6 May 2008

Speech to Seventh Annual Symposium of CATR (Council for Asian Terrorism Research)

International Security Conference, Taronga Zoo Sydney

Distinguished guests, welcome to Taronga Zoo.

In my previous role as Minister for the Environment in the State of NSW I had portfolio responsibility for this zoo, a much calmer and more interesting environment than some of the other zoos one encounters in politics.  

I acknowledge the traditional owners of the land we meet on this evening.

Thank you for the opportunity to meet with you to discuss the challenges we face in Australia with border protection and counter terrorism issues.

I trust I will also have the opportunity to learn more of the challenges you face in your countries as well.

I am pleased to see so many delegates from a diverse range of countries, some of which I hope I have the opportunity to visit in my capacity as Australia’s Minister for Home Affairs.

I start tonight with some background on the Home Affairs portfolio.

In some ways it seems everything old is new again, because the Home Affairs portfolio was one of the original Ministries in the very first Australian Government after the federation of the Australian States in 1901. 

In the middle of the last century, my portfolio, as it is now, fell under the responsibility of the Minister for the Interior.  As the inward looking view was overtaken by more engagement with the world at large, the name changed again, and both Home Affairs and Interior were terms superseded by a number of portfolios, with the policing and border protection areas under the responsibility of the Minister for Justice and Customs.

The new Government made a conscious decision to create a portfolio of Home Affairs.  The reason was to bring together responsibility for Australia’s internal and external territories and a range of agencies dealing with criminal matters under a portfolio umbrella that also includes the major challenges of national policing, customs and border protection.

Responsibility for counter terrorism policy and operations lies with my colleague the Attorney-General.  It meshes with my responsibility for border protection and the broader security of life within our borders.

The Australian Government sees, however, that Australia’s home is in the world, geographically and strategically in the western Pacific at the edge of South East Asia.

One of the priorities of the Government is to have strong relationships with countries of the Pacific.

The Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd made our determination to re-engage with our Pacific neighbours clear when he visited Papua New Guinea and the Solomon Islands earlier this year, and Australia has put in a bid to host next year’s pacific Islands Forum.

In PNG the Port Moresby Declaration was signed to symbolise Australia’s new approach to the region and our commitment to partnerships with Pacific countries by increasing development assistance and improving economic infrastructure, creating local employment opportunities and achieving quality, universal basic education.

We’re working with our Pacific neighbours on climate change by reducing deforestation of rainforests – the second largest source of global emissions after power stations – and reducing the rates of HIV.

Stability in the Pacific creates stability in the region, which is why, from our home, in this region, we must engage with and respect our neighbours.

Here on this large nation continent, we know we cannot protect our borders in isolation; it requires cooperation and friendship with other nations who have the common interest of peace and security.

Former Deputy Defence Secretary Paul Dibb, now Emeritus Professor of Strategic Studies at the Australian National University says:

National security is a greatly abused concept.
Threats to our national security should be restricted in definition to events that could seriously undermine our territorial sovereignty, democratic freedoms and rule of law, and basic economic prosperity. It is not good enough to invoke generalised threats that could inconvenience us, such as illegal people movements or transnational crime, or challenges that could erode our standard of living such as climate change.

This is a view to be respected but I find it somewhat rigid and constrained in the face of our engagement with the global economy and particularly in the context of the community’s reasonable expectation that government will actually have an ability to plan for and respond to threats of all sorts.

The government of Australia is quite properly preparing a Defence White Paper but in an ever more interconnected world the purpose of the Defence force has become more diverse and a number of other agencies have become more active at our borders and beyond: Australian Federal Police, Customs and the intelligence agencies to name the obvious ones.

Everybody accepts that terrorism is a threat to national security.  People also believe that non-military threats like transnational crime and climate change, insidious to our national well being as they are, require government response for the protection of citizens.

It is not that we wish to elevate non-military threats above others.  It’s not that we wish to pretend that climate change is any immediate threat to the rule of law or our sovereignty.  However climate change is indeed a threat to our long term basic economic prosperity and I guess the point is that government need consistently to look sensibly to priorities in the overall strategic situation.

Nobody in the new Australian Government is going to discount traditional threats like arms races and diplomatic tensions between nation states.  However, matters that challenge our economic wellbeing and our ability to lift people out of poverty should not be sidelined.

Indeed the traditional kind of disputes could very easily emerge from resource security concerns - including oil supplies, water scarcity and fish stocks.

Limits and scarcity may promote tension among major and emerging powers.  Terrorism may breed among local peoples dissatisfied with their own share of resources in a resource compromised world.

Resource sharing is a clear part of the solution and that is one of the reasons for Australia’s extensive partnerships in the international aid sphere as well.

Hardly anybody had heard of climate change ten years ago.  Our brief is to be constantly aware of the shifting situation in the world and ready to respond with Government intervention and partnerships with business and the community where possible.
Under my Home Affairs portfolio responsibility I have a range of agencies that I will now briefly explain .

As well as the Australian Federal Police I also administer the Customs portfolio with its direct responsibilities at our immigration borders and in Australia’s surrounding waters.

The Australian Federal Police is key to Australia’s internal security.  It has a direct role in our border protection through its everyday operational activities, through the Uniform Airport Policing Model at Australia’s international airports and deployments of an eventual 1200 personnel in the International Deployment Group.

The International Deployment Group was established in February 2004 to manage the operations of Australian and Pacific Island police overseas.

The Australian Federal Police works alongside our overseas neighbours to achieve long-term law enforcement goals to maintain a safe, stable and secure region. Regional stability depends in part upon well trained and equipped police agencies working together.
IDG deployments presently include the Solomon Islands, Timor-Leste, Nauru, Tonga, Vanuatu, Cambodia & Afghanistan

The Australian Crime Commission with its intelligence gathering powers assists law enforcement uncover serious organised crime, and we also have an agency established to track financial transactions.

So important is this aspect of security in our modern world the previous and current Australian government has supported dedicated resources for this purpose.

AUSTRAC is the Australian Transaction Reports and Analysis Centre which was established to counter money laundering and terrorism financing.  AUSTRAC works closely with the banking and finance sector and the gambling industry to ensure compliance with our laws against money laundering and terrorism financing

I understand tomorrow you are meeting with Kevin Zuccato from the High Tech Crime Centre at the Australian Federal Police who will talk to you about what the AFP are doing to counter cyber crime in Australia.

This ongoing threat is taken very seriously by the Australian Government

The use of the internet to commit crimes is a global phenomenon which Australia is attacking with global cooperation.

Child pornography and sexual enslavement is being shared on international sites with a criminal impact in our jurisdiction, the practice of hacking and so called phishing is a threat to our security as well as all of yours.

A recent Internet Security Threat Report published by Symantec in April this year revealed in the last six months of 2007 nearly 90 000 computers were detected that are in operation seeking to steal your bank account and personal details.

The same report indicated a new identity can be created for as little as one dollar.

In my portfolio and across the Australian Government we recognise these complexities and must remain open to flexible responses and recognise that our security and border protection priorities must be constantly reviewed.

In February this year I met with a number of Ministers of the Indonesian Government on a brief visit to Jakarta.

It came as no surprise to me that the Indonesian Minister for fisheries expressed concern about Chinese, Thai and Malay fishermen illegally entering Indonesia’s territorial waters and compromising their fishing stocks.

Just as Australia has worked with Indonesia to protect our territorial waters from unlawful entry by Indonesian fishermen, my Indonesian colleague is working to protect the integrity of his waters as well.

Our meeting was an opportunity to cement the cooperative approach our countries need to have to protect all our internationally recognised interests.

I am pleased to advise the Indonesian delegates at this meeting their Minister for Fisheries, Mr Freddy Numberi is committed to working on solutions.  

While I was in Jakarta I was also briefed by Australian Federal Police and Indonesian Police who are working together and benefiting from the joint initiatives Australia has contributed to at the Jakarta Centre for Law Enforcement Cooperation (JCLEC).

Since it opened in 2004 the Centre has trained over 3,000 law enforcement personnel in counter-terrorism related activities including post bomb blast analysis, financial investigations, intelligence, forensics and leadership, disaster victim identification and Islamic politics and law.

Our relationship with Indonesia and Indonesia’s excellent work in counter terrorism and community engagement is testament to the requirement to continue to work together to build up communities in an inclusive fashion rather than to isolate people from each other.

Community engagement is indeed a rapidly growing component of the Australian Federal Police’s efforts regarding counter terrorism.

The AFP actively engages with Australia’s Islamic community through a range of programs and relationship building activities.

Last year the AFP set up an Islamic Liasion team in Melbourne with the purpose of setting up effective ongoing dialogue, particularly with young Muslim people most at risk of marginalisation.

It provides Islamic communities with a better understanding of the AFP’s role, including investigating and disrupting extremist activity.

Improvement of these ties also minimises the possibility of negative responses and lack of co-operation when police act against terrorist networks.

The work of the Liasion group includes:

Last month the Liasion Team hosted a Unity Cup Family Day at Essendon Football Club which united various Islamic groups through a mutual appreciation of AFL – one of Victoria’s other religions.

It was a huge success with more than 3,000 people turning up, not only from the Islamic community but from Victorian Police, local businesses, the AFL  and the wider community.

Clearly the Liasion Team is making enormous gains and the AFP is working on expanding these Community Engagement Teams nationally.

Religious and cultural awareness training is also a core part of recruitment training for the AFP. Its Culture and Language Centre co-ordinates this training not only for AFP recruits, but for other state and territory police forces.

It also co-ordinates language training in Mandarin, Arabic, Thai and Indonesian.

Strengthened communities in Australia are a major asset in the reduction of the threat of terrorism and extremism.

Recently the Attorney General held talks with ministers in the UK who offered to allow Australian officials to be seconded to its new Office of Security and Counter-Terrorism located within the Home Office, which coordinates the UK’s counter-radicalisation strategy.

It will be invaluable to observe up close how the UK de-radicalisation programs work and to see how they can be adapted for Australia.

The UK has also established high levels of early co-operation between police, intelligence agencies and prosecutors which has ensured high conviction rates in terrorism cases.

Successful prosecutions also feed into counter radicalisation programs because of the clear message they send to people on the edge of extremism, or flirting with the idea of it.  

Peter Anderson has advised me that the Council for Asian Terrorism Research has expressed an interest in similar engagements with local communities to strengthen relationships and to counter radical views that may influence unrest or lead to attacks on the security of Australians, our infrastructure and governments.

I expect that bodies such as yours will also be in a position to assist and influence governments with your own research and findings into effective counter radicalisation methods and the best models for encouraging and promoting participation in the broad Australian community.

Participation of marginalised young people in all facets of Australian life is an important part of building up the Australian community to be resistant to terrorism, civil unrest and threats of violence.

The Australian Federal Police also has 87 counter terrorism liaison officers in 33 posts in 27 countries.  It’s established Regional Co-operation Teams in Jakarta and Manila.

The Australian Government is also giving consideration to question of whether we would benefit from a single Department of Homeland Security or whether the existing coordination of agencies through the National Security Committee of Cabinet remains the best option.

The former Head of the Australian Department of Defence Mr Ric Smith is conducting a review which will report to the Prime Minster in the middle of this year.

I am sure you will be interested in the Government’s response to Ric Smith’s review. In conjunction with the Defence White Paper now in preparation and a range of other considerations, it will shape our approach to the ongoing issues facing us in the area of security for all Australians.  

Once again, thank you for the opportunity to meet you this evening, I am sure you will benefit from your time here in Sydney. Organisations such as yours have much to contribute to the way government’s work on border protection matters and I look forward to hearing more from you in the coming few years.