David Johnston (WA, Liberal Party, Minister for Justice and Customs) Share this | Hansard source

Coastguard mark 3! It is always entertaining when the opposition dabble in areas of national security. Of course, homeland security in terms of AusCheck is utterly irrelevant. I have not had the opportunity to talk about this recently, but I am interested that the idea is still being pushed here in the Senate, having received the reception it did in the House of Representatives. The assumption that we might not look at what happens abroad and see what could be learnt would obviously be a flawed assumption. The opposition go ahead notwithstanding the experience of other countries. We have always looked at what is happening over there, and there are a couple of very good examples, particularly with respect to Hurricane Katrina.

The government have come to the view, having revisited all the arrangements that we need to, that a reorganisation of the type suggested by the opposition would be very problematic. It would have the effect of lessening our efforts in relation to security while we had people focusing on looking at what their tasks might be, re-establishing appropriate linkages and relearning their relationships. As I have said, you only have to look at what happened in the United States with respect to the tragedy of Hurricane Katrina, where the Department of Homeland Security was, not to put it too finely, a failure. That contributed greatly to the ongoing problems that exist even today in New Orleans with respect to the rebuilding of that city.

As always, the opposition has come up with a very grandiose, bureaucracy-laden proposal which in reality has nothing to commend it. I come back to the point that the opposition actually supports this bill but seeks to obtain some political leverage off this point-scoring second reading amendment. I commend the bill to the Senate.

Question negatived.

Original question agreed to.

Bill read a second time.

Ordered that consideration of this bill in Committee of the Whole be made an order of the day for a later hour.