Asia Pacific Airport and Aviation Security Summit 2005
Speech by Mick Keelty, APM
Sydney
28 November 2005
Good morning. I'd like to acknowledge the Gadigal People who are the traditional owners on the land in which we are having this conference today and I'd also like to acknowledge the presence in the audience of former AFP Commissioner, Mick Palmer, who is here.
What I want to talk about today is to put some meat to the bone I guess to some of the earlier presentations from the Attorney-General and also from Andy Turner from DoTARS about things such as the Wheeler Review. But a key part of the transformation of the AFP as a policing agency in recent years has been working with other government agencies as part of the whole-of-government approach to countering terrorism but also working with the private sector in such places as our Australian High Tech Crime Centre. There, we have each of the major Australian financial institutions, credit unions and credit card companies working in partnership with private enterprise which I think is the future direction of policing right around the world, if not only here in our own country.
And with the Wheeler Review what we are trying to do is work with these new measures to boost security right across the board and I'll talk more about that from an AFP perspective shortly.
But if we look at the aviation environment, of course we are all very familiar with that, but when you look at it from a Federal aspect, there are a lot of competing interests and a lot of competing tensions.
Today our airports carry something in the order of 660,000 flights per year, with over 125,000 international flights. And as we all know, technology will enable that to increase over time and we already have about 60 million passengers coming through this country every year. And there was an 11 per cent increase in domestic passenger numbers in the past year and as we know also, there are some other entries into the market from other airlines in the last 12, and certainly the next 18 months. There has been a 10.9 per cent increase in international passengers in the year since December last year, and the AFP's aviation security budget has grown from $20 million in 2000-2001 to over $74 million this current financial year. So therefore airports are regarded as a significant aspect of our work.
It has taken the Wheeler Review I think to clarify the issue, particularly since the privatisation of airports in 1989, and I think with the privatisation of airports there was a lack of coordination over a period with who was responsible for what, particularly in terms of airports around the country, but that has now been clarified through Wheeler and certainly substantially moved forward through the recent COAG Meeting in Canberra.
At the end of the day, airports are no different to the broader community and more than 12,000 people, for example, are employed at Sydney Airport and the high volume of traffic is increasing daily.
People familiar with Adelaide will know that there is a new national airport, although I think for a variety of reasons familiar to some people in the room it isn't fully operational - certainly when I was last there which was about three weeks ago.
And last week the new Joint Airport Investigation Teams, which were a Wheeler initiative, made their first arrests since they began operations earlier this month. Three men, all Qantas employees, were charged over the weekend in relation to the distribution at street level of narcotics within Sydney airports and also the wider metropolitan area here in Sydney. I'm obviously not able to comment on the detail of that but it shows that since the implementation of that new group, they have been effective in certainly coming to terms with some of the crime that is operating in the community of the airport.
And despite our heavy reliance on aviation in this country, thankfully we have experienced a very low number of security incidents to date. But as we all know, 9/11 highlighted a number of things, namely aircraft security and passenger security, and in more recent times we have focused on cargo security and airport infrastructure security. And although much has been done to strengthen our response since that time one of the things we are working on in the AFP, particularly post the London bombings this year is trying to develop some counter-measures to avoid a culture of complacency particularly with some of the frontline employees working in the protection area. Being in that sort of business, you have to be motivated and alert all of the time for the entire shift, and that does require special skill sets and not everybody has got that special skill set.
And I am sure we can all individually relate to incidents we have seen in our own experiences where some of the security provided at some installations by some, particularly the private sector is questionable and we need to have that more highly regulated and we need to have people in those positions who are capable and able to meet the challenges that now confront us all and obviously part of the work that we are doing is to work in partnership there to ensure that people are trained at a standard and that those standards are applied in a uniform way, not only in a airport, but now since Wheeler, right across all the airports around the country.
We have got to continually seek, I believe, new methodologies and initiatives to ensure the government, public and business remain confident about travel. A lack of confidence in air travel in this country would have significant ramifications and we have also got to continually re-examine approaches to policing to keep up with the changes in the environment.
For example, we need to have much stronger consideration for the down-stream effect of security breaches such as the cost of public confidence and particularly in other areas such as hospitality and retail when we are making operational decisions about airports.
And that emerged most recently during Mercury 05 which was the national counter-terrorism exercise that was conducted across five jurisdictions in this country, but during the exercise a decision was made in a particular place to shut down an airport and I am not sure that the police operational commander making that decision had all the wherewithal to understand the downstream effects of that.
And if I digress for a moment and tell you that we commissioned the International Centre for Economics to undertake some studies following the first Bali bombings, not the second Bali bombings, and we understand that it cost the Indonesian Government - or the Indonesian economy - something in the order of $3 billion Australian. $260 million of that was in the initial police response, the balance was in the loss of hospitality and the loss of trade, so one can only imagine the impact of the second Bali bombing, and of course one can only imagine if you transpose that to an Australian experience what that would mean for us here.
And as you have heard from the Attorney General and also from DoTARS that there is a multi-layered aviation security approach adopted by the Australian Government post-9/11 and there is new legislation and as a result of new measures and policy there is strengthening of policing, most importantly strengthening intelligence and also the investigative capacity of airports.
The Attorney General spoke about the Aviation Transport Security Act 2004 and the security regulations that have been introduced this year (2005). This new legislation introduced the concept of security controlled airports. There are approximately 180 right across Australia. It also redefined the relationship between the security officials and airport operations, shifting responsibility for Counter-Terrorism First Response to a singular organisation - being the AFP.
Other security measures involving the AFP have included the Air Security Officer Program and I point out that Garry Young, the manager of that program is here in the audience today, and we have just finished the 5th International Meeting of Air Security Officers - otherwise known as sky marshals - in Canberra in the last fortnight.
We have introduced the Regional Rapid Deployment Teams. These teams are based now across the eastern seaboard and also have been working effectively in the region, or particularly in south-eastern Australian at the regional airports and we have introduced the Protective Security Liaison Officer Network which I'll talk more about in a moment.
The introduction of an Airport Police Commander was one of the Wheeler recommendations and it looks at having a single command structure at Australian airports. To the travelling public there ought not be any discernible difference from going from one airport in Australia to another. At the moment we know that is not the case. At the moment we know that you can walk in through an x-ray machine with a pair of shoes on, you will be stopped at one airport and not stopped at another if you have to go through a number of airports in the one day. We need to get a much more uniform approach to that and everybody should have the same experience regardless of where they are travelling.
We have established a Unified Policing Model, integrating the AFP with State and Territory policing at each of the 11 Counter-Terrorism First Response airports. That is not going to be an easy task. It is being coordinated by the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet, the Chair of the National Counter Terrorism Committee, Duncan Lewis and that was a direct result of the COAG Meeting recently.
But what we are trying to do is get community policing up and running at each of the major airports around the country, which as we know at the moment has not been the case. We have had NSW Police at Mascot Airport up until the Olympics. Anyone that is familiar with Sydney Airport knows that the NSW police station there lies idle today. We have got Victoria Police at Tullamarine and they will increase their presence in the lead-up to the Commonwealth Games and anyone who has been through Brisbane Airport knows that the nearest police station is really Nundah which is some considerable geographic distance away. So we want to try and shut some of those gaps down and have a permanent presence of community policing at airports.
Whilst those sorts of decisions are easy to make, to actually implement them is a lot harder because there is not a lot of police forces around the country that will agree that they have shared capacity to do community policing. So we have got to come to an arrangement where we get those community police up and running as soon as possible and at the same time we want experienced people at airports, we don't want new recruits at airports, so we are going to have to work very hard to implement that aspect of the Wheeler Review and the COAG Agreement and that work is underway as I speak.
We are establishing already dedicated joint Airport Intelligence Groups at each of the counter-terrorism airports and as I mentioned, the Joint Airport Investigation Team, which we hope will be joint in the true sense when our State and Territory police join us. At the moment there is only AFP and Customs people at the five major international airports being Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Perth and Adelaide. And we are still negotiating with the states to have a presence there.
And I think that simply highlights some of the issues pre-Wheeler and that is we need far more cooperation delivered on the ground and I don't think the travelling public nor the community expect anything less.
To accommodate the new responsibilities associated with aviation laws and security measures we have restructured our own business approach. Traditionally aviation security has been managed by our protection portfolio which obviously also includes responsibilities for close personal protection for high office holders and national infrastructure protection, but earlier this year we also integrated the Australian Protective Services into mainstream AFP business and we have just now commenced the position for an AFP National Manager in Aviation, so a dedicated manager looking after aviation issues in the AFP.
We have also commenced Project Jupiter which is the name given for the implementation of the post-Wheeler reforms. When Project Jupiter is fully implemented the number of staff involved directly in aviation security around Australia will be between 1100 and 1200 staff. So that will include the community policing at airports as well as the Joint Airport Investigation Teams and the increased Intelligence focus.
The Airport Police Commanders will be announced shortly. We put them on hold during the Wheeler Review but clearly one of the things that Wheeler has pointed out and many of you in the private sector will be very familiar with, is that we need to have no ambiguity in terms of command and control. That worked really effectively post the London bombings. Certainly this issue of trying to get people from different organisations familiar with each other but also understanding the different rank structures by cutting through the various ranks in various organisations and emergency services by simply adopting a gold, silver and bronze tabard to be worn by people who are decision-makers or people who are team leaders in each of the various organisations. So we need to cut through all of that.
We are currently developing specific functional roles for each of the officers that will have command of the airports. They will oversee the planning and security at airports, determining mid to long term operational priorities and resourcing and coordinate security response mechanisms. They will also be in overall command and oversee broader liaison with industry and other stakeholders at each of the airports.
The Intelligence Groups that I have talked to you about will comprise members, and some of these are already up and running, from the AFP, the State and Territory Police, the Australian Customs Service, and ASIO as well as other government departments on an as-needs basis.
Their role is to collect, collate and interpret and disseminate intelligence relating both to criminal activity at the airports but also security and they will then tap in with programs like the Air Security Officers on what flights should be covered and which are the critical areas to put resources around airports. Previously when these issues were the subject of private contract, we were basically at the beck-and-call of the private contractors as to where some of the resources at the airport were located. That wasn't necessarily based on operational grounds or good intelligence. It was for the purpose of business confidence. I am sure there is a space in the middle there where we can improve the travelling public's confidence but also deal with security and crime issues at airports.
The Airport Investigation Team will involve 66 staff nationally and comprise, as I said, Customs staff and AFP and State Police officers when they come on board. They will be based at Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Adelaide and Perth and they hopefully will deal with the organised and serious crime that Sir John Wheeler identified as presenting a threat to some of the airport operations, whilst the community policing will deal with community policing in the same way that they do in the broader community.
If I just turn now to the Air Security Officer program, that has been in place since December 2001. Its objectives are to provide an anti-hijacking capability through the use of armed security personnel aboard flights. The ASOs are selected from within the Australian Protective Service arm of the AFP, from other State and Territory police and also from members of the Australian Defence Force and other specialist areas. They are highly trained in negotiation and defensive tactics and also the specialised use of firearms on-board an aircraft. Due to the discreet nature of the program, operational methodologies such as the number of flights covered and specific destinations are never disclosed publicly, but officers are deployed based on current threat assessments and also on a random basis.
Australia's program actually meets world's best practice standards and we have done a lot of work in co-training, particularly out of the Middle East, Europe and the United States. And, as I mentioned, we hosted the 5th Annual Conference of the air marshals about two weeks ago and over 24 countries were represented.
There is a new role for the Protective Security Liaison Officer Network at airports. There are 17 Federal Agents currently deployed to the Network. Their work is to provide a centralised point of contact for all information and advice regarding aviation security issues including potential risks and threats. And they will obviously work in support of the new Airport Police Commanders.
Some of the legislation or policy that has been introduced under the Aviation Transport Security Regulation Act, deals with bomb hoax legislation. Since the introduction of the Act there have been 171 incidents brought to the attention of the AFP. 140 of those 171 cases required no further action but 8 cases have resulted in a fine, 15 cases were dismissed, 5 are still before the courts, 1 is still under investigation and 2 are still with the Commonwealth DPP.
But clearly there has been a period of time where the travelling public need to be aware that threats to security such as unguarded comments about bombs are treated seriously by all of us. And that is not a policing issue in one sense. It is not just the police interested in this. As you know in the aviation sector, we have to evacuate terminals. We have to delay flights, flights in the air have to be diverted, there is a substantial cost attached to unguarded comments about bombs and certainly all of them have to be treated seriously in the current environment and hopefully we will see over the next 12 months a significant decrease in those incidents because they are very resource-intensive and just like everything else in this industry, there are significant downstream effects from it.
The Regional Rapid Deployment Teams were introduced under the Securing Our Regional Skies Program which was introduced by the Government in 2004. These provide a rapidly deployable counter-terrorism first response around our regional airports. There are two types of deployments:
- One is a threat-based deployment at very short notice triggered by intelligence indicating an increased threat at regional airports; and
- The other type of response is a pre-planned deployment which obviously tries to cover most of the regional airports over a given period.
The first deployment operations commenced in January this year, and since then they have been introduced in Brisbane, Sydney and Perth since July.
Each of those teams has 8 AFP Protective Service officers including an explosive bomb appraisal officer and also a canine detection team.
They are expected to conduct about 50 deployments over the course of a year.
And just looking at the explosive detection canine capacity, these are deployed at Sydney, Brisbane, Melbourne, Canberra and Perth and also at other installations such as Parliament House. There are 24 of these teams around the country improving screening responsiveness and accuracy and we have also increased the technology for the bomb appraisal officers in trying to determine very quickly whether an object is a legitimate bomb or not so that we reduce the time and inconvenience to airports operators and the travelling public.
The Counter Terrorism First Response Teams are at the 11 major airports around Australia - Cairns, Brisbane, the Gold Coast, Sydney, Canberra, Melbourne, Hobart, Adelaide, Perth, Darwin and Alice Springs. They provide nationally-consistent operations for responding to security threats using proactive, preventative and intelligence measures. They will increase patrols and strategic groupings of airport security experts in fields such as protection, explosives detection and bomb appraisal. And from the 1 May to 31 August this year they have responded to 74 incidents around airports, 26 of those were in relation to on-board incidents.
In conclusion, when we talk about working with industry the AFP understands that there are many businesses associated with the aviation industry and that they are uniquely placed to observe the activities of a number of individuals at the coalface. And so we are trying to engage with industry to observe the activities at the coalface and point to suspicious or untoward activity. In fact some of the more public recent discoveries of people, if you like, tailgating on ASIC cards at airports have actually come from staff working at the airport. So the more that staff do to secure their own environment, the better it will be for all of us and I commend the staff that have been bringing these issues forward either to their own security people or their own security management either within the airline industry or in the airport environment or to the police.
We are developing a Memorandum of Understanding to promote stronger cooperation on information, intelligence exchange between the AFP and Qantas and we are working with Virgin Blue and Regional Express to develop similar arrangements over the course of the next couple of months.
We have also engaged in executive placements at Qantas and our Manager Aviation Security is one of the people who has recently undergone one of those executive placements.
So we are treating the relationship with industry very seriously and we understand totally that nothing that we can do to secure the aviation industry in this country will be done by the AFP alone. It needs to be done in concert with all the other agencies and industries working there.
I suppose if there has been any silver lining out of the recent terrorist events around the world, and of course the AFP has been to most of them even those in the Middle East, it has been an increase in our experience and understanding of what is happening in terrorism. Tomorrow morning I will open an international conference of bomb technicians from around the world. We have in the AFP one of the best Bomb Data Centres in the world, which is recognised right around the world and often relied upon when suspicious items are found overseas to compare the data. We are increasing the capacity of that to not only deal with explosive materials but it will now deal with chemical, biological, and radiological material. We have opened up a similar centre in the Philippines, we are negotiating with the Thai Government to open up one there, and there is one opening up in Indonesia. So that the data that we collect, particularly from recent experiences with bombings, things such as TATP which we saw used in the London bombings and which we allege was the subject of concern in some more recent arrests here in Australia, the technology exchange has to be very quick, it has to be very accurate and that is why we have put so much investment into our Bomb Data Centre.
But we do look forward to working with our partners, particularly the Department of Transport and Regional Services, the Customs service and other Australian Government agencies, but also state agencies. Every airport sits in a state or territory so it is important that we have good, clear lines of communication and cooperation with the state agencies and finally with industry, which is why I am here today.
I think you for inviting me here to speak to you and I wish you best wishes in your deliberations over the next few days.
Thank you.