In the Line of Duty: Policing Australia
Presentation by Australian Federal Police Commissioner Mick Keelty APM
Old Parliament House
4 October 2006
Check against delivery
Good afternoon everybody, my first point to acknowledge is that we are having this discussion this afternoon on the land of the Ngunnawal People and acknowledge their connection to the land on which we are standing.
The Ngunnawal people and the indigenous community have a culture of ‘story-telling’. I think the exhibition here today is very similar in the ‘story-telling’ about the 200 years of policing which started in the fledgling colony of Australia….and I’ll be talking to you this afternoon about how change has happened in our time.
This exhibition has been given in connection with the opening of the National Police Memorial. For those of you who were not around last week or visiting Canberra, the Memorial was opened by the Prime Minister last Friday night. The significance of the 29th of September is that it is the Feast of St Michael and St Michael is the Patron Saint of Policing. We have on the Memorial sum 719 names of police that have been killed on duty since policing began in Australia. It is located over in Kings Park near The Carillion…. if you have some time it is worth visiting the Memorial.
The exhibition here and the Memorial itself are as much a chronology of Settlement in Australia as they are an exhibition. As you look around the exhibition you will see things like Dan Kelly’s helmet… you will see portrayals of the Ash Wednesday bushfires…. Cyclone Tracey….and you can see how the work of the police is intricately linked to the community over the last 200 years.
But this afternoon I have been asked to talk about the AFP……
The AFP's Creation
The AFP, for those who do not know, was created in 1979 following a review by Sir Robert Mark, an English bureaucrat, who recommended to the Government of the day the creation of the Australian Federal Police. Following the review, the Australian Federal Police was commenced on 19th October 1979.
If you go back to 1979, given this is an exhibition, things that were on the agenda back in 1979, and this might interest those here from the media, where things such as calls for tougher gun controls; problems with train services; debate over political deals and pecuniary interests; new laws for drink-driving; and a television deal for the Leyland Brothers.
So when we reflect on those media reports that were on the front page of the papers so many years ago, they remind us of how some things have changed and some things have not.
For instance: The debate over tougher gun controls has long progressed and in now legislated in Australia …..if you look at the United States you might reflect that police have taken a very responsible attitude to gun control in this country and I think that that has led to a significant reduction of crimes committed with the use of firearms.
Concerns about drink driving have widened to include now driving while under the influence of illicit drugs…and I guess the Leyland Brothers have long been overshadowed by a different kind of brother on television - one called 'Big Brother'!
But some things haven’t changed that much… transparency and accountability back in 1979 are still very much in the forefront of people minds today. I think so too is honouring our democracy - not only within Australia but within the region.
The AFP's Evolution
So the AFP grew out of the Hilton bombing and we look after the Commonwealth Government's interests in terms of national crime. That is fraud against the Commonwealth, the importation of illicit drugs, the smuggling of people, but also the AFP has responsibility for the provision of community policing in the Australian Capital Territory where we have a contract with the ACT Government, the external territories of Jervis Bay, Christmas and the Cocos Islands…. and Norfolk Island….which there was some publicity given to the investigation of the Janelle Patton murder.
I will shortly talk to you with regard to our overseas presence in the AFP.
Events such as September 11, the Bali and London bombings, and natural disasters such as the Indian Ocean Tsunami have really put the AFP to the forefront of people’s minds in Australia.
As you look around even here in this exhibition, we have things like touch screen televisions and interactive displays it demonstrates that technology has really changed not only since the creation of the AFP, but also the inception of policing in our country. Today we have a High Tech Crime Centre in the AFP…we have things such as botnets - that interfere with a multitude of computers at any time, on-line identity fraud - which costs Australia up to $4 billion annually, and “phishing” – a crime that has seen an increase of 25 per cent over the past two years alone.
So whilst we still deal with traditional crime, we also deal with new crime types. In the last few years has seen some significant operational outcomes including:
- high-profile anti-terrorism operations;
- launching a new online child sex exploitation unit;
- expanding airport security;
- the arrest and conviction of high profile criminal identities;
- rapid deployment within the region in stabilisation missions;
- dismantling of major fraud syndicates;
- the seizure of millions of dollars of proceeds of crime assets; and
- the closure of the third largest clandestine laboratory ever discovered in the world.
Just last month, we saw great success with the alleged attempt to import more than 135 kilograms of cocaine, believed to be the biggest seizure of the drug in Queensland’s history and the fifth largest in Australian history.
The complex challenges now facing policing are very different to the ones you will see downstairs in the exhibition. Now we deal with transnational crime; the intricate web of ideological, social and economic factors driving crime; we deal with new techniques being used to commit crime; and we have become very collaborative in our efforts to fight crime.
It also reflects how we have grown in the past twenty-seven years in the AFP to become a knowledge driven organisation but one with a truly global reach.
Perhaps the clearest indication of just how much growth there has been within the AFP since its inception is that when we were created back in 1979 our budget was 73 million dollars. This year our budget is in the order of 1.4 billion dollars. The size of the organisation back in 1979 was a little of 2,000 and probably next year it will be 6,000.
In fact, the AFP has grown by 90 per cent over the past 5 years. This is extremely good growth by any standard. Over the same period, the Australian All Ordinaries grew by 55 per cent and the Dow Jones Industrial by a less impressive 11 per cent. So if you want to invest in the AFP you are sure of a good return!
We have also engaged a number of Universities to measure the performance of the organisation in different crime type areas. In fact, we are conducting a joint study with the Australian National University and Flinders University into the work we are doing in places like the Solomon Islands.
We have used Griffith University and Queensland University to set up studies into our work in counter terrorism and our work in fraud investigations. So we are very open to objective analysis in terms of performance of the organisation.
The organisation is different to traditional policing organisations. Our profile of persons joining the AFP reflects an average age of 27, more than 70 per cent of them have a tertiary qualification and more than 30 per cent have second language skills.
The AFP has not mounted any recruitment campaign yet as of the end of last month we had in the order of 2 300 unsolicited applications to join the application.
This is a very positive statement in regards to the reputation of the organisation and the desire of people wanting to come and join it.
Even my role has evolved in my five and a half years as Commissioner to include the positions of:
- Chair of the Board for the Australian Crime Commission;
- Co-chair with Indonesia of the Asia Pacific Group on Money Laundering;
- Member of the Business Government Advisory Group on National Security;
- Australian representative at ASEANPOL;
- One of 21 members on the Pacific Islands Chiefs of Police Committee; and
- A position on the Board of Governance of the Jakarta Centre for Law Enforcement Cooperation which I will talk to you about shortly.
I think this shows how the exhibition downstairs demonstrates where we have been over the past 200 years, but I guess it will be a very different space and a very different exhibition should we see it in the future.
Prevention as Innovation
I mentioned September 11 was a watershed moment in our collective history, but also had a tremendous impact on the work of the AFP.
Terrorism itself of course is nothing, as I mentioned the Hilton bombing created the AFP, but in its modern form terrorism is largely a type of transnational crime.
As we learn more about how terrorists and organised crime groups operate, it is clear that they gravitate towards weak and vulnerable environments so that they can carry out activities without fear of detection.
One of the key learnings from September 11 was the need for law enforcement and Intelligence agencies not only to investigate such terrorist-related activities, but to identify them at the earliest possible stage - to close any ‘gaps’ in our Intelligence to ensure that risk is averted.
This has really changed our focus to ensure that at the sharp end we are focussed on crime prevention, not just reaction.
You only need to look at the events in London on both the 7th and 21st July last year to see that investment in prevention that is, police and intelligence resources, have been a key focus of governments on both sides of the globe. In Australia, we have been very well supported by the government.
Sir Robert Peel, who created modern policing back in 1839, said that: "The basic mission for which the police exist is to prevent crime and disorder." I think the issue of terrorism has really focussed our thinking on how do we prevent a catastrophic event from occurring?....how do you prevent mass casualties from occurring? I think any future exhibitions of ‘In the Line of Duty’’ would need to reflect that and would in fact pass judgement on how successful or otherwise we have been.
I’d like to talk about the overseas growth of the AFP. We now have 31 posts in 26 countries around the world and that does not count our International Deployment Group. Being in all those countries working with the local agencies against drug trafficking, money laundering, child sex tourism, people smuggling and fraud effecting Australia, has provided a significant bulwark for the AFP to protect Australians against crime away from our shores.
In fact, we have entered into a number of Memoranda of Understanding with countries such as Thailand, The Philippines, Malaysia and Vietnam. But our overseas liaison officers also support countries such as Colombia, which has no Australian Embassy….we are the first Western agency to open in China, in Beijing,…we have since opened up a second post in China and we will have our third post in China towards the end of the year. By January next year, we hope to have an office in Bangladesh and another office in New Delhi India. This reflects the cooperation that we seek to have with the agencies in those areas.
One of the success stories for the AFP in recent years after the Bali bombings, and of coursed we are in a period of time where we gather and commemorate the anniversary of the Bali bombings, but since that time, the Australian Government and the Indonesian Government created the Jakarta Centre for Law Enforcement Cooperation (JCLEC).
The vision for the Centre was that it would bring law enforcement agencies in the region together and they would talk to academics and talk to forensic and explosive experts, practitioners and Intelligence experts about how we can deal with terrorism in the region.
To date more than 1,140 participants from around the world have attended JCLEC courses. Our most recent seminar involved 23 jurisdictions from around the region. That is unprecedented in terms of the cooperation that we are getting to deal with issues such as terrorism. In fact, the Centre has attracted significant attention in the European community. The European Union and the European Commission have invested heavily in the Centre. So almost by accident we have created something that many locals and law enforcement agencies around the world see as a viable proposition in terms of moving forward with the challenge in front of us in regards to terrorism.
Over time, we hope the Centre will become a regional hub for training police but also for us because often in policing we will not have all the solutions to the problems that we face and we need to listen to those who have put a career and lifetime into some of the issues that confront us.
Domestically one of the most successful packages produced by the AFP has been the Management of Serious Crime Course. We established it in 1991 on the back of our learning from the UK experience about how to manage serious and serial crime in a different way. Since we started the Management of Serious Crime model, over 800 Australian and foreign police have been through the course here in Canberra or off shore where we run it in Singapore.
Graduates have come from as far afield as the Cook Islands, Brunei, Columbia, Ireland, the Netherlands and Bangladesh. All of them have become ambassadors for what we are trying to achieve in Australian policing.
We have also set up a network Pacific Transnational Crime Coordination Units around the region in Fiji, Jakarta and Thailand to try to coordinate the exchange of information in parallel, as opposed to competition, so that countries with whom we have natural affiliations can exchange information in an open and transparent way.
Our international work has obviously led to our involvement in the Bali bombing investigations.
Bali Bombings
You will recall that 88 Australians lost their lives in the first Bali bombings and another 202 people lost their lives.
It did present us with significant challenges.
We were invited into the investigation by the Indonesian National Police…we actually had a liaison officer in Jakarta since the 1990’s so we had Bahasa speaking police and we also had a significantly positive relationship with the Indonesian National Police.
At its peak we had 120 Federal and State police working side by side with the Indonesians, more than 400 working here at home in Canberra and approximately 7,300 Australians were interviewed as a result of the investigation.
The Disaster Victim Identification (DVI) process was both one of the highlights of our efforts in the investigation in terms of forensics - we established a competency here in this country that stood the test of time. This really came to the fore after the Indian Ocean Tsunami when the Royal Thai police asked us to go over and help them with the investigations into the deaths of so many thousands, largely from Europe, who were killed in Phuket.
But back to Bali investigations, there were 46 separate crime scenes and in this exhibition you will see some of the earlier forensic work in policing – this was quite difficult….46 different crime scenes and 2,900 separate exhibits were collected as part of the investigation to be mounted by the Indonesians against the Bali bombers.
We found ourselves in a space where there were very significant Government and public expectations, here in Australia, about the AFP and what we were able to deliver. I think over time people will judge whether that response was appropriate.
We also had the second Bali bombing and the bombing of the Australian Embassy in Jakarta that was responded to in the same way. We worked with Indonesian National Police to capture the bombers….. our work with the Malaysian Police, the Royal Thai Police and the Singapore Police continues as we speak.
The other area that I mentioned is our International Deployment Group.
International Deployment Group
In the exhibition downstairs, you will see a photo in this exhibition involving a contingent of Detectives assembled from each of the Australian States.
Their task was to identify the criminal element amongst the Australian troops, and to provide investigative skills to detect and prosecute criminal offences during World War 1 – you could say this was Australian’s first international policing mission.
At the request of Prime Minister Lyons, they sailed to Egypt in March 1916 and arrived in Cairo almost one month later. Nine decades later, the AFP has the capacity to provide a somewhat more rapid response – we have been able to put our police offshore within 24 hours after violence erupting in the Solomon Islands and East Timor.
But our overseas missions have included our work with the United Nations in Cyprus since 1964. I think most people would be aware, but we don’t get a lot of visibility around the fact, that we are in Jordon training the Iraqi police as part of an international contingent, and we are in the Sudan working with international law enforcement agencies trying to rebuild the Sudanese policing arrangements.
The organisation has been challenged to provide significant policing capacity offshore, which led to the creation of the International Deployment Group - launched by the Prime Minister in 2004.
Today as I speak to you, we have nearly 600 members of the AFP and State and Territory police deployed around the region in the Solomon Islands, East Timor, Nauru, Vanuatu, Sudan, Cyprus and Jordan.
The Government announced just recently further funding for the International Deployment Group, which will be built up to 1200.
There is a photograph here of my visit to Malaita and Tulaghi Islands, Solomon Islands, December 2005. I think one of the things that most people don’t appreciate in terms of policing offshore - not only the AFP but also the State and Territory police who are there to assist us - is that it must bring back to the Australian community a better policing capability. Their understanding of cultural issues, their understanding of the basics of community policing must benefit our policing here at home. None of them has left these experiences untouched by the closeness of which they interact with the local communities…..and there are extraordinary stories.
A police officer from Victoria was working in the Solomon Islands Crisis Centre when she received a phone call to shoot the local bull. The question was asked “why do you want to shoot the bull? Is the bull sick? Did the bull run wild?” The answer came back “Since the police took all the fire arms out of the community we have no gun to shoot the bull….. and we need to shoot the bull for Christmas dinner!” There are all sorts of strange requests….
One of the challenges for us is to ensure that we are accountable for what we are doing offshore, because for all the dollars spent on policing are dollars that could also be spent on health and education - and that is where ultimately we want the investment by Government to be – so nation building and community building is the outcome we are working towards……
The AFP Beyond
In closing, I will just talk about where we are going in the future.
A lot depends on what happens in the broader, global community in relation to social, political and economic developments. Pressures on marginal economies are likely to fuel instability, while changing trends in demographics, the environment and health, could also lead to substantial shifts in government priorities and resource allocations, with implications for law and order.
However, it is clear that National Security continue to be a dominant focus for all of us.
Conflicts driven by religious, ethnic, economic and political disputes are also likely to continue in our region.
The impacts of globalisation will continue to play an important role in shaping our environment. Trans-national crime will be facilitated by rapid and largely unrestricted flows of information, capital, ideas, goods, services and people across borders.
Emerging crime types - particularly identity theft, cyber crime, network invasions and system viruses - can also be expected to continue.
The AFP’s current work with our regional neighbours to stabilise their law and order situations and build a law and justice system will have had time to produce generational change. The police forces of those regional countries will be much stronger partners in preserving the peace, stability and good governance of our region – and that’s why we want to work so closely with them today.
Notwithstanding the developments in technology that will characterise the years ahead….people will still be the difference as to whether we are successful or not.
It is clear that we will need to move with the times - it will be just as important to have the skills to deal with the any new or developing crime scene so...we will continue to develop our capacity, and the capacity of our communities to deal with future challenges.
Conclusion
The philosophy underpinning our activities recognises that the provision of support to local law and justice institutions forms the basis for a stable security environment for emerging nations…. and it does provide a platform for their long-term development and consequently greater security for our citizens.
Delivering on that philosophy are the men and women of policing, officers who stand ready to serve the Australian community regardless of the theatre of operation whether that be at home in our region or beyond the region.
These men and women chose to be on the front line in the protection of the community - and accept the inherent dangers that accompany such a role.
As you walk through the exhibition today and look at the faces of the men and women of policing– captured in various images and documents - I hope you have a clearer understanding not only of their story but also of the story that helped shape our future as well..
Thank you