Luke Simpkins (Cowan, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I appreciate the opportunity tonight to make some comments on the Aviation Transport Security Amendment (Screening) Bill 2012. When visit schools and talk to children in the Cowan electorate about government and parliament—whether they are in primary school or high school—I am very clear on this matter. I say to the children: the one thing that is always clear is that both sides of politics believe in making this country the best place it can be, but the difference between them—the Labor side and the Liberal-National side—is how we get to that place. I can say that about the major parties; I am not so sure about the fringe party.

This is one of those bills where we are as one. This is one of those bills where we believe that more needs to be done. We welcome the fact that this bill is coming through. I certainly endorse the technology and I endorse the bill.

In recent days we have heard that the only person found guilty of and sentenced for the Lockerbie terrorist attack, the attack that brought down the Pan Am 747 over Scotland so many years ago, has recently passed away—and good riddance, might I say. The involvement of the then Libyan regime in that matter is, I think, strongly suspected and believed by most people. The reality is—whether it is in the past, like major terrorist attacks like that one; in the more recent past; or when we look forward to the future—that there are people out there who wish to create havoc. They wish to murder and kill innocent people. As a result of that, governments around the world need to work together and come up with these sorts of laws, and make use of technology which is going to increase the likelihood of detection and safeguard the people.

There is nothing more tragic in the world than to see those—particularly the innocents, the women and the children—who have nothing to do with politics and who have nothing to do with the issues that so many terrorist groups espouse around the world get caught up, get killed, maimed or terrified in the crossfire of the evil and brutal ways of such groups.

When I was in the Australian Federal Police many years ago, back in 1986 and 1987, the security arrangements at the airports at that time were good, but they were only up to the technology at the time. We have seen that technology move on. That technology, as I said before, is required to deal with not only the conventional and the usual threats that might be out there, such as the weapons of various kinds and the explosive devices, but also the latest technology, such as the underwear bomb and the new generation of underwear bomb that was recently discovered by the US secret services. What we need is a further increase in security to match up to the threats that currently face the world.

Australians are used to running their carry-on baggage through the X-ray machines and stepping through the X-ray machines and, more recently, the random checks of explosive trace devices that we have at the airports. All of us who travel regularly, from Perth and from other places, are subject to that—I think I have had about a hundred explosive trace detection tests—and Australians accept that. I do not wish to run down the privacy concerns but, ultimately, everybody who hops on a plane wants to be safe and they are prepared to forgo a little bit of convenience to make sure that their journey is not going to be stopped by a terrorist attack or by people up to no good with weapons or explosives. So there is no doubt that there are some privacy concerns. You only need look on the internet at Google images of the body-scanning machines we are talking about today to see sensationalist pictures of somebody appearing in a—let us say—anatomically correct way. Of course people are concerned about that, so it is heartening and completely appropriate that within this bill the regulations are completely defined. It is absolutely the case that the use of only gender-neutral, generic images of the body are absolutely locked into the bill and that the legislation looks at and addresses the fact that improvements in technology will see further generations of these sorts of machines coming through.

One of the images I have seen from these body scanning machines was of the minister—in all his clothed glory, luckily. He went through one of those machines. A number of us also got to test out the machines ourselves, and that was a very good way of making sure that we as parliamentarians were better informed. I was given the opportunity to put myself through one of these machines and, because I had already emptied my pockets, nothing came up. I was heartened by that, but then I remembered that in my office I had a small plastic covered device which I had been given several years before during a science-meets-parliament event and that one part of the device could be pulled off to reveal a very sharp knife. I was thinking, 'I will go and find that in my office, and I will come back and slide it down one of my socks and work out whether this machine is as good as it could be.' There was no doubt—as soon as image came up, there in yellow the machine described exactly where the knife was hidden on my person. So I became a very clear and absolute fan of this technology.

I had seen one of these machines in Los Angeles a couple of years before, soon after the last election. A member of my family was asked to go through one of the machines, and I was of the view that perhaps a little bit more could be seen than just the non-anatomically correct image. But I am greatly heartened by the fact that such privacy concerns are covered within the legislation. The machines cannot record images, and a fuller stick figure is all that is going to come up on the images. Through personal experience, I have no doubt that these machines are very good and that they do detect what needs to be detected.

There have also been concerns—although none have been raised with me personally within the electorate of Cowan—that these machines will expose a person to increased electromagnetic radiation. But this is also dealt with in the legislation. The scanner will emit 10,000 times less radiofrequency energy than an average mobile phone telephone call. I think that fact really addresses the key issues that have been covered by a lot of the commentary on these body scanning machines.

I turn now to address concerns about cultural and religious profiling. I have watched very carefully the existing explosive trace detection regime that takes place at our airports, because with my federal police background I am quite interested in aviation security, and, as a frequent flyer, I am very interested in aviation security. I have observed the people who are picked up during the X-ray walk-throughs to be called forward for the explosive trace detection procedure, and it does seem to be very random. It does not appear that people are targeted for any sort of racial, cultural or religious reason.

In conclusion I say that I think that what we have here in Australia is pretty good so far and that this bill and this technology will improve what we already have. As I said before, there have been some great tragedies in history and, as we know, there has never been a single survivor of an explosion on board an aircraft. We want to make sure that the best security regimes possible are in place and that the Australian public and visitors to our country are as safe as possible. All the concerns about implanted medical devices, about medical objects, about privacy and about the targeting of particular groups are addressed in the bill. We have a good background in this country in making sure that security measures are applied fairly and appropriately, and I have great confidence that aviation security will only be improved by this bill and by this technology. I welcome the passage of the bill, and I look forward to seeing body-scanning devices used widely throughout the nation's airports.

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