BILLS › Australian Crime Commission Amendment (National Policing Information) Bill 2015, Australian Crime Commission (National Policing Information Charges) Bill 2015
Mrs GRIGGS (Solomon) (17:05): I, too, rise to speak on the Australian Crime Commission Amendment (National Policing Information) Bill 2015. Mr Deputy Speaker Vasta, as you know, my husband, Paul, is a police officer of some 30-plus years, and I know firsthand how hard he and his 1,400 or so colleagues work to ensure the safety and security of the cities, towns and communities right across the Northern Territory. I am reassured that the coalition government, under the stewardship of the member for Stirling, the Minister for Justice, is using its legislative powers to improve policing outcomes and law enforcement capabilities in the face of the ever-evolving crime threat in this country. The measures being debated today will see the Australian Crime Commission and CrimTrac merged into a single entity, with the goal of improving productivity and effectiveness at both an operational and an administrative level. CrimTrac contributes to Australia's crime-fighting effort by facilitating information sharing between police agencies across the state and territory borders. The Australian Crime Commission began its operations in 2003 with a broad remit to combat serious and organised crime such as corruption, terrorism, drug related activities and, indeed, money laundering. It works with local enforcement agencies and has recently had some success in tapping into the insidious trade of the drug ice in the Northern Territory and indeed nationally, which I will talk about in more detail soon. CrimTrac has its origins back in July 2000 with the signing of an intergovernmental agreement by representatives from all states and territories. It was 10 years earlier, in March 1990, that the Commonwealth, the six states and the Northern Territory entered into an agreement concerning the National Exchange of Police Information as a National Common Police Service, formerly known as the NEPI agreement. I was working in the IT section at the Northern Territory Police around this time and so remember very clearly the discussions that were being had around this particular agreement and how excited many members were. The intergovernmental agreement identified that CrimTrac in coming years would include a national automated fingerprint identification system and a national DNA criminal investigation system. The Northern Territory Police's forensic unit was leading the way in terms of DNA and was recording a lot of DNA long before other states. They were actually leading the area around DNA collection. A national child sex offender register is something that George Christensen and I are very keen on having made public, but there is a lot of work to be done before it gets to that stage. The purpose of the Australian Crime Commission Amendment (National Policing Information) Bill and the Australian Crime Commission (National Policing Information Charges) Bill 2015 is to bring CrimTrac and the Australian Crime Commission together under one banner. The legislation is intended to implement last year's decision by the Law, Crime and Community Safety Council that the Commonwealth will take steps to implement a merger between the two agencies. This merger brings together Australia's national criminal intelligence and information capabilities. A unified resource of this type will value-add law enforcement's national understanding of criminal activity and will allow police, justice agencies and policy makers at all levels of government to adopt a more effective, efficient and evidence based response to crime. Under the proposed merger, CrimTrac will carry its functions over to the ACC, providing nationally coordinated criminal history checks. The CrimTrac Board of Management and the position of CrimTrac CEO will be abolished, but the merged agency will continue to carry out all of CrimTrac's functions, which are referred to as 'national policing information functions' under the merged agency structure. The merger will broaden the remit and functions of the ACC board and ensure that states and territories have the capacity to retain control over board decisions should the composition of the ACC board change over time. It will set out the constitutional basis for the merged agency's new national policing information functions and enable the merged agency to charge a fee for goods or services that it provides in the course of performing its national policing information functions, as CrimTrac currently does. The legislation will preserve the current CrimTrac funding model, which allows charges for certain services to support the provision of national policing information systems and services to police at no cost to Australian governments. CrimTrac, it should be pointed out, is entirely self-funded through revenue generated primarily from criminal history checks. It will also broaden the types of duties a state or territory law may impose on the merged agency to include duties relating to the merged agency's national policing information functions and place limits on the Crime Commission's CEO's ability to disclose national policing information to non-board agencies, as currently apply to CrimTrac. It will enable the ACC's CEO to disclose national coordinated criminal history checks to an accredited agency or the individual that is the subject to the check and continue the National Policing Information Systems and Services Special Account. The merger will be cost-neutral and small savings are expected over the forward estimates. The ACC has reach right across Australia and in September last year was involved in a joint initiative with Northern Territory Police, Australia Federal Police and the Australian Border Force, as well as the Australian Crime Commission, in a major drug bust in Darwin. This was all part of Taskforce Nemeses. Two women were charged following an operation focused on the trafficking of methamphetamine into the Territory. The operation showcased the benefits of agencies working together and the collaborative capacities of the nation's law enforcement agencies. In the sting, a 46-year-old woman who was found with 500 grams of ice concealed in chocolate wrappers was charged with supplying a commercial quantity of methamphetamine, possessing a commercial quantity of methamphetamine and possessing an implement to administer a dangerous drug. Another woman attempting to board a flight from Darwin to Sydney was located with $55,000 in her possession and a search of her home in suburban Palmerston, which is where I live, located 165 grams of ice. She was charged with drugs, property and conspiracy charges. Following these arrests, New South Wales police executed a search warrant at a residence in Sydney and seized 1,000 grams of a substance suspected of being ice. In the Northern Territory, as it is across Australia, ice has become a terrible problem, with its reach extending from Darwin's nightclub strip to remote communities many hundreds of kilometres from the nearest city or town. It takes a terrible toll on individuals, families and communities. Were it not for the efforts of agencies such as the Crime Commission and CrimTrac, the problem would be much worse, I fear. In May last year the ACC reported in its Illicit drug data report that the price of methamphetamine in the Northern Territory was $1,600 an ounce compared with the national average of $1,000 an ounce. The ACC chief executive officer, Chris Dawson, said the high price for ice in the Northern Territory reflected the significant mark-up that occurs in remote communities. Other key findings in the Illicit drug data reportincluded the number of national illicit drug seizures and arrests. The weight of drugs seized nationally in 2013-14 was the highest on record. Nationally, law enforcement seized a record number of amphetamine-type stimulants and police also made 26,269 amphetamine-type stimulant related arrests nationally, the highest on record. The annual median purity of analysed methamphetamine samples has continued to increase since 2010-11, with purity figures reported in 2013-14 the highest on record. The number of national steroid seizures and arrests continued to increase and also were the highest on record. The weight of other and unknown drugs seized nationally was the highest on record, increasing over 600 per cent from the previous reporting period. The number of laboratory detections were relatively stable in the 2013-14 period, with 744 detected right across Australia. The majority of these—68 per cent—were detected in residential locations and 12 per cent were detected in vehicles. Australia's law enforcement and justice agencies are increasingly dependent on accurate information and intelligence to ensure that our officers on the ground, at our borders and in our intelligence agencies can do their jobs. Merging CrimTrac and the ACC offers significant strategic opportunities to the agencies and national policing and justice sectors, such as: increased connectivity between key national intelligence and police information agencies; enhanced quality and timeliness of information and intelligence delivered to front-line officers; improved agency and national productivity by removing duplication and providing a single vision for the agencies; and an enhanced national threat picture, providing better evidence to inform operational decision making and priorities. The more we can strengthen this capacity, the quicker our police will be able to identify the patterns and associations that can help detect and disrupt significant threats, including terrorism, international drug trafficking and cybercrime. The two bills will amend the ACC Act to enable the merged agency to carry out all of CrimTrac's functions, also known as 'national policing information functions'. They will enable the merged agency board to set high-level priorities for the agency's new national policing information functions and provide the board with additional, specific functions currently exercised by the CrimTrac board, such as making recommendations to the relevant Commonwealth minister about expenditure from the national policing information systems and services' special accounts. This will also ensure that the merged agencies can continue to share national policing information and enable the merged agency to continue CrimTrac's current funding model in the same way as CrimTrac currently does, as well as providing nationally coordinated criminal history checks to a range of stakeholders. The coalition government will continue to fight crimes at all levels within the community. Measures such as the domestic violence strategy show that we are committed to doing what it takes to stop crime in the home, and this legislation shows that we are prepared to hone organisations charged with upper-level crime and organised crime. Mr Deputy Speaker Vasta, I know you will agree with me when I say that I will always support legislation that will help our men and women in blue. They work tirelessly to keep our community safe. I would like to place on record my thanks to all law enforcement agency members across the country. But I give particular thanks to the men and women of the Northern Territory's police force. Reece Kershaw is the new Police Commissioner for the Northern Territory. I think he is doing a fantastic job. He and his team are working really hard to restore the Territory community's faith in our outstanding police force. Unfortunately, there have been a few bad eggs. Perception was not as good as it should have been. But the men and women in our police force do an incredible job, and they should not be judged on a few bad eggs. I have absolute, 100 per cent faith that Commissioner Kershaw and his team will restore the community's faith. As I said, I would like to place on record my thanks to the men and women of the Northern Territory police force. I hope that this legislation passing will give them the tools that they need to fight crime in the Territory and to keep our homes safe from the criminal element. With that, I commend the bill to the House.