Subject:
Border security
E&OE...
PRIME MINISTER:
The purpose of the news conference is to announce a major upgrade in Australia's border control system. The process of preparing this upgrade began at the end of last year. The work has been carried out by ASIO, The Department of Immigration and Citizenship and other Government agencies. In essence, it involves the introduction of more state of the art software which will enable a massively more comprehensive and effective examination of the antecedents of people who seek visa entry into this country. Australia already has arguably the most effective border control system in the world, because with the exception of Australian citizens we do not allow visa free entry into this country of any person, from anywhere in the world. I am able to announce that the new system will be introduced in September of this year and it will significantly enhance our capacity to examine the background of people who seek to come to this country. The new border control system will involve new levels of electronic connectivity, particularly between ASIO and the Department of Immigration; advanced analysis of personal details for all travellers to Australia; higher quality data matching; more efficient systems with enhanced auditing capacity to ensure that security requirements do not slow down processes affecting legitimate business and tourism.
You will understand that for purposes, for reasons of confidentiality and security, I do not intend to go into particular scenarios. That would be self-defeating. But I can explain that the new system advanced identity management will enable our border control authorities to check the travel and certain behavioural patterns of visa applicants to determine if they might constitute a security risk to Australia. As you know the task of border control, is on the one hand to identify known people of concern and false documents and on the other to try to identify unknown people who on further investigation should also be refused entry. Our security checking arrangements already cover such matters as criminal history and terrorist connections including training with terrorist organisations and the financing of terrorist acts. These new measures will include amongst other techniques, matching movement and financial data with associations a person may have overseas or in Australia to provide a more comprehensive picture and targeted security advice. Australia's record to date is very good, because approximately half of the visas refused on security grounds each year come from what could loosely be called, the unknown category.
I would imagine that given the stark security challenges that this country faces and indeed all western societies face at present, the need for an enhanced capacity to check the backgrounds of people who want to come to this country, would have wide community support. Plainly, these announcements represent the end result of a process that began at the end of last year. It's not a process that has been initiated as a result of recent events, it has been a process which has been in train now for some months and its introduction will be accelerated so that the new system can commence some time in September of this year. We believe that this will give Australia an even more effective, more sophisticated and certainly world-class 21st Century border control system. We regard border control as one of the foundation and bedrock responsibilities of this government. We live in a globalised world where the free movement of people is essential to our economic and political existence. But the enjoyment of that free movement carries with it, the responsibility on the part of the government to do all it humanly can to make sure that people who come to this country don't come with a desire or a capacity, or both, to do harm and do evil to Australian citizens. I think we have seen in the past two weeks, without making any judgements as to the guilt or innocence of any particular individuals. We have seen the global reach and potential of terrorism. The notion that one can pick and choose as to where you fight or deal with terrorism is an outdated 20th Century notion which ignores the phenomenon and reality of the globalised world and the sophisticated communications techniques which are available to those who would seek to do harm to us.
These new measures that will come into Australia in September give us a greatly enhanced capacity through the use of very sophisticated software techniques give us extraordinary additional capacity to drill down into the backgrounds of people who seek to come to Australia using methods and collating and connecting data and behaviour and patterns of travel and behaviour which have not previously been possible.
JOURNALIST:
Prime Minister you say this process began at the end of last year, but has the announcement of its implementation been brought forward because of recent events?
PRIME MINISTER:
Well it's been accelerated, let me put it that way, it's been accelerated. But the important thing is that this began at the end of last year. This is not some kind of reaction to what's happened over the past few weeks. Obviously what has happened over the past few weeks is on everybody's mind and I don't make any apology for making certain that everything is humanly done, that can be done. Now we do our best, we can't give guarantees but we do our best. This system I am told, naturally there is a certain pride of authorship in those who give me this advice, but this system I am told is better than any border control system of its kind elsewhere and I have no reason to doubt that advice. It is an infinitely more effective and sophisticated system than the one that it will replace, although the one it will replace has served us very well but it does involve the application of software and techniques and approaches to connectivity which will enable us to access the background behaviour of people. I mean it is one thing to have a situation where a person has a criminal record or has a known association with a terrorist organisation, or a known association with an individual terrorist, and if that is the case now, that person's name automatically goes on the migrant alert system the MAL. But it's an entirely different thing to be able to track patterns of travel and other behaviour which suggest a predisposition on the part of somebody towards malign behaviour and that opens up a whole new field of possibility and a whole new range of opportunities in detecting people as being those for whom a visa might be refused or might at the very least be subject to questioning when they arrive in this country.
JOURNALIST:
Sir, is there any new types of antecedents that will be investigated or is it just a (inaudible)....?
PRIME MINISTER:
Well I think you will understand, beyond what I have said, if I start trying to provide scenarios and mock examples I could be doing damage to the effectiveness of the system. The point I make is that I understand your question, but I've said you could examine travel patterns and other associations and you could match financial data with associations but I do think if I start to go into further scenarios, I do run the risk of perhaps indicating to people who I would not want to give an indication to, at what our security agencies have in mind.
JOURNALIST:
Sir, but are these new pieces of information to us?
PRIME MINISTER:
Oh yes.
JOURNALIST:
They weren't available before?
PRIME MINISTER:
Well because there wasn't a technique to get hold of them, except through the normal methods of checking a person's criminal record as notified to us by international agencies or terrorist or other associations. Clearly, it will be new information,yes. The Attorney may want to add something to it.
MINISTER RUDDOCK:
Well let me just go through the scenarios as simply as I can. We do already have a wealth of information about people whom we believe pose potential risks, because of their criminal antecedents, because they are known to security agencies and we put that together as part of the movement alert system. The purpose of analysing electronically and quickly, other data that might be available to you and is, as part of a risk analysis of people who potentially require further detailed assessment and so what will happen with the new resourcing is that we will have a capacity to analyse very quickly that data and be able to deal with the full range of people who are seeking to enter Australia and we have something in the order of four million tourists. We have hundreds of thousands of other temporary entrants - students, as well as people on work visas. If you are going to focus on those that potentially pose a risk, you either try to analyse everybody, which means you would essentially, largely stop the movement of people in or out of Australia or you find ways of being able to identify particular information which, if linked with other information you hold, might suggest that further enquiry is necessary. This new approach with the resourcing for new software will enable immigration and the security agencies to address these issues far more quickly than they now do and the analysis to be far more reaching than it has been in the past.
JOURNALIST:
Prime Minister can I ask how much this new software program costs and secondly, we saw with the experience of the doctors who have been questioned...?
PRIME MINISTER:
The experience with the what?
JOURNALIST:
The doctors being questioned for the UK terror bombing, but those are already people who are in Australia. Are we able to retrospectively look at visa holders in Australia to see whether they could fit any of these suspicious profiles...?
PRIME MINISTER:
There would be a capacity to do that, yes. Of course there would be, there wouldn't be any legal prohibition on that happening. I mean we are able through whatever combination of circumstances it may be information suggesting a pattern of suspicious behaviour comes to light which justifies people being questioned, visa holders, then we can do that yes of course.
MINISTER RUDDOCK:
Can I just say in relation to the funding, I mean one of the reasons this has been brought forward is because if you go through the process of looking at the level of detail you need to be able to make announcements about the precise cost, that means you've started to look at acquisition, and you've made estimates in relation to that. We are bringing the whole process forward, and so I wouldn't want to say precisely in a sort of Budget context, what the cost might involve, but I am told that it is nevertheless a significant commitment that we are making.
PRIME MINISTER:
It will be quite expensive.
JOURNALIST:
One of the problems (inaudible) is that once the terrorists know the measures you are taking they may have the initiative (inaudible)?
PRIME MINISTER:
That is why we don't intend to go into elaborate scenarios.
JOURNALIST:
Yes, but that's the whole point, they've got the ball in their court, with imitative they can work out ways of somehow methods of (inaudible)?
MINISTER RUDDOCK:
Look we took advice as to how much we could say today and the formulations that the Prime Minister has used were agreed with the relevant agencies and we were very conscious that any announcement and because people want to know what you are doing in relation to the situation that we face that any announcement should not in any way expose the agencies methods to the sort of examination that would allow those about whom we are concerned to change their behaviour.
PRIME MINISTER:
The information we have provided today has been provided, having full regard to the advice that both of us have received from the Director General of ASIO and from the Department of Immigration and also from my own department. We have to strike a balance between reassuring a naturally concerned public that everything is being done that can be done, but equally not providing any information to those who try and bust the system. Now, we've struck that balance by the sort of explanation we have given today.
JOURNALIST:
So who will provide this information on the visa applicants?
MINISTER RUDDOCK:
Well we collect that information now from a variety of sources. I mean when people apply for travel to Australia, there are two routes - it's either electronically dealt with, in which case the information is from travel agents and certain information is required to be provided it comes through a computer system that operates in Atlanta in the United States run by CITA who are the organisation who provide all the interconnectivity for travel agents around the world and airlines, and we receive that information, it's processed here in Sydney, we have name matching technology which enables the agencies to assess whether further enquiries are required in the individual cases. And there is a risk-based approach with it, other people are required to apply from certain parts of the world for paper-based visas, and all of the processing against the movement alert system is undertaken in relation to all of them. But it is the enhancement of this system that will enable us to look at those people for whom further enquiries might be necessary.
JOURNALIST:
So if that person has an undesirable association...an undesirable association as in the example that the Prime Minister gave, how do you discover it?
MINISTER RUDDOCK:
Well let me just say there are ways and means and they are matters about which we are not able to speak.
JOURNALIST:
Can I ask are there any new requirements for banks of financial institutions, Australian businesses, retailers to provide personal information?
MINISTER RUDDOCK:
Well there is a range of the operational arrangements in place for reporting certain financial transactions and that has been enhanced by the recent legislation on money laundering and counter-terrorism financing. So organisations that are involved, banks, financial institutions and it will move to a further range of organisations when we going into the second tranche. But we do have very comprehensive arrangements which meet the requirements of FATAF which is the international financial organisations that looks at money laundering and financing issues and outlines what are the minimum standards that you have to meet and Australia's legislation has been designed to ensure that we meet those obligations.
JOURNALIST:
Prime Minister how much international cooperation is needed for this system to work?
PRIME MINISTER:
I think there is already a lot of international cooperation and my understanding and my experience is that the agencies of most countries are only too ready to cooperate and to provide information and assistance and I can't imagine that there will be any lack of cooperation and information providing from those countries and those sources that in the past have provided information.
MINISTER RUDDOCK:
Can I just elaborate if I may just briefly from my previous life, a lot of countries look at the systems that Australia has in place because they do give us an inch. We want to know as much as we can about people before they embark upon a journey to Australia. You go to any countries the processing that is undertaken is at the point when somebody arrives at the gate, at the barrier and if you have visa waiver arrangements such as they have in parts of Europe, and even in the United States, you put the analysis into the 30 seconds that somebody stands before you at the gate. What we've been able to do and what people are looking at to try and model their arrangements more closely to ours is to look at people at the point when they are buying their ticket to get on an aircraft or at the point when they are at the overseas airline gate and are about to get on an aircraft and we want to know before people travel whether or not there are issues of concern to us, and we've been more effective at that, and other countries know of that system and are keen to emulate it and we'll probably see more of that over time.
JOURNALIST:
So will people wanting to come here be asked any extra new questions?
MINISTER RUDDOCK:
This involves using a range of information that we now receive and ensuring that it is appropriately analysed in a timely fashion.
JOURNALIST:
The tabloid report that came out of the UK about the Australian connection in the Glasgow bombings Is there any truth in that that (inaudible) come from Australia?
MINISTER RUDDOCK:
Well I dealt with that earlier today and I spoke to the Commissioner of Police about it and these are ongoing enquiries in which it would be inappropriate to forclose the avenues that the enquiries might take, but I think the story is more likely to have emanated from the fact that is in the public arena and known, that some of the people had been in the United Kingdom left sim cards and telephones behind and so there are some connections with people who are now in Australia, but the connections aren't necessarily from here, but involved people leaving that sort of equipment in the United Kingdom.
JOURNALIST:
Is it your view that the (inaudible) regimes that (inaudible) believed to be involved in these things from Australia should perhaps be changed to meet the British standards which I believe is 30 days?
MINISTER RUDDOCK:
Well I am constantly keeping those matters under review and we will look at our experience in relation to this investigation as to whether or not any further developments are required. I have made it clear on a number of occasions already that there are some reports which have some recommendations that the Government is looking at. There's no urgency associated with those. Some of those involved the Sheller Review which endorsed the measures that we had put in place but suggested some other matters that we might look at. There was the Law Reform Commission Inquiry in relation to the sedition offences and there are some issues that we've been having a look at. But I keep these matters constantly under review, I talk to the relevant agencies, we are now using these provisions and if there are any short comings, we will obviously move very quickly to remedy them. Thank you.
JOURNALIST:
Prime Minister can I have some comment please about the second anniversary of the London bombings, I guess marking that milestone and what it might mean to us today?
PRIME MINISTER:
Well naturally those of us who recall and that I am sure is the entire Australian community recall that event as a reminder of the brutal, unprovoked, unjustifiable, evil character of blind terrorism that takes the lives of innocent people and it's a reminder that this is a long struggle. I think we are going to be fighting terrorism for many years into the future. People who imagine that you will buy immunity from a terrorist attack by retreating from one part of the world are deluding themselves. Terrorists don't work like that. If they drive people of goodwill out of one part of the world, they switch their attention to another and that has been their pattern and that will continue to be their pattern. Thank you.
MINISTER RUDDOCK:
Thank you very much.
[ends]