Security in Government 2006 conference: Regional policing for national security
Address by Australian Federal Police Commissioner Mick Keelty APM
Tuesday 9 May 2006
National Convention Centre, Canberra
Please check against delivery
I’d like to begin by acknowledging the traditional owners of this land, the Ngunnawal People. It is important to recognise their historical connection to the land on which we gather today.
- Attorney-General, Philip Ruddock;
- ASIO Director General of Security, Paul O’Sullivan; Secretary of the Attorney-General's Department, Robert Cornall;
- Deputy Secretary of the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet, Duncan Lewis;
- Chief Commissioner of Victoria Police, Christine Nixon,
- distinguished guests; ladies and gentlemen.
Thank you for your invitation today.
I appreciate the opportunity to address the topic ‘Regional policing for national security’ alongside representatives from so many fields working to maintain national security.
I find it quite appropriate that ASIO’s Paul O’Sullivan has just presented on security challenges, and that I will be followed by Robert Campbell from Defence Signals Directorate about challenges to security environments in relation to IT. It reinforces the core tenet of national security, that it must be a truly whole-of-government, and indeed community response.
Because if we are talking about policing in the region today, we need to understand that it requires multi-jurisdictional addressing of a number of challenges, not only in security – but across many disciplines in society, particularly in a rapidly changing environment.
You only need to look at the United Nations’ current human security agenda as evidence of this. Seven areas are identified as threats to the individual – economic security, health security, food security, environmental security, personal security, community security and political security.
We are at a time in our history in this country where we are attempting to balance human rights, civil liberties and powers of the State to address national security. At the same time, we find ourselves inexorably involved in similar issues offshore.
This is why I recognise the development from last year’s theme of ‘working together’. I think all of you here in this room are very aware of the need for robust partnerships in order to respond to security threats in a timely and appropriate manner. So it is appropriate that the focus this year is on security and the Australian community.
All of us at some level are responsible for managing security across communities – across agencies and for the development of security capability and response.
What I want to discuss this morning is how the security environment has changed. I want to discuss from the AFP’s perspective, the impact of what is happening in the Solomons and what this means for us.
I think we all accept that weak and failed states can have an enormous impact on our own community. For example, we have seen in the past how some small pacific states have been used as money laundering centres for Russian organised crime. We are yet to unravel the role, if any, of Taiwanese and Chinese influences behind the recent violence in the Solomons. These complex influences are exacerbating an already difficult relationship between the Malaitans and the Guadacanalese.
To what extent, if any, is Chinese organised crime influencing the corruption of the PNG government or its officials?
Add to the mix the recent violence between the East Timor Defence Force the F-FDTL and the East Timor Police Force, the PNTL and what that means to the balance of power in the East Timor Government.
Changes to the security environment
As the Attorney General stated this morning:
If our neighbourhood is not safe, then neither are we.
September 11, the bombings in Bali, the Jakarta hotel bombing, the bombing outside the Australian Embassy in Jakarta and the Indian Ocean Tsunami, all happened outside of our borders. They touched the lives of Australians and dramatically altered government and community expectations on how to deal with threats to society.
The protection of vulnerable nations within our region has become a greater priority for government.
This in turn has profoundly affected policing in Australia and the context of Australian and regional policing, particularly in the past 5 years.
It has had to change.
The AFP now plays a key role in the Australian government framework which recognises the critical importance of assisting regional law enforcement to build a sustainable capacity to develop and deliver effective, efficient and accountable police services.
This is very different to the role security played on the government’s agenda a decade ago. Where policies of the past focused heavily on health and education – and rightly so – we have seen a shift in emphasis to security especially during the past two Federal elections.
So we as a security community can not afford to be parochial, or to work as silos in respect to national security.
In some ways we are already well down the track.
The Bali bombings engaged DVI experts from all jurisdictions and RAMSI engages all jurisdictions.
What I would like to highlight is that the majority of our work in the regions is not an AFP solution. It is an Australian policing initiative towards which the Australian policing community is contributing.
Before I move to discuss regional policing and in the context of what I have just stated, it is important that as we deliver whole of government responses, we understand the boundaries of our public comments because there are overlaps in many areas of policy today that are a product of our contemporary solutions.
On that note, I want to make it clear that my comments on regional policing are not about regional foreign policy which is of course in the providence of DFAT.
As we all know, the Asia-Pacific is an incredibly diverse region, comprising 53 countries and more than 60 per cent of the world’s population.
Each of these countries has its own political, economic and social structures - often incorporating different cultures, languages, beliefs, values and practices - as well as levels of wealth and development.
But despite differences in character and composition, the communities of each nation share a common desire for peace and justice.
Crime represents one of the clearest manifestations of these principles being violated. Illegal activities such as fraud, corruption, organised crime, terrorism or illicit drug trade come at a high social and economic cost.
Unfortunately today no society is immune from these forms of crime. If we look at the Asia-Pacific, it is known as a major production and distribution hub for illicit drugs. It is also a preferred base for international syndicates involved in the trafficking of human beings, especially women and children, for forced and exploitative labour. And it has been chosen as a base by many organised crime groups – including terrorist organisations such as Jemaah Islamiyah.
As I mentioned earlier, one of the great concerns about organised criminal groups is that they tend to target weak and vulnerable countries struggling with poor governance structures and social, political and/or economic instability.
Such conditions allow these groups to set up and conduct operations with relative ease and a substantially reduced risk of detection than would otherwise be the case in a strong, functional society.
You will hear from others today about the security challenges caused by advances in communications and transport technologies, and how they allow threats to easily spread across borders, potentially undermining the security of nations across the region, or indeed the world.
In Australia, this has led to a significant shift in our crime fighting focus, with many more law enforcement resources now being directed offshore.
We have been busy not only trying to improve the capability of some overseas policing counterparts, but to also work to enhance co-ordination of intelligence and information exchange with law enforcement partners. In the Asia-Pacific, this has included setting up Transnational Crime Units in Fiji, Samoa, Tonga, Vanuatu and Papua New Guinea, as well as the Pacific Transnational Crime Coordination Centre in Suva, Fiji.
In the 12 month period to October 2005 the AFP’s international network received more than 7,000 tasks and lodged nearly 15,000 outgoing tasks with various overseas law enforcement agencies. The majority of these tasks related to the exchange of operational information and intelligence
The International Deployment Group set up three years ago comprises about 500 personnel – from the AFP and many State and Territory Police – who are now engaged in a range of missions in the Solomon Islands, Papua New Guinea, East Timor and in Nauru.
There is also an historic deployment to the Sudan to impart skills and experience to the Sudanese police. We have also looked at crime trends and the need for us to position ourselves for emerging transnational crime so we have officers in Bangladesh Colombo, Sri Lanka and India.
But the more we learn from what we’ve done, the more we realise what we need to do.
The AFP has set up initiatives such as the International Management of Serious Crime Course, operational cooperation (JOC and MOC) and invested in the management of organisations by exposing them to international best practice. We sponsor participation in Master programs with Australian academic institutions and enhanced our network of CT liaison officers.
Each mission presents a unique set of challenges for the IDG and time constraints prevent me from talking about all of them today.
In the case of the Solomon’s it has been one step forward, two steps back. For instance, up until three weeks ago, we had the first elections successfully completed against a backdrop of relative peace and calm. There had also been a significant positive impact economically.
During the times of the greatest civil unrest, the Solomon Island economy is estimated to have contracted by 14.3 per cent in 2000, which was reduced to 9 percent in 2001 and a further 2.4 per cent in 2002.
The Central Bank of Solomon Islands estimated in its 2004 Annual Report that the economy had grown by 5.6 per cent in 2003 and again by 5.5 per cent in 2004, the fastest rates of growth since the early 1990s. The Central Bank had projected a growth rate of 4 per cent in 2005 and that was expected to continue into this year.
More than 3700 weapons and 300,000 rounds of ammunition had been seized, more than 7000 arrests made and more than 10,800 charges laid.
But it was more than that - women and children had begun to return to the streets. This is an example of how the changing work of the AFP extends beyond law enforcement outcomes to impact social and cultural outcomes.
But, of course, all of that has now changed. We need to monitor the economic development of the Solomons over the next 12 months to understand the impact of the most recent violence and the loss of local business in the capital, Honiara.
We eventually need to reach the goal where the people of these countries acknowledge that their quality of life and their future has improved because of our presence.
On that score, I caution that some of the observations and criticisms made over the course of the past 2 weeks have been made by people with vested interests that are not always declared or are done with 20/20 hindsight.
There are many examples around the world where failed states have reached the first stages of governance by having successful elections. But the population needs to take ownership and interest in the outcomes. You can see from the pictures here that many in the Solomons community took pride in tearing apart what had been slowly built up in recent years.
More disturbing is the violence used against RAMSI personnel and equipment reminiscent of the very actions from which the people of the Solomons were rescued only three years ago.
But unfortunately, we need the thousands of Solomon Islanders who danced and sung their way through the very public celebrations of the first anniversary of RAMSI to speak out against what has happened.
The longer the security situation remains unstable, the less likely that foreign investment will be attracted to Honiara and the people will remain worse off because money will need to be poured into security instead of health, education and employment.
Conscious of the responsibility to measure our performance, we wave been working in conjunction with institutions to ensure that we have independent and qualified assessment of our performance.
The University of QLD is doing performance measurement around our Counter Terrorism activities in Australia and around the world. Griffith University is measuring performance in Economic Crime, Canberra University is measuring our performance in drug investigations.
We can tell you the return on investment in dollar terms, for the work of the AFP in drug investigations, in fraud investigations and in counter terrorism work.
But what difference, if any, have we made in the Solomon’s and how do we measure that?
Again, to me these are important questions because the capacity building programs are fast becoming the largest investment by government into the AFP. As I mentioned earlier, the cost of this means that other areas of public policy may not be receiving the same level of attention from government which places a heavy onus upon us to understand and measure our performance.
Flinders University and the Australian National University are conducting a joint study on our work in the Solomon Islands.
Because despite political differences, it has always been my view that when we enter a foreign country we do not impose our own values and systems of judgement upon them. Instead, we need to listen and learn how they do their business on their patch.
What have we learnt from listening? What does the Solomon Islands need, what does East Timor need?
One key learning is that policing in the regions requires long term, sustainable help. Australian policing is not the only option – we must be there in partnership paying particular attention to the cultural and social differences to our way of policing.
In East Timor we are still addressing the security issue; however there is little economic investment and we still don’t have occupation for the youth. If you do the policing right you can then not only create security, but create other things that can benefit the community well beyond what policing can do on its own.
The point I am making is that with all of the challenges we face in our world today, we need to recognise that from a more strategic perspective, this period represents a time in our history when we must understand the long term nature of the problem and manage our expectations of the time it will take to turn things around.
RAMSI is a key example of trying to provide long term solutions. Another timely example is the AFP’s full-time presence in Indonesia. The AFP and the Indonesian National Police (INP) continue to work closely in the fight against transnational crime and terrorism.
The discovery last week of more suicide bombs in Indonesia highlights why policing solutions in the region require a long term commitment and plan.
Bomb making techniques are widely known. They've been taught in a number of training camps around the world, and a number of people have undergone that training. That's one of the focuses not only of the AFP and the Indonesian national police, but of police forces right throughout the region and indeed intelligence agencies around the region.
I have deliberately focussed on regional and international efforts of the AFP in addressing security in the Australian community. I have avoided talking about the domestic work in security by the AFP because outside of aviation security, much of that work involves matters currently before the courts.
In addressing the regional and international work of the AFP, I want to emphasise that we are working in collaboration with many Australian agencies such as AusAID, DFAT and Defence as well as our international partners. These are as I say long term commitments.
The vulnerability for the security of the community caused by weak or failed states in our immediate region cannot be understated. Exploitation of their jurisdiction is but only one side of the story – we see many examples of the exploitation of their natural resources without regard for future environmental sustainability.
While the task is complex and a difficult one for us, it has been an area of significant growth for us. Mindful of that, the AFP has gone to some lengths to ensure that we are accountable through assessment and evaluation conducted by experts outside our organisation.
Others will talk more about domestic security but in a globalised world from financial transactions to international travel – we are only ever going to be as secure as the weakest link in our region. We understand that and we want to work with others to deal with it. The consequences of walking away or ignoring it are not worth contemplating.
Thank you.