CHECK AGAINSEIDELIVERY EMBARGOED UNTIL. DELIVERY
SPEECH BY THE PRIME MINISTER
ELEVENTH ASIAN REGIONAL
CONFERENCE OF INTERPOL
CANBERRA 26 FEBRUARY 1991
Commissioner Peter McAulay,
Delegates to the Eleventh Asian Regional Conference of
Interpol
This is the first time that Australia has hosted a major
Interpol conf* erence. So the welcome that we extend to you
is a particularly warm one.
We appreciate: your choice of Australia as the venue for this
conference. It is an appropriate choice. Australia is
playing an increasingly prominent role in the international
effort to combat crime through, for example, our new role
as the Interpol regional communication centre for the South
Pacific.
We meet at a time when the world community is facing an
acute challenge. Iraq's invasion of Kuwait last year
threatened in a blatant and brutal way the principles of
international security and stability on which we all depend.
Australia has played a timely and commensurate role in
supporting the allied effort, under the auspices of the
United Nations, to seek Iraq's withdrawal from Kuwait.
Regrettably that effort has recently had to be intensified
with the commencement of a ground offensive to eject Iraq
from Kuwait an offensive that only became necessary
because Saddam Hussein has consistently and determinedly
defied the world community by his refusal to withdraw
without conditions.
It will certainly be a difficult military task but it is one
in which I am confident of ultimate success for the allied
forces.
While our attention is focussed on the war in the Gulf
which we hope! will be over soon this audience is involved
with the war against crime which never stops.
It is very retlevant to note that in both these struggles,
the way forward lies essentially with the same means. A
successful ou~ tcome will be achieved only through effective
and deliberate international cooperation.
Crime itself is no respecter of national boundaries.
So crime prev, e ntion, too, must be an international effort.
There are many signs that this kind of effective cooperation
is in fact emerging. The continuing relevance of Interpol
is one of them. The growing cooperation of national police
forces throughout our region is another. The development of
treaties of extradition and of mutual assistance is yet
another. And this conference is one more sign a very
welcome one, and one which I trust will be productive and
instructive for you all.
Delegates, In our dynamic Asia-Pacific region, our nations have learned
well the lessons of our interdependence.
As a region, we are all the beneficiaries of the massive
expansion of trade within the region, the larger regional
GNPs,' the stronger regional investment, the higher standards
of living.
In a region that was once regarded by much of the world as
an area ravaged by international conflict and by widespread
impoverishment, we are now showing the way forward towards
prosperity and regional cooperation.
All this lay behind my call in 1989 for the establishment of
the new forum for Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation APEC.
I saw the need for a means by which the economies of the
region could meet together to achieve closer regional
economic cooperation.
I have been enormously gratified at the steady progress APEC
has made since it first met here in Canberra in November
1989.
The relevance to a police forum of these comments about
economic cooperation should be clear.
Because just as the recognition of regional and global
interdependence has ramifications for economic policy
makers, and for all those who contribute in one way or
another to the creation of prosperity farmers,
industrialists3, investors, tourists, exporters so
interdependence has direct and vital implications for
regional police work.
At one level, interdependence means that national
boundaries, which once represented very significant barriers
to the flow of goods and services and people, are becoming
less impassible and more porous.
To see the truth of that, one need only consider the
dramatic developments planned for Europe in 1992, or the
free trade bloc developed in North America or, closer to
home, the Closer Economic Relations process involving
Australia and New Zealand.
Throughout the world, nations are gaining confidence in the
fact that greater openness, and in particular the easier
entry of foreign goods, ultimately helps boost living
standards all round.
Visas, once a hard-won symbol of a nation's right to deny
entry to foreigners are becoming steadily easier to obtain
and in many cases are being eliminated entirely in those
countries that wish to encourage the influx of tourists and
the consequent creation of jobs and capital inflows.
Where artificial barriers persist as in the case of the
trade barriers erected around the protected farms of Europe
one sees a diminution of economic efficiency and, thus, of
living standards.
The recognition of interdependence is of course very
welcome. But I accept that it poses headaches for police
forces. It makes it easier for criminals and criminal organisations
to flourish and to flout national laws. While it allows
tourists and businessmen to come and go with greater
freedom, drug runners and terrorists benefit as well.
The solution for law enforcers is not of course to seek to
turn back the clock to days of insularity and isolation but
to step forward into a new era of international cooperation.
So Interpol is an important and integral part of the
strategies used by nations to pursue criminals within their
national boundaries, and to detect and prevent the movement
of criminals and their organisations between countries.
In the same way, treaties of extradition and mutual
assistance are adding new strength to the armoury of law
enforcement agencies.
Australia has now concluded such treaties and agreements
with countries on all continents.
The territorial concept underlying many countries' criminal
law systems had the disadvantage in the past of limiting
investigative assistance to that which could be obtained
with the voluntary cooperation of witnesses.
But under the new agreements, for example, search warrants
can be issued in Australia to locate evidence of a crime
committed in another country. And recognising that a
fundamental motivation for crime is profit, the new system
of international cooperation makes it harder for criminals
to profit from their crime by moving the proceeds offshore.
Delegates, Through increased international cooperation, we can step up
our efforts against those who threaten civilised standards
of law and order, whether within or among the nations of the
world. In particular no nation can afford to assume that it can, on
its own resources, turn back the threat posed by those twin
evils international terrorism and the drug trade.
Drug trafficking and international terrorism are major law
enforcement problems facing the international community.
Drug traffickers and terrorists do not respect national
boundaries. They prey on the weak, the young and the
innocent of all nations. Our countries must strengthen
their co-operative resolve if our communities are to be
protected from these predators.
Australia has largely avoided the impact of international
terrorism. We are a peaceful and tolerant people, and we
take pride in the fact that as a multicultural community we
have no interest in seeing the divisions and conflicts of
other countries given new life here.
Yet when Australians see campaigns of terror waged in other
countries against innocent people, they are justifiably
outraged and concerned that our record of relative safety
might be threatened.
One of the most despicable elements of Saddam Hussein's
career evident most notably since he invaded Kuwait last
year has been his ruthless and, indeed, his barbaric
willingness to make innocent civilians, including innocent
Iraqi civilians, pay the price of his ambitions.
During the Gulf conflict, I have been frequently asked what
assurances can be given that Australians will not be added
to the list of victims of Saddam's terror.
Some would reply that no guarantee can be given, because
terrorism is by nature a ruthless and unpredictable
activity. But I give a different answer.
Australia has good surveillance and counter-terrorist
capabilities. They are strengthened by the kind of
international cooperation represented by this conference.
Together, we must make it clear to those nations and
organisations who sponsor terrorism that their strategy will
not succeed. We will not succumb to their threats or accede
to their demands, and our societies will prove resilient
enough to withstand this challenge.
Equally, we will not stand idly by if innocent citizens are
killed or maimed. We will work to ensure that terrorists are
brought to book and that they pay for their crimes.
That is the only way to deal with terrorists.
But to make that determination stick, we need the continued
vigilance, the ceaseless diligence, the continuing
international cooperation, the pooling of resources and
intelligence, of our law enforcement agencies throughout the
world. In developing our international response to organised crime,
we need to be innovative and determined.
For example, Australia has established a network of
Australian Federal Police liaison officers in some
countries around the world more than half of them based in
the Asia-Pacific region.
This has materially assisted us to improve the amount and
quality of information available on criminal activity.
Recent successful large scale drug trafficking
investigations were facilitated by liaison between the
Australian Federal Police officers and their counterparts in
the South East Asian region.
Australia also provides financial assistance to allow
countries in the Asia and Pacific region to develop
particular projects and to train their personnel. One such
project we have assisted is the Office of Narcotics Control
Board computer facility in Thailand, which has realised
enormous benefits to both our countries in tackling the drug
trafficking problem.
However, vigorous international co-operation has to be
matched by equally vigorous action at home if we are
successfully to oppose drug trafficking. There would be no
drug trade if there were no producers or users.
Some countries have a tradition, established over a long
period of time, of growing crops which are used in the
manufacture of illicit drugs. We must encourage and assist
the farmers of these countries, who depend on such crops for
their livelihood, to produce alternative crops.
During my visit to Thailand in 1989 I inspected a project
doing just this the King's Royal Crop Substitution Project
near Chiang Mai. This project helps provide the hilltribes
people with a living through the production of cash crops
rather than opium. Initiatives like this demonstrate that,
with a positive will, solutions can be found to the supply
problem. For our own part, Australia follows a policy of destruction
or confiscation of illicit drug crops and the prosecution of
convicted growers.
There is also the need, of course, to reduce the demand for
drugs. We have embarked on a major national educational
effort to wa: cn people of the dangers of drugs. This message
forms part of our National Campaign Against Drug Abuse which
also provides for the treatment of drug users. The campaign
is aimed at all members of Australian society, and is
particularly directed towards the young.
It will be through internal efforts such as this and a
continued commitment to close international co-operation
that we will see headway being made against the scourge of
the drug trade.
My friends,
Not so very many years ago, the countries of our region
would not perhaps have accorded a conference such as this
very high billing.
From Australia's point of view, a conference about law
enforcement would not have been seen as dealing with a
primary concern of our foreign policy.
I am certain that our interrelationship as members of the
region have become much more diverse and more mature since
then. Today, cooperation among law enforcement agencies makes a
useful and, indeed, a vital contribution to the protection
and enhancement of our individual and our collective
interests.
The encouragement of such cooperation is a legitimate
interest of Governments and is an important aim of foreign
policy. In an interdependent world, citizens of one country are
justifiably concerned about whether their livelihood will be
threatened by the activities of criminals based in another
country. They see the threat that organised crime, drug dealers and
terrorists pose to their societies; they see the damage that
such criminals are wreaking in parts of the world.
7.
They demand that Governments do all they can to defeat those
law breakers and to safeguard the lives and futures of the
innocent. They are right to make those demands.
In opening this conference, let me express the hope and
the confidence that your work here and in the future will
help Governments meet those demands.