Natasha Stott Despoja (SA, Australian Democrats) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I move:

That the Senate take note of the document.

This is the report for the year ending 30 June 2005. It is an important report, and, as you well know, Mr Acting Deputy President, we try to draw attention to these reports in the Senate chamber. It has some good news in that there was a decrease of approximately 4.5 per cent in the number of warrants that were issued under part VI across all state and federal agencies. So 2,883 warrants were issued. New South Wales agencies obtained a total of 1,337 warrants. This is almost four times as many as the next state, which was Victoria. The majority of these warrants, however, have been used to combat narcotics offences and drug trafficking. In fact, in 2003-04 the AFP had 538 warrants issued. In 2004-05 they had 459, which is 79 fewer. In comparison, in 2003-04 the AFP had two warrants issued for terrorism. In 2004-05 they had 60 warrants issued for terrorism. I am quite curious about what this suggests about terrorist activity, heightened or otherwise. Could this be an interesting use of the warrant system? Terrorism was as much an issue in 2003-04 as it was in 2004-05, and no state agency—not one—had a warrant issued for the purpose of terrorism.

During the recent inquiries into the antiterrorism legislation and the telecommunications interception law, terrorism was listed as the main reason that it is considered necessary in this country to have such an invasive warrant regime. But, as we can see from the report, terrorism ranks hardly at all with the federal and state law enforcement agencies in terms of their warrant requests. Of the 60 terrorism warrants issued to the AFP, not one resulted in evidence being given in the prosecution of an offence. We cannot tell whether this information resulted in arrests, as the reporting does not require that the number of arrests made as a result of lawfully obtained information be categorised or reported to the parliament. The overwhelming number of warrants for all agencies were in relation to narcotics or trafficking.

Another interesting aspect is the average duration of time for warrants. It is actually quite concerning when one looks at the report. I will give you an idea of some of the averages. The time that was specified in warrants on average for 2004-05—that is, the requested time for the warrants to be operative—was 80.49 days. And how long were the warrants in force? On average, warrants issued in 2004-05 were in force for 46.37 days. So, as you can see, the warrants are in operation for a considerably shorter period of time than what has been requested.

I put that on record because it makes you wonder why the duration of the warrant—which we have changed in law—is for 90 days. Given that the statistics show that they are not required in force for that period of time, why are we allowing them to be available for that period of time? I am not suggesting that it is necessarily resulting in fishing expeditions, but I think it is worrying. If the average time a warrant is in force is much shorter than what is requested, maybe we should reconsider that 90-day period that is allowed under legislation.

We recognise that interception as a tool for enforcement agencies is a necessary and effective tool. We can see this from the average 62 per cent success rate from warrants issued resulting in arrests made. This average, however, seems to be brought down by the AFP who, from this report, had 647 warrants issued and made only 154 arrests from those warrants. That is a 23 per cent success rate when compared to, for example, the New South Wales Police, who made 52 more arrests than warrants issued and the South Australia Police, who made 61 more arrests than warrants issued. We do have to wonder—and I am only asking this question because it is hard to read into this particular report exactly why it is the case—whether people, particularly the AFP, are doing enough to justify a warrant being issued. The other outstanding issue goes to who is issuing the warrants. Nominated AAT members are issuing a number of the warrants. I seek leave to continue my remarks.

Leave granted; debate adjourned.