Wilson Tuckey (O'Connor, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I withdraw. But I am only commenting on what the member for Brisbane presented to this parliament. He wants it to be a compulsory requirement that all the things that the inspector is supposed to consult upon and inquire into be made publicly available. In those circumstances, how many people are going to give him the evidence he needs? He is there to advise the minister to conduct inquiries and to do the things that are necessary to upgrade the government’s performance in this area. We have all sorts of cops out there who will deal with the day-to-day issues. Of course, the reason that the taxpayer does not have to keep this man around from nine to five is that he will be called upon to advise the government when the need arises—and let us hope that the need never arises. Let us hope that the authorities at the various points of transport perform adequately in ensuring that the laws that have already passed this parliament are complied with, and let us hope that we are fortunate enough not to suffer a terrorism event—and, unfortunately, that cannot be guaranteed.

On other aspects of the bill, I have to express concerns about the government’s policies. I represent a large rural electorate where people deliver fertiliser to their properties in road trains, yet with two or three shovels of fertiliser and the appropriate alteration—pour some diesel on it and find a detonator or, preferably, a short stick of gelignite or dynamite—you have a bomb. Just how far can government ask people to go in the normal activities of their business to secure that product? It is a really serious problem and I wish I had an answer. But my plea is that there will be a bit of common sense relative to the risk assessment of those goods. I have read papers which have suggested that, if you are driving your own truck with 20 or 30 tonnes of this stuff and you stop for a cup of tea at one of the roadhouses, you are supposed to have it inside the truck. I hope they have designed the roadhouse that way.

The reality is that we have got to be a little careful, and I think what the member for Brisbane is asking for today is a direct contradiction of those remarks. He is taking the opportunity, from the privilege of opposition, to tell the government to go beyond a reasonable level of requirement, because he is on about every regional airport—and we know there are hundreds, if not thousands, of them. Instead of taking the advice of the British security agent who said, ‘You must risk-assess these various regional airports,’ he is saying, ‘No, we want total control everywhere.’ But I am not aware that he ever asked Premier Carr, I think it might have been, to allow surveillance in the luggage areas of Qantas. It was not that it was not allowed; the fact of life was that it was prohibited. I think that has now been resolved.

This is good legislation. It provides principally for the independence of this inspector. I am not saying that he is not independent because he operates at the direction of the minister of the day. The minister will be confronted from time to time by correspondence or by the media for whatever purposes and will have drawn to his attention matters that are of interest, and I expect that the minister will give a directive that the inspector look at it. He does his inquiries on, quite properly, a no-blame basis—and I thank the member for Brisbane for his support of that provision. There is protection of information collected as part of an inquiry. Notwithstanding the fact that I thought the member for Brisbane endorsed that proposal, I thought he got a bit wobbly about it, because in another breath he wanted to have the Leader of the Opposition and someone else know about it—and a secret once repeated is no longer a secret. There is recognition that the work of investigating agencies should not be interfered with by inquiries undertaken by the inspector.

In those four provisions we get a clear description of what this particular job is all about. We have the Australian Transport Safety Bureau, we have state departments for road transport and we have all sorts of other agencies with specified tasks relating to the conduct of that area of transport. This is an overriding position that looks specifically at security. The minister might give the inspector a directive one day, saying, ‘Look, what about so-and-so? Do you think legislation and other activities are adequate in that regard?’ and the person currently occupying the post has a wealth of experience—and, I might add, courage—to look at those issues. We asked him to do another inquiry and I am not sure we came out of that smelling of roses. He was very hard on us, and obviously he has demonstrated his integrity in that regard. I would expect that, be it he or someone else in the future, they will value the integrity of the post and deliver accordingly. But this is not a position for day-to-day surveillance of other aspects of transport, and I think the legislation has properly covered these matters. That it has taken another year is one of the criticisms that we have received, and the opposition says it:

... condemns the Howard government’s dismissive use of the Inspector of Transport Security who has been engaged on an average of just one day a week in spite of repeated failures in security in the Australian transport sector at the same time as terrorists have targeted aviation and rail transport over years, and

What is that supposed to mean when in fact the best that the opposition have been able to bring to this House is a photograph of some door that, from their point of view, was supposed to be locked?

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