Anne Ruston (SA, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I too stand to make a short contribution to the Crimes Legislation Amendment (Powers, Offences and Other Measures) Bill 2015. It is a real pleasure to be here today to speak to this bill, because it does deliver on a commitment that was made by the Abbott government when it was in opposition to tackle crime and to make sure that we make our communities safer. I cannot understand why anybody in this place would not want to see anything enforced to make sure that our communities are safer from criminals. The most important thing that we can do as a government is to make sure that we provide the necessary tools to our law enforcement officers to make sure that they are able to do that.

The reality is that we live in a new world. There is no question that the tools that are available to our criminals these days are quite different to the tools that were available in the past. As Senator O'Sullivan, who has been a law enforcement officer for most of his life, quite rightly points out, we have to make sure that the tools that we give to our law enforcement officers are commensurate with the tools that are available to the criminals, because, if we are going to catch criminals, we need to be at least as well resourced as they are and preferably better resourced. If we are going to keep our community safe then we need to make sure that the full weight of the ability of this parliament is given to our law enforcement officers so that we can keep the men and women of Australia safe.

What we have got today is a suite of powers that we are putting forward to this parliament to enable the Commonwealth to be able to make laws that are robust, effective and reflect the government's efforts to target criminals and reduce the heavy cost of crime to Australians. Crime is not just affecting those people that are directly impacted by the crime; across the whole of the country the cost of crime to this nation is absolutely massive. This bill seeks to make sure that we give the tools necessary to our enforcement officers so that they can reduce the level of cost to our community for crimes that are committed.

There is a suite of different specific measures within this bill—for example, tougher penalties for gun related crimes. The bill introduces mandatory minimum sentencing for five years imprisonment for the offences of the illegal importation of firearms and firearm parts into Australia and illegally moving firearms and firearm parts across borders within Australia. It gives mandatory minimum penalties. It sends a very strong message to the gun related crimes and acts as a deterrent to our criminals so that they do not think that it is easy to get their hands on these lethal weapons.

Another measure in this is the operation and effectiveness of serious drug and precursory offences, which is a really serious issue at the moment. We have all been talking about the epidemic of ice in this community. We heard the very sad story of Senator Lambie and her son, but there are many sad stories out there about the impacts of drugs on our community. Whilst we understand that we certainly are not going to enforce our way out of the drug problem that we have got in Australia and in particular this methamphetamine problem, it is one of the tools that we need to make sure that our law enforcement officers have got so that they can do their very best to try and get these drugs off the streets. Whilst we have to change, we have to educate our community and we have to work with the people who are impacted—and there is a whole heap of social and cultural change that needs to take place to enable us to deal with the drug issue—one of the very strong platforms within that suite of things that we must do as a community to deal with drugs is to make sure that our law enforcement officers have got the necessary tools to make sure that they can get these perpetrators, who are killing our children, off the streets. I do not think anybody in this place would be particularly—

Debate interrupted.