Customs and AusCheck Legislation Amendment (Organised Crime and Other Measures) Bill 2013 Introduced to the Senate

The Customs and AusCheck Legislation Amendment (Organised Crime and Other Measures) Bill 2013 was introduced to the Senate last week in a bid to mitigate vulnerabilities in Australia's aviation and maritime sectors that can be exploited by organised crime.

Two recent reports have highlighted organised crime threats and vulnerabilities in the maritime and aviation sectors:

• the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Law Enforcement (PJCLE) 2011 report following its Inquiry into the adequacy of aviation and maritime security measures to combat serious and organised crime, and

• a 2012 report prepared by Joint Task Force Polaris that examined criminality in the Sydney maritime environment.

Issues identified by Polaris and the PJCLE report include:

• concerns about particular individuals having access to restricted zones at airports and seaports

• individuals using access to cargo movement information to track illicit goods and providing that information to criminal groups, and

• individuals accessing containers in terminals to collect illicit goods for criminal groups.

This Bill amends the Customs Act 1901 (CTH), AusCheck Act 2007 (CTH)and Law Enforcement Integrity Commissioner Act 2006 (CTH). It contains measures to:

• strengthen the cargo supply chain against criminal infiltration, through:

• the creation of new obligations on cargo terminal operators and cargo handlers

• the creation of new offences for using information from the Integrated Cargo System to aid a criminal organisation, and

• the adjustment of existing controls and sanctions under the Customs Act to increase their utility

• introduce the power for the Secretary of the Attorney-General?s Department to suspend Aviation and Maritime Security Identification Cards, or processing of applications, if the cardholder or applicant has been charged with a serious offence, and

• remove the prohibitions on the Deputy Speaker of the House of Representatives and Deputy President of the Senate being members of the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Law Enforcement.

As announced in the Minister's Second Reading Speech, this bill is part of a broader action to tackle organised crime through:

• National Coordination Team and an Anti-Gang Intelligence Coordination Centre based in Canberra;

• Strike Teams in Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane — made up of Federal Police, State Police and Tax Office Investigators; and

• Liaison officers in Perth, Adelaide and Darwin.

The Minister also indicated that in the"near future I will be able to bring forward national antigang legislation and national unexplained wealth legislation to give our law enforcement agencies even more power to target organised crime." It is yet to be seen what the impact of the legislation will have on current Australian law.

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