George Brandis (Queensland, Liberal Party, Shadow Attorney-General) Share this | Hansard source

Since the current Prime Minister knifed, stabbed in the back, politically assassinated, butchered the former Prime Minister, Mr Rudd, who is now the Minister for Foreign Affairs, and took control of a Labor Party which, in her own words, had lost their way, we have seen 89 boats and 4,981 unauthorised arrivals on her watch. Without a strong border protection policy, these numbers will continue to increase as more people risk their lives and the lives of their families trying to enter Australia illegally.

As I have stated many times in this place, the coalition believes in an uncompromising approach to protecting Australia's borders. The integrity of our borders cannot be maintained without a properly resourced Australian Customs and Border Protection Service. Since coming to office three years ago, Labor has cut funding to Customs for cargo screening, making Australia's borders less secure and our nation more vulnerable. In the 2009-10 budget, Labor cut the budget to Customs for cargo screening by $58.1 million. This cut to screening by the Rudd-Gillard government reduced the number of potential sea cargo inspections by 25 per cent. Labor's cuts also resulted in a reduction of 75 per cent of air cargo inspections. It is no wonder illicit drugs are slipping through our borders when only 13.3 per cent of air cargo consignments are X-rayed and only 0.6 per cent of air cargo is physically examined. That means that 86.7 per cent of all air cargo consignments are not examined at all. What has become quite clear is that Labor's cuts to the Customs cargo and vessel inspection systems put Australians at risk by giving a boost to organised criminal gangs that smuggle illicit drugs and weapons into the country.

I turn to the specific measures proposed in the Customs Amendment (Serious Drugs Detection) Bill 2011. Under the Customs Act as it currently stands, an internal search, including an internal scan, can only be carried out by a medical practitioner at a place specified in the regulations. The Customs Regulations 1926 specify a hospital or a surgery or other practising rooms of a medical practitioner for this purpose. Once detained, an application can be made to a judge for an order for an internal search of the detainee by a medical practitioner. Internal searches can be carried out by various means, including by conducting a scan of a person's internal cavities. A detainee can also consent in writing to be subject to an internal search. The amendments in this bill allow, in addition to the existing internal searches by medical practitioners, internal non-medical scans to be done in limited circumstances by a Customs officer using prescribed equipment. The former search will be renamed 'medical internal search' and the latter will be called 'non-medical internal scan'.

According to Customs records, last financial year 205 people were taken to hospital for examination under suspicion of having drugs concealed internally. Upon medical examination, less than a quarter were found to be carrying drugs. In the light of these statistics, it makes sense to the coalition to support the changes proposed in this bill in order to streamline the process for Customs and enable funds to be saved where possible. We believe the changes are reasonable. The bill provides that a suspected person may refuse a non-medical internal scan and opt for the medical internal search at a hospital, as per current practice. The bill also provides for the application of technological efficiencies to border protection. Although, as I said in my remarks, the government's record on border protection is shameful and lamentably weak, nevertheless this is a pragmatic and largely uncontroversial improvement to the regime. For that reason, we will offer it our support.