Doorstop, Melbourne Airport
Monday, 14 June 2010
Topics: New and tougher aviation laws; leadership; asylum seekers.
BRENDAN O'CONNOR: Today the Government’s proposing tougher laws for aviation related crimes. The Government wants to make sure that we’re vigilant that the public is safe when they travel in our airports, by our aircraft. For that reason we’re proposing decisions to strengthen crimes where there’ve been offences against persons or property in aircraft or airports.
In December last year the Government announced changes to the ways the Australian Federal Police will be policing our international airports. It was a fundamental change and we’re looking to see that occur and transition over the next three years to effectively provide security at our airports. We’ve also announced in February this year a $200 million allocation to boost and enhance security at our airports and that will of course ensure that we have better screening facilities and greater capacity for Customs and Border Protection to gather information about passengers who may pose a serious risk. And a 50% increase in the explosives detection dogs at our ports.
Today, we’re proposing new penalties and increased penalties for aviation-related crimes. They include crimes that go to hoaxes, for example, where people may say they’ve planted a bomb in an airport or on an aircraft. They also go to where an aircraft may be endangered by the actions of an individual and therefore we also look to create new offences whereby there will be penalties of jailing up to ten years for people who assault aircraft crew. So they are penalties that will of course deter the likelihood of people offending at our airports, on our aircraft. For that reason we would be making the skies safer, the aircraft that fly in our country and between countries safer and our airports, where we have millions of passengers each and every year, a much safer place.
Now we look to introduce this legislation in the fortnight ahead. I have consulted widely with major airports, major airlines, all state and territory governments, unions that represent employees at the airports and we have been given an overwhelming supportive response by those interested parties. They support those proposals. Now we look to introduce this into the parliament, subject to the views of caucas, and I do expect to get the full support of the Opposition.
JOURNALIST: Why did you decide to bring in these tough changes now?
O’CONNOR: We’ve been consulting over the last six or so months, but formally for the last three months with the sector because we’re concerned that we need to do as much as we possibly can to reduce the likelihood of these offences occurring. The actual flight NW-253 that landed in the United States on Christmas Day last year I think focussed like-minded countries about the potential threats of hoaxes and indeed terrorist acts. We need to make sure that our laws are capable of not only deterring such crimes but properly prosecuting those crimes if they take place. For that reason this year we’ve been speaking widely with the international airports, the major airlines, the unions representing the workforce and the state and territory agencies to make sure that we have tougher penalties and new penalties that protect the interests of the public, the staff, both at the airport and on aircraft.
JOURNALIST: But in all honesty a terrorist is not likely to be deterred by extra penalties are they?
O’CONNOR: Terrorists will use serious hoaxes as a way to disrupt airports and also disrupt and cause chaos at international airports. So we need to make sure that if anyone is seeking to act in such a manner they understand the consequences are serious and they can be imprisoned, even for a hoax, a serious hoax, for up to ten years. Currently, the penalty is two years – that’s too less a sentence given the potential consequences for actually ringing up and suggesting there’s a bomb in an airport. That can lead to enormous disruption, it can lead to the compromise of public safety, it can lead to forcing planes to be diverted at short notice with dire consequences. These are serious offences and therefore we need to have serious penalties. I call on the Opposition to support these measures when they are introduced into the Parliament in the next fortnight.
JOURNALIST: How do you distinguish between terrorists and say kids on school holidays ringing up. You don’t want them to go to jail for ten years do you?
O’CONNOR: As I’ve said I’m focusing on serious hoaxes. Judges will determine, courts will determine the penalties. But what we needed to do was make sure we had the threshold right, we had the ceiling right. At the moment, two years is too little a sentence if there is a serious effort to compromise the public safety of an international airport that could cause serious injury. For that reason we’re looking to increase the penalty. In the end, it’s a maximum penalty and of course courts who determine these matters will discern between what are frivolous, though sometimes very irresponsible, efforts by members of the public and very serious efforts to cause disruption, anxiety, distress – all the tools of the terrorist. They seek to cause distress and heighten anxiety amongst the public of democratic nations and we need therefore, as a Government, to be vigilant to ensure that such actions by terrorists, or others, should be properly prosecuted and appropriately jailed.
JOURNALIST: How is the Government viewing the risk of terrorism in Australian aircraft at the moment?
O’CONNOR: We have a high standard of security and safety at our airports and in our aircraft, but we always have to have a look at the current laws to ensure we’ve done enough. The current Act, the Crimes Aviation Act, is 19 years old. It did need review and I’ve undertaken that review. We are now looking to ensure that that legislation, the offences that were there 20 years ago can be brought up to date. Let’s be honest about this – in the last 20 years, certainly in the last ten, things have changed. The threat of terrorism is greater, and for that reason all Governments in like-minded countries around the world have to make sure that the measures they put in place reflect the new reality. That is, that there is always potential danger of a terrorist offences and for that reason we need to ensure that our penalties reflect those possible actions.
JOURNALIST: Are there any other areas of the Act that you think need updating?
O’CONNOR: I think we’ve had a thorough review of the current offences and indeed introduced new offences. For example, assaulting an aircraft crew member while the plane is in flight, was not as focused and specific and did not have a significant penalty as I believe it needed. So for that reason we’re now proposing that have up to a ten year imprisonment as a penalty. That, in my view, is commensurate with the offence, given the potential consequences of disrupting that plane’s journey.
JOURNALIST: Have there been any incidents in relation to these types of offences?
O’CONNOR: There have been assaults against aircraft crew, there have been hoaxes. We have to make sure that we are anticipating any further or more dangerous threats to our security and what we don’t’ want to do is to bring legislation in after the offence. We want to have the right suite of offences before any event will and can take place. It would be wrong for us to be making decisions post-facto and for that reason this Government is ensuring that we are well placed if there’s a need to respond to offences against planes, or airports or indeed the staff in each of those areas.
JOURNALIST: On another topic, do you see this last sitting of Parliament as Kevin Rudd’s last chance to turn around the polls?
O’CONNOR: We’re going into two weeks of Parliament and then we rise for the winter recess. We may or may not be returning. I’m assuming for the purposes of this legislation that we will be returning because I want this legislation through in the Spring session of Parliament. As a Minister that’s what I’m doing, making sure we have our laws in place. The Government is focussed on the priorities of this country. It has the national interest in its sights. For that reason we will continue to focus on economic growth, that we have good schools and very good education system, that we properly reform the health system so that we have the best health system in the world. These are the things that the Rudd Government will continue to prosecute and y’know Parliament’s always an interesting place to be but it’s also a place where we make laws to protect our citizens. That’s what I’ll be doing by introducing this Bill in the next two weeks.
JOURNALIST: Will the talk of a leadership battle act as a distraction?
O’CONNOR: As far as I’m concerned Kevin Rudd as the Prime Minister has been a fantastic leader. We confronted the worst economic circumstances since the Great Depression less than two years ago and through his leadership we not only ensure that we avoided a significant recession but we are now better placed than any other economy in the world. We have the second lowest unemployment, may even now be the lowest – 5.2%, very low, half the level you’re seeing in the United States, Europe and the United Kingdom. 200,000 jobs were saved or secured as a result of the stimulus packages. These things were done because we acted quickly and we acted decisively and if they weren’t done we’d be in the same boat as those other developed nations that are suffering severe recessions, high unemployment and major problems to their economies. I think it’s also important to note that the global economy is not yet stabilised and for that reason we need a leader, we need a Prime Minister who can make the economic decisions in the national interest. The Prime Minister has shown a capacity to do that in the past, he’ll do it in the future and he’ll be leading us to the next election.
JOURNALIST: Do you think Julia Gillard would make a good Prime Minister?
O’CONNOR: That’s a hypothetical that doesn’t really matter in this situation. The fact is the Prime Minister of this country is the best person to lead our party, this Government into the next election. He will be doing that. His actions have already shown a strength of leadership on the economic front. We need to make sure we maintain our focus on economic, education and health reforms. That’s what the Government is doing, led by the Prime Minister and there will be no change in relation to the leadership. Kevin Rudd will lead us to the next election.
JOURNALIST: What information, if any, do you have in relation to the 12 asylum seekers who reportedly drowned on the way from Indonesia?
O’CONNOR: I’ve seen reports in the paper in relation to the alleged drowning of 12 asylum seekers. I cannot confirm, but indeed if there’s a need to confirm that, and I think there is, the Indonesian authorities are best placed to do that. As I understand it the claims have been made about a sinking of a vessel, a very small vessel, in Indonesian waters. So they would be best placed to confirm or deny that claim.
But can I say, whether it happened or not, the fact that there’s been a report underlines the grave dangers and perils of embarking on unseaworthy vessels, being lured by people smugglers, who like to take a persons life savings, place them on dangerous vessels in high seas and too often with fatal consequences. Therefore I say to those considering such journeys please do not do that.
Those people who seek to support them in such journeys – desist – because this is very dangerous. That’s why the Australian Federal Police and the Indonesian National Police are working very closely to disrupt those ventures. To date, in the last 14 months we’ve disrupted more than 5000 people embarking on those vessels from Indonesia and we’ll continue to work with our law enforcement agency counterparts in the region to reduce the likelihood of people embarking on those perilous journeys. We saw the worst incident in our history in 2001 when more than 350 people perished on one vessel and so we know the awful tragedy that can arise and so we need to do as much as we possibly can to disrupt the people smugglers and prevent people being lured on such vessels on such dangerous journeys.
JOURNALIST: Well critics argue that people are getting on boats in the first place shows a failure of your asylum seeker policy.
O’CONNOR: We’ve seen surges before. The largest surge in our history was under the Howard Government where the second and first highest numbers of arrivals occurred in 1999 and 2001. We also saw, I’m sad to say. A far far greater number of people who perished in that period and that was because the surge was greater. At no time did the Opposition – the Labor Party – seek to blame to Howard Government for that. I would have to say it’s beyond the pale to use the tragic deaths of people to score political points and I would really expect more from the Opposition leader but unfortunately they’ve shown a great capacity to cause fear amongst the community and also make very extreme and exaggerated claims. In the end however, the Australian people understand that we are dealing with a very difficult problem. We are dealing with exactly the same problem that many other countries are dealing with. We are 16th out of the 24 or so countries that are dealing with people smugglers, less than one-and-a-half percent of people seeking asylum seek to come to Australia. We’ll continue to do more. This Government has dedicated more resources in tackling people smugglers than any other Government. But it’s a difficult challenge and we’ll keep working with out friends in the region to do what we can to reduce the number of people embarking on vessels and endangering their lives.
JOURNALIST: So you don’t do anything to investigate this, you sort of leave it to the Indonesians? Are you gonna call them and check that they’re on it?
O’CONNOR: That’s something that our agency can do, these are claims ...
JOURNALIST: Will they do it?
O’CONNOR: That’s something Customs and Border Protection I’m sure can engage with. But can I say at this stage they’re only claims in a paper and at this point the only way we could confirm that is whether the Indonesian authorities are aware of that, and that’s not to say they are aware. I’m sure the Indonesian authorities are better placed than anyone else to determine the existence or otherwise of that vessel.
JOURNALIST: So will you be seeking further information from the Indonesian authorities?
O’CONNOR: Customs and Border Protection work very closely with their counterparts and I’m sure that they will discuss that to see whether there’s any veracity to the claims that have been made.
JOURNALIST: In response to the Opposition Spokesman for Border Protection, he’s said that at the end of the Coalition’s time in Government there were 4 people detained and now there’s over 3500, there were 452 in detention at the moment compared with 21 at the end of the last term of Government …
O’CONNOR: We can both pick our points during terms of Government. The facts are if we’re to follow the Opposition’s logic, why is it the case that the largest surge in our history happened under the Howard Government? Why is it that the greatest number of people to come here through these means came here during the Howard Government? Was it something they did? I would say that logic is fundamentally flawed because otherwise we’d have to conclude that the Howard Government in 1999 made domestic decisions that led to that largest surge of arrivals we’ve had in our history. The reality is, overwhelmingly that people seek asylum by vessels as a result of people fleeing persecution, or certainly coming from places where there’s conflict. It occurred under the Howard years, it’s occurring under our term now and that’s the fundamental reason why people seek to get on these vessels. When you see an end to a conflict, or an end to a war you’ll see a greater repatriation of people. For example, there were five million people between 2002 and 2007 repatriated to Afghanistan, the largest repatriation since World War II occurred in that period. That’s why there was a decline in people being detained in Australia. Let’s not forget though that they left people on Nauru Island for five or six years, left them indefinitely. It didn’t work in the end. Of those people that were left on that island, 70% came here and were settled. So I think there’s a lot of misrepresentation that’s been put by the Opposition Spokesperson and the Leader of the Opposition. They know that’s not the case, but I guess the thing is that they love running scare campaigns and they intend to run this one right up until the election.
JOURNALIST: The Greens have also said you wouldn’t rule of re-opening Baxter Detention Centre soon, is that true?
O’CONNOR: Well that’s something you might want to direct to the Minister for Immigration, but that’s the first I heard of it was when I noticed they said we might be doing something or not doing something today. It’s not something that I’m aware of, except the comments I saw from The Greens spokesperson.
