. We have seen plenty of examples of that right across Australia at every level of government. We have seen coordinated planning between the Commonwealth and the state and local authorities—for example, looking at critical infrastructure and looking at a whole range of different ways in which a terror threat may manifest itself. So I think it is a bit glib of the member for Brisbane to have criticised the government when such a broad-ranging effort has been undertaken.

This bill deals with aviation security, and it follows on from the 2005 Wheeler review. It has been designed in consultation with the industry. There are two major concerns that are addressed within the bill: firstly, improving the regulatory arrangements that would apply when a security controlled airport conducts activities that are not part of its usual business and, secondly, better arrangements for the management of cargo management and handling.

I was listening to the comments of the member for Brisbane, and in his address he criticised the government for being too slow to act on the terror threat. I rebut that completely. I think the government has been comprehensive in its response. It has not been a knee-jerk response. It has been a considered, weighted, ongoing response. As potential contingencies have been developed and considered properly within all those different levels of government, they have found their appropriate home and are dealt with in that time. It is not a knee-jerk response. It is a considered, effective response. If the member for Brisbane wants to criticise the government for being tardy in response to the 9-11 incident, I can equally go back to incidents in the past and I could criticise former Labor governments for failing to respond.

I remember when I was working at the Rockhampton Morning Bulletin in Queensland, which was about the period that Labor came to power federally. There was a huge gold heist in which people crawled into the belly of planes. They basically posted themselves in boxes all over Australia and were sent in the belly of an aircraft. It was so simplistic it is unbelievable that they were able to do it, but they did it. Off they went in these posted packages on board the plane. Of course, as soon as the plane took off and got into the air, they crawled out of their little boxes and proceeded to open various packages within the aircraft that contained gold.

I notice that, in the statistics that I have drummed up in looking at this incident and in looking at this bill, there is quite a proportion of aircraft cargo which does involve the transportation of gold. The three top exports by value of air cargo are non-monetary gold, medicinal and pharmaceutical products and miscellaneous manufactured articles. So in about 1983 we had an incident where human beings who had been able to post themselves in boxes on board planes leapt out of the boxes and were able to steal gold shipments from on board that aircraft. This was foiled only when some eagle-eyed baggage handler at Rockhampton airport, as I recall, happened to notice an arm sticking out of a package and, of course, it was attached to one of these bandits.

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