Barry O'Sullivan (Queensland, National Party) Share this | Hansard source

I might open by saying that I am on the cusp of suffering from crime fatigue. It troubles me that, as I make a contribution to this Crimes Legislation Amendment (Powers, Offences and Other Measures) Bill 2015, it seems to be heavy going for our government to try to put in place adequate laws and adequate tools, resources and powers for those of our nation who are charged with the responsibility of maintaining law and order. The effort to get this Senate to support us on some of these measures seems to be quite heavy going.

The first thing we need to acknowledge is that one of the greatest costs to our nation is the cost to administer people's lawlessness, their criminal and quasi-criminal activities. I make the point that, whilst not necessarily directly relating to crimes and misdemeanours, when people's everyday behaviour is against a rule or a regulation it can have a cost to our nation.

All of us have driven along our great highways and seen long sections of road, some of them for 20 or 30 kilometres, where there are the imprints of truck tyres that have destroyed $200 billion worth of pavement in less than an hour. These trucks that are overloaded and not rated for that purpose, drive along the highway on a hot day and that can impact on the cost of our nation by effectively rendering a road unserviceable or, at the very least, reducing the life of that road. Its serviceability can be reduced by a decade or more, meaning that some government or another has to attend to the capital works to replace the road for our use.

This cost of people's behaviour on our nation is very, very heavy. It is one that weighs heavy on the minds of Australians. It is no secret to those of us involved in politics that what is on the mind of most Australians—in no particular order for some or a particular order for others, depending on where they are in their life—are the issues of health, education and law and order.

It is well recognised, and there has been a lot of research done in this space, that law and order will always take precedence when the community feels insecure. Education is significantly important to us because as parents and as grandparents we devote a large part of our lives and the resources of our lives to ensuring that we get the very best education for our children. We also work very hard—and this government has made both education and health a serious focus of its term—to try and get the best health services in place for the citizens of Australia. Recently, through this very House, we spoke about looking over the horizon and investing in research for future health benefits of Australians.

But when you do some qualitative research and have discussions with our citizens, they will tell you that, without law and order, issues such as health, education and many other issues are not important to them. They need to feel safe. This government is very conscious of that. This government is acutely aware of the negative impacts of lawless behaviour on the citizens of the nation and of the impacts it has—and it has massive impacts—on our nation's economy and productivity.

I do not intend to revisit that space because it makes my head hurt after the contributions I have had to make over the last couple of days with the CFMEU and all those associated issues. But, nonetheless, the government is well aware of it, and this Crimes Legislation Amendment (Powers, Offences and Other Measures) Bill is a very well thought through, very considered, contribution that will assist this government in putting in place measures that give those tools, powers and resources to our law enforcement agencies and allied agencies to enable them to keep our country safe.

The challenges that present for our nation, and indeed for those people who are charged with keeping us safe, have increased dramatically. I myself have a background in law enforcement, which I have mentioned in contributions I have made to the Senate before. I remember recently making a contribution to the preface of a book that was published by retired Assistant Commissioner Laurie Pointing, whom I had the privilege of serving as a staff officer in the mid-1980s. Laurie had chronicled law enforcement over the form of his career.

In my contribution to his book I made the point—and it was an observation, not a reflection—that when Laurie and his peers were selected as police officers they were largely selected because of their physical prowess and their ability to demonstrate the application of common sense in their role as peace officers.

At the time that he started—and fortunately Laurie is still with us, writ large and living in my home state of Queensland—police were still moving around in many of the regions with the use of horses. They sometimes had to travel up to 100 kilometres, in modern lingo—back then, about 60 miles—to access a telegraph line or, on rare occasions, phone lines. Many of them were on their own and it might have taken them a week or two to do a job that would today take an hour or two. They would travel with horses and packhorses to the far-flung areas of their often lonely police beats to attend upon complaints of crime.

At that time, and I referred to this in the preface, they had no concept of the transition that would happen in law enforcement—Laurie acknowledged this himself—in the space of his career. When he retired he was in charge of some 670 personnel who shared almost 300 vehicles, and those vehicles were fitted with the very latest technologies. That is the reference I made to the tools and resources that we need to put in place for these people to do their jobs, and this legislation in part addresses some of those challenges.

Today we see that our law enforcement agents can conduct their patrols, and in the space of seconds they can successfully access data to: help them to identify an individual; tell them facts and figures about vehicles and vehicle movements; about who the owner may be and where the owner lives—at least according to the registered data; whether the owner or driver, if they have been intercepted, has a criminal history and if they are wanted for questioning for any offences or if there are outstanding warrants and the like. Those capabilities are new capabilities. In my lifetime one would often have to wait overnight for information. Those of us who were, sadly, born in the 1950s or so will remember the old teletypes—where you would send a message away and you were lucky to get a reply, sometimes, within 10 or 12 hours.

I know that this coalition government is committed to this particular purpose—it is significantly important that we not just keep up but also, to the best of our ability, get one step ahead of those who would commit criminal offences, so that we are in a position to detect them. But most importantly, the ideal ought to be—and I know this is the ideal objective of most law enforcement and security agencies—to get ahead of the game and either prevent the crime or the behaviour happening in the first instance or present such a united, efficient and competent front that it acts as a deterrent.

I will visit one or two of the statistics that make modern law enforcement and the need for these types of legislative changes essential. We have some 50 million movements across our borders annually—50 million people; imagine that. If those travellers reflect society, then a significant percentage of them have probably engaged in criminal behaviour historically. Additionally, it would not be unreasonable for us to propose that a number of the 50 million would actually be travelling to our country to give effect to their criminal behaviour. And let us not forget those who are committing a criminal offence when they leave our nation. They could be carrying prohibited goods or they could be heading off somewhere in the world to commit an offence as described under the jurisdiction of our nation, such as the alleged fighters—cowards, I say—who are leaving our nation to join conflicts to kill and pillage innocent citizens in, in this case, the Middle East.

If the 50 million does not boggle your mind, let us compare the people movements across borders now in our country with the numbers that Assistant Commissioner Pointing and his colleagues confronted just 30 or 40 years ago. We are dealing with hundreds and hundreds of millions of movements across our state borders each year. I drove back to Canberra from Sydney on Sunday, and there was a constant stream of traffic in two lanes in front of me for as far as they eye could see—the whole way from Sydney to Canberra. I have no doubt that, had I had the capacity to look all the way back to Sydney when I reached the outskirts of this city, that line would be unbroken all the way back to the New South Wales capital. So think about that. Not only do we have 50 million people coming across our borders and leaving our borders, but we have hundreds and hundreds of millions of people—

Senator Bilyk interjecting—

I heard that interjection—including, sadly, members of the CFMEU, who deserve some personal attention. I would advocate that this legislation be slightly further amended to put in a dedicated division of all law enforcement agencies just to wake up each day to deal with the CFMEU and those who support them in their behaviour. But I digress.

As well as the relatively porous borders internationally and the very porous borders of our states, we have the movements within a state. Again we are dealing with hundreds of millions of movements every day. Offenders have the ability to go and commit a crime at a new place; they can leave home in the morning, drive 600 kilometres, commit an offence and be back home to have tea with the wife and kids, in effect. When you think of the very nature of law enforcement, particularly post-event investigation, the challenges are enormous. They really are enormous. You might be left with the colour of a car, a make and model—and, of course, there will be hundreds of thousands of them in the state and the vehicle in question might not now be a local vehicle. We need to ensure that we have the tools and the resources to deal with that, and this bill is looking to do that. This bill is looking to make sure that these people are resourced with the equipment that they need and the financial support that they require, as well as the powers that one needs to equip oneself to do the job.

If none of the other things that I have spoken about present a challenge, we have the area of new technologies. That is the internet, in particular, but it is not limited to that alone, of course. These new technologies are being applied for the commission of offences, and equally they are being used to avoid detection—to conceal the behaviour of individuals. Mind you, when people commit an offence or they set out to commit an offence, most of them—except for the true idiots—make an effort to conceal their behaviour. Some of them are not very good at it, but indeed each of them will put a pair of socks on their hands and wear an old balaclava that they found in their grandma's drawer to try to reduce the prospects of detection—except for the members of the CFMEU, who are not ashamed to show their faces as they move around and commit offences in this country. But again, I digress. I really wish I had never heard of the CFMEU, because I am breaking out in cold sweats when I mention the name. Let us come back to the issue of the technologies. With these new technologies it is very difficult for law enforcement agencies to keep up. We have things known as the 'black net'. Apparently if you have an ability to do more than turn the device on, you can delve somewhere into the deep bowels of the ether of—I don't know—cloudland or something. That used to be a dance venue in Brisbane when I was a young fellow.

Let me close because, whilst I could truly go on for hours and hours and each time I ran out of something to say I could just start to talk about the CFMEU again, unfortunately my time comes to a close. I say to colleagues that, even though we have had a battle in this place over the last few days about resourcing and providing powers to agencies to curb the lawlessness of some of the trade union movement, this is a more widespread bill. This will give it to our law enforcement agencies. This will give new powers, tools and resources to those people charged with protecting our nation, the security of our nation and our families. I commend as loudly as I can the Crimes Legislation Amendment (Powers, Offences and Other Measures) Bill 2015 to the Senate.