Christopher Pyne (Sturt, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister Assisting the Shadow Minister for Immigration and Citizenship) Share this | Hansard source

I have a series of questions, most of which go to the Minister for Home Affairs. I am grateful that he has decided to come to the Main Committee to go through this important part of the budget process. The first question goes to the announcement in the budget to do with the 500 new sworn Federal Police officers. The analysis that I have done of the budget and this particular announcement indicates that 19 per cent of the funding for this initiative will be spent before the next election, due in 2010—only $36.7 million, according to Budget Paper No. 2, part 2, page 89. This suggests to me that in the coming year there will be 31 new sworn officers, in 2009-10 there will be 30 and in 2010-11 there will be 39. This means that only 99 of the new officers will be in place before the next federal election. Another 213 would follow in 2011-12 and 188 in 2012-13. I ask the Minister for Home Affairs to confirm, at the appropriate time, whether these figures are in fact correct and whether it is true that only 99 out of 500 new officers will be delivered before the next federal election and that, in fact, the vast majority will be delivered after the federal election, suggesting that this is a heavily back-ended program. If that is the case, could he explain why it is the case. If the answer to that is that they take some time to train, I think that he needs a better and more credible answer than that—with due respect—because obviously many of the sworn officers could be in place within the next three years.

I would also ask the Minister for Home Affairs what the government intends to do and what action it is taking in terms of the police officer shortfall at airports around Australia. There have been numerous reports in the press and elsewhere about the 70-officer shortfall in police officers at airports around Australia. This was a promise that the previous government was building and putting in place over time. The Wheeler review of airport security, released three years ago, indicated a certain number of officers that needed to be put in place. Reports this year suggest that they are 70 short, and the government does not suggest in its budget that this will be solved in the short term. I ask the minister to indicate how the government intends to address this very substantial shortfall.

On the protection of children online from child predators, I note that the government has abolished the previous government’s program in relation to the role of the AFP in the online monitoring of overseas child pornography sites, which are, unfortunately, visited by paedophiles and those people who would seek to be paedophiles, with the government cutting the Protecting Australian Families Online program by $2.8 million and rebadging it as the cybersafety plan. The opposition does not have any particular objection to the cybersafety plan, quite evidently, but in cutting our program and introducing a new program there has been a $2.8 million cut. I think you will find that in Budget Paper No. 2, part 2, page 415. This is of great concern to us, and we want to know exactly why the government, at a time when there is even more heightened concern about child pornography, paedophilia and the activities of the sort of scum who prey on children, would cut the program. To many people $2.8 million would seem not to be a substantial amount of money, but it has meant that the AFP will not be able to continue their very important program of monitoring the online sites that push this kind of disgraceful material. I will leave it there because I will not be able to ask the other questions I have in 26 seconds—I hope I get another opportunity to ask them.

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