David Shoebridge (NSW, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I move:

That the Senate take note of the document.

I take note of the Report on the Commonwealth Ombudsman's activities under part V of the Australian Federal Police Act 1979. The Commonwealth Ombudsman has now provided two reports on the Australian Federal Police's handling of complaints against its appointees—against members of the Australian Federal Police. This report covers the period from 1 July 2023 to 30 June last year. That report has now been tabled, and I have to tell you that it is utterly damning of the management by the Australian Federal Police of complaints against Federal Police about their conduct. I'll quote from the report:

This report contains the results of two reviews of the AFP's administration of complaints conducted by my Office—

the Ombudsman's office—

Our first review, in August 2023, focused on its administration of allegations of minor misconduct administered as Category 1 or Category 2 complaints. Our second review … focused on allegations of serious misconduct administered as Category 3 or 4 complaints.

This is a summary of what the Ombudsman found, from the executive summary:

We found across both reviews the AFP was not delivering a complaint handling system that was meeting the requirements of the Act, particularly in relation to how the AFP are exercising the discretion under section 40TF of the Act to take no further action in relation to complaints. My Office previously identified a systemic issue of the AFP not investigating complaints based on the perceived merits of incomplete information, often without sufficient attempt to obtain potential evidence from complainants and AFP appointees. I am concerned this issue has not been addressed and the AFP is continuing to decide to not investigate complaints before confirming the existence of relevant evidence.

There's a neat way of summarising what this is. The AFP have had complaints—often very serious complaints—about how they exercised excessive force against children, about how they used excessive force against members of the public and about their access to confidential information and their use of confidential information, and what the Ombudsman is saying in this report is that the Australian Federal Police senior officers used the discretion they had to just kill the complaints without even pretending to investigate them. What is worse is that, after this was pointed out to the AFP in the initial August review, the AFP did nothing. Again I'll quote from the Ombudsman's report:

My Office made 2 recommendations to the AFP to improve its use of section 40TF of the Act following our August 2023 review—

and remember section 40TF is the kill power, the power that senior AFP officers have to just kill off complaints without even bothering to investigate them. It's a discretion that they have abused time after time. The Ombudsman says:

The AFP advised my Office in July 2024 that it had not implemented our recommendations and advised that it would seek to work in consultation with our Office on the application of section 40TF of the Act. We again made findings related to the use of section 40TF of the Act at our May 2024 review … including 4 recommendations. I am encouraged that the AFP has accepted all the latest recommendations and has undertaken to initiate an external review of the AFP's complaint management system to address this issue.

After two reports and multiple findings that the AFP is in routine breach in how it handles complaints, they are undertaking, apparently, an external review. We have had no clarity from Commissioner Kershaw or from the Attorney-General about who is undertaking the external review, what the terms of reference of this external review are or whether or not any of the gross failures of the AFP have been addressed to date.

When you read further in the report, it again shows that things are not getting better in the AFP; they're getting worse. The ombudsman says:

Compared with previous years, the AFP was exercising the discretion to take no further action in relation to complaints under s 40TF of the Act in a disproportionate manner.

We found that most of the instances we reviewed involving s 40TF of the Act were unreasonable, unfair and failed to meet the requirements of the Act.

This is the police force we're talking about. The police force's conduct of its own internal complaints handling system was 'unreasonable, unfair and failed to meet the requirements of the act'. What have we heard from the Albanese government about this? Zip, nada, nothing. There's never accountability against the Australian Federal Police when they engage like this. It's as though Commissioner Kershaw has some sort of protective cloak on that prevents any kind of effective control, even when the most extreme failures have been shown here by the ombudsman. We say to the Albanese government: will you continue to allow the AFP to have these gross failures of what are often some of the most significant conduct— (Time expired)