Mr HATTON (2:12 PM) —My question without notice is to the Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Transport and Regional Services. Will the minister confirm that the government is yet to provide a copy of the Customs report detailing serious security breaches at Sydney (Kingsford Smith) Airport to the New South Wales police minister? Minister, isn’t the government’s approach to protecting Australia’s national security as fragmented, fractured and uncoordinated as in the United States prior to lessons learnt from the September 2001 terrorist attacks?

Mr ANDERSON (Minister for Transport and Regional Services) —As the former shadow minister, who asked a question a moment ago, would well know from his briefing yesterday, that was an internal Customs report that was put together for their own internal use and instruction. It was not intended for release. Let me make this point again because the Labor Party does not seem to want to understand the key point in this. The report at the heart of those questions was put together in 2003. That was confirmed again yesterday by the head of Customs. It does not describe the current situation at Sydney airport.

Furthermore, it was put together before the latest round of 65,000 background checks was conducted on staff working in security sensitive areas of Australian airports. As I have said to this place, in those checks ASIO did not identify any individual as having a history of politically motivated violence. But in the unfortunate climate that we now have, where the opposition is more intent on playing the politics of this issue, I again refer the House to an independent person who knows more about aviation security in this country than anyone opposite. I do not think anyone would challenge that assertion. There would be no-one in this country better equipped than Neil Fergus, who was responsible for aviation security at Sydney airport during the Sydney Olympics, who was a consultant in Athens for the games last year, and who has reviewed 40 airports, internationally. He said:

That is the message that I think should be heard by the Australian people. There is no complacency or smugness on our part. I have made it quite plain, at all points, that we get very regular updates, very regular reports on aviation security. We benchmark as often as we can. We have the Office of Transport Security taking forward the government’s policy. The government sets these policies. They are then taken forward by our agencies. We seek to learn, at every point, where changes need to be made and we make those changes as quickly and efficiently as we possibly can in the interests of the safety of the travelling public of Australia.