Warren Snowdon (Lingiari, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Northern Australia and Indigenous Affairs) Share this | Hansard source

I am about to draw your attention to the role the United Nations might play. It has a significant interest in international law, as you would well know, being a lawyer of some repute yourself. I think you are a Senior Counsel—we will not refer to you as a Queen’s Counsel—with an interest in international law. You have written a very interesting book about the United Nations, so we understand your interest. I am sure you would appreciate the international legal implications of maritime security. Therefore, no doubt informed by the very intelligent debate which is taking place in this chamber, you will go across to the United Nations knowing that if there is a discussion about this issue you will be able to participate. So I am pleased you are here. Others are pleased you are here, too.

The Maritime Transport and Offshore Facilities Security Amendment (Maritime Security Guards and Other Measures) Bill 2005, for those who have an interest in this subject, amends the Maritime Transport and Offshore Facilities Security Act 2003. It does a number of things which are of interest to us and which we would support. It empowers a maritime security guard to request that a person found within a maritime security zone provide identification and a reason for being in the zone—a matter of common interest, I would think, throughout our region. It empowers guards to request that an unauthorised person move out of that zone. It empowers a maritime security guard to remove, or have removed, unauthorised vehicles and vessels found in maritime security zones. A little later I will come to an issue which I am sure will be close to the heart of many of the people you will meet in the United Nations—piracy.

This legislation has two schedules. The first schedule contains provisions which determine the nature of the work of maritime security guards and how they might undertake that work. The second provides a number of miscellaneous amendments to the act, especially definitions. For instance, a cleared area means an area that may be entered by persons, goods, vehicles and vessels that have received clearance. Items 4 and 5 substitute the reference to 500 or more gross tonnes.

It is interesting to think about schedule 1, because we need to comprehend what in fact maritime security guards are going to be empowered to do under this legislation. As I have said, they will be able to request that a person found within a maritime security zone provide identification. They may request that a person move. They may remove vehicles and vessels.

If you think of the waters of Northern Australia, as I do constantly, and you note the now accepted abysmal failure of the government’s border protection policies and the very porous nature of Australia’s borders, leaving aside the issue of people wanting to come to this place as refugees, the number of sightings and landings of foreign fishing vessels in Australian waters raises very significant questions about the way in which we look after our national interest. In that context, it is relevant to consider the amendment which is being proposed by the member for Brisbane, Mr Bevis. Amongst other things, it:

... condemns the Government for its failure to provide necessary maritime security and protect Australians, including—

and this is important—

(1)

its careless and widespread use of single and continuing voyage permits for foreign vessels with foreign crew who do not undergo appropriate security checks ...

You would think, would you not, given the implicit threat that we understand to exist around the world at the moment, that you would want to find out who the hell was coming to Australia and whether they were coming as passengers on aircraft, passengers on vessels or crew. The provision of single and continuing voyage permits for foreign vessels without enforcing security checks upon those crew members ultimately raises significant questions for all of us. Whilst we do not know that anything has happened to date, we have seen vessels come to Australia which have later been shown to be involved in activities which we do not like and did not sanction, whether it is smuggling or otherwise. Therefore, I would have thought it very important to understand who is sailing these vessels.

Then of course there is the concern expressed by the member for Brisbane about permitting foreign flag of convenience ships to carry dangerous goods on coastal shipping routes, failing to ensure ships provide details of crew and cargo 48 hours before arrival, failing to X-ray or inspect 90 per cent of containers that hit Australia’s shores, failing to establish and properly fund an Australian coastguard and failing to establish a department of homeland security to better coordinate security in Australia. I would have thought that, if we had learned any lesson over the last few years, we would have learned that not all wisdom resides on either side of this chamber. In fact, the collective wisdom is what we should be bringing to this issue. I cannot for the life of me understand why the government does not accept the propositions that have been put here by the Labor Party about the need for an effective coastguard or the need to establish a department of homeland security.

I have to tell you, Mr Deputy Speaker, that initially I was not that supportive of this idea of a coastguard. In fact, I was very equivocal. But over the last couple of years I have come to see how important this is. That is not to decry or malign the very important and magnificent work that is done by the Australian Navy in the waters around Australia, particularly those waters to our north, or the Australian Coastwatch or Customs. They do great work, but clearly not enough is being done and insufficient resources are being made available to focus on the key issues—that is, how to ensure that our border is not porous, how to make sure that we get sufficient intelligence to know who it is that is sailing in our waters and how to prevent the possible incursions of individuals or groups of people who may be contemplating actions which are against our national interests and against the interests of the community in the region.

When this issue was first introduced, during the debate in the Main Committee on the Maritime Transport and Offshore Facilities Security Amendment (Security Plans and Other Measures) Bill 2006, Minister Truss demonstrated the government’s singular lack of performance and knowledge of what is happening in our waters. The minister admitted that he did not how many ships entering Australian ports failed to comply with the requirement that they provide details for crew and cargo 48 hours before arrival and admitted that there have been no prosecutions for failure to comply with this requirement. I think the casual observer would have to ask: ‘Minister, why not? Presumably your department has sufficient records or has the ability to access the records to provide you with that very important piece of information, given the security demands that are being placed on the Australian community internally, the vetting of Australian people when they travel on aircraft and when they walk into this building.’ Any person walking into this building is searched—the merits of that are perhaps debatable at times, but nevertheless they are searched. They are searched in the sense of having to go through a security vetting.

Now we have an admission that they cannot give us the fundamental information about the security of Australian ports in terms of people arriving in this country. They cannot do it. I am not sure which comic-book character the minister is trying to emulate, but I would have thought having your head in the sand is not an appropriate way to do business when you are looking after the security of our country. We know that the member for Brisbane has indicated the areas of concern in his amendment.

This bill has been the subject of a review by the Senate Rural and Regional Affairs and Transport Legislation Committee and the committee supported the bill and recommended that the bill proceed. Comments by the Labor senators of that committee—Senators McEwen, Sterle and O’Brien—raise a few concerns with the processing of this piece of legislation. Firstly, they note that the operation of this legislation will be through its regulations, and the draft regulations were not made available to the committee. So how the hell, given that the effects of this legislation will be through the regulations, can we properly contemplate the impact of the bill until we see the regulations? What we are asked to do here is effectively give the government a blank cheque to devise a set of regulations that will carry out the purpose of this legislation without having the scrutiny of the parliament before they are implemented.

I would say that, when you are in New York and you are talking to people about a subject—say, democracy and decision making, because we know that there are particular countries in this world that have the view that democracy looks a particular way—you might well ask if the decision making processes in this place affect all that we would want them to affect and give people a democratic right and a role in decision making in a way that I think the founders of this nation would have considered when they were drafting our Constitution and setting up the rules of this parliament. I would think it entirely reasonable under those circumstances for us to understand what the impact of this bill will be if the regulations are written prior to our passing this legislation through the parliament. It is a basic tenet of decision making.

The committee flagged its concern that ‘maritime security guards should have training commensurate with their increased powers’. The Maritime Union of Australia said:

Clearly maritime security guards are operating at a different level of responsibility to say a guard on a gate a factory or outside a shop.

I would have thought that was clear to all of us. It continued:

On this basis there must be a requirement for a higher standard of training.

The Association of Australian Ports and Marine Authorities voiced its concern about the level of training. The MUA argues, I think legitimately, that a higher training level should be consistent across jurisdictions to allow for portability of qualifications. As noted in the Senate committee’s report on the bill, the MUA in their submission argue:

... a maritime security guard should be a dedicated position, to avoid the situation where guards sourced from labour hire companies are ‘responsible for a council swimming pool one day and guarding our critical maritime infrastructure on another.’

Again, in your discussions in New York with our friends from other countries, they will ask: ‘What do you do in your country to safeguard your interests? Do you get the bloke who guards the council swimming pool to look after your ports the next day?’ You would have to answer that question, wouldn’t you? You would have to say, ‘Well, as a matter of fact, it seems you can.’

I want to hit on piracy, because that could well be an issue of some discussion for you and your colleagues in New York, Mr Deputy Speaker Kerr. It demonstrates the need of this country to have a properly constituted maritime security framework, one we currently do not have and one which has been identified by the Labor Party as an absolute priority. Again, I would have thought the collective wisdom of this place would tell us that it is in our national interest to do so. Let me share with you some information. The International Chamber of Commerce’s Commercial Crime Services provides a weekly piracy report based on broadcasts from the International Maritime Bureau’s Piracy Reporting Centre. It is reported that, on 31 August this year—that is, just last week—in Indonesian waters, waters not too far from our northern shores:

... four robbers boarded a bulk carrier and entered the engine room via funnel by cutting the grills on the funnel floor. They stole engine spares and escaped in a boat waiting with an accomplice.

That happened not too far from our northern waters. The annual report from the International Maritime Bureau reveals that piracy in this region is not uncommon. According to that report, Indonesian waters are the most piracy prone in the world, with 79 attacks occurring in 2005. That represents nearly 30 per cent of all reported attacks world wide. In the Strait of Malacca, between Indonesia and Malaysia, there were a further 12 attacks in 2005. We should be concerned, lest those sorts of things start to happen in our waters. I have spoken on a number of occasions in this place about illegal fishing vessels. It is not too big a jump to ask this. If illegal fishing vessels can enter Australian waters sight unseen—or even sighted but not intercepted—what other vessels might be engaged in coming to Australian waters not seen?

Let me give you an estimation of the extent of the problem we currently have. Rear Admiral Crane, in his advice to a Senate estimates committee, said that in 2005 there were 13,018 sightings of illegal vessels. He said that that was a 35 per cent increase on the previous year. In the same year only 280 illegal vessels were apprehended and only 327 boats had their fishing gear and their catch confiscated. That represents 4.6 per cent of the total vessel sightings that year. There, in itself, is sufficient excuse for the collective wisdom of this place to decide that in fact the Labor Party has struck on a bloody good idea. What we as a community, working together, ought to do is implement that idea. But that is not what we get. We get all sorts of obfuscations and excuses for why it cannot happen. The fact is that we need to provide the assistance that we need in this country and provide Australia with appropriate maritime security. (Time expired)

See this speech in context