PRIME MINISTER:
It’s good to be here at the Australian Federal Police centre in Sydney. I’m delighted to be joined by my friends and colleagues, the Minister for Justice, Michael Keenan, the Assistant Minister for Health, Fiona Nash, and I want to thank the police officers who have been giving us a very comprehensive briefing on the ice scourge which is now afflicting our country.
I want to say that as a citizen and as a parent, I am appalled at what is happening on our streets and in our homes. Ice is far more addictive than any other illicit drug. It does far more damage than any other illicit drug. The propensity for violence, the propensity to subsequent very serious mental illness, the propensity to disfigurement which ice produces means that this is a drug epidemic way beyond anything that we have seen before now. I am determined that right around our country, we will take every possible step to combat this dreadful, dreadful scourge.
So today, I am announcing the establishment of a National Ice Taskforce that will be headed by former Victoria Police Chief Commissioner, Ken Lay, to ensure that in every state and territory we are taking this menace seriously. It is an absolute menace. It destroys lives, it ravages families, it damages communities, it is on the increase. You look at the statistics – the statistics tell us that something like 400,000 Australians have used methamphetamine in any one year, roughly 50 per cent of those, or some 200,000 people, are using crystal meth, or ice. The statistics show us that some 25 per cent of methamphetamine users are using at least once a week. This is a devastating, devastating toll and it is a massive increase in crime.
New South Wales Police statistics show that over the last couple of years there's been a 25 per cent increase in ice related arrests and detections and as you can see, there are massive quantities of this pernicious and evil drug coming into our country all the time.
Now, I'm pleased to say that all of our agencies are doing everything they can, but we must constantly be ramping up this struggle against illicit drugs, particularly against ice, because of the devastation – the absolute devastation – that ice is wreaking on individuals, on families and on communities.
JUSTICE MINISTER:
Thanks, PM, Fiona. Just recently, I launched the Australian Crime Commission's first unclassified intelligence report into the effect of ice around the country and the picture that it showed was very disturbing and that is that because of the nature of the market here in Australia we're pulling in criminals from all over the world to take advantage of the high price that we can get for a substance like ice here in Australia.
It is an unprecedented problem and we do need to deal with it in a different way and that's why we have announced the Ice Taskforce today headed up by a very eminent Australian, Ken Lay, a man whose law enforcement background and links to the community make him perfect for the job.
Law enforcement is already doing everything that it can to stop ice from hitting our streets. They are seizing more of this drug than ever before. We are intercepting more of the precursors that go into making ice than ever before, but we're not going to be able to police our way out of this alone. The law enforcement response will always be very important, but we also need to find other ways to work with the community, particularly within the health sector to address this issue.
The Government is also tightening up the laws around the importation of precursors into Australia. I will take a proposal to my state colleagues at our next Law and Community Safety Council meeting in May to make sure that we're doing everything we can to stop precursors from being diverted into the making of this very illicit and dangerous substance.
ASSISTANT HEALTH MINISTER:
Thank you, Prime Minister, Michael. As I travel around the country, particularly rural and regional areas, it's becoming increasingly obvious the rapid escalation of the use of this drug. It is destroying people's lives – disfigurement, mental illness, psychotic behaviour – we're seeing a range of things coming forward relating to aggression and violence. It's a drug that doesn't discriminate. As I was just in a treatment service a couple of weeks ago, talking to some people trying to get their lives back on track, they were smart people, had held down good jobs. This drug is not discriminating between old and young, rich and poor, it's touching people right across the community. Talking to a regional journalist whose cousin is currently devastatingly affected, up in Moree recently where there had been two suicides as a result of use of ice. The devastating impacts of this drug are reaching right across the country.
The Government's been very concerned about this; I've personally been very concerned about this for some time now. I instructed the Australian National Advisory Council on Alcohol and Drugs that gives advice to Government to look at ice as their first priority and I expect they will be key in giving expert advice to the Taskforce. I recently was at the UN Commission on Narcotic Drugs talking to other world nations about the fight that we're going to have globally to address this issue.
But, this is an issue we're not going to police our way out of. We're going to need to look at the health and education impacts, we're going to particularly need to look at demand and it's something that Government cannot do alone. We're going to need to do this with state and territory governments and also, most importantly, with the community.
PRIME MINISTER:
Ok. Thank you, Fiona, thank you, Michael. Do we have any questions?
QUESTION:
Prime Minister, last night on the 7:30 Report there was a story about a spate of deaths of soldiers from a Perth naval base and one of the issues looked at in that report was the use of ice. Are you concerned about the use of this drug among Defence Force personnel?
PRIME MINISTER:
I haven't seen the 7:30 report, although I have received some briefing on it. We do take reports of this nature very, very seriously. I know that Defence are urgently looking into it, as you'd expect. I think the culture of Defence is much better now when it comes to the pastoral care of Defence Force personnel than it was in times past, but we can always do better. The fact that ice is reaching out, even to Defence Force personnel, indicates the scale of the problem and the need to take urgent action at every level – at the state and territory level and at the national level – and this just reinforces my commitment and my Government's commitment to be absolutely unflinching in the struggle against this dreadful scourge.
QUESTION:
Prime Minister, apart from law enforcement and the focus you're placing on that, to what extent will the Federal Government boost funding to rehabilitation services to help families get through this nightmare?
PRIME MINISTER:
This is a very fair question and this is the kind of thing we will be considering when we get Ken Lay's report in the middle of the year, but we are already spending something like $200 million a year on treatment and rehabilitation for people who are afflicted by this dreadful scourge.
QUESTION:
Prime Minister, what will the Taskforce do in practical terms? And is this an admission that the current approach, I guess, has been a failure in tackling this?
PRIME MINISTER:
Well, look, there's a sense in which the fight against illicit drugs is always a work in progress and what we are seeing, as time goes by, is new drugs, new tactics by criminal syndicates and gangs. Obviously, there is a heavy gang element in the ice trade right around Australia now and this is something that we promised to tackle pre-election and have been tackling as a matter of great urgency since the election and we now have gang squads – state and territory anti-gang squads – in most of the jurisdictions.
The problem is getting worse. The problem is getting worse and that's why we are ramping up our response. Back in 2010, something like 20 per cent of methamphetamine users were ice users. Now it's 50 per cent of methamphetamine users who are ice users and the trouble with ice is that it is far more potent, far more dangerous, far more addictive than any previous illicit drug. It's worse than heroin, it's worse than cocaine, it's worse than LSD, it's worse than ecstasy. It's much more addictive, much more dangerous, much more damaging. The chances of being able to function while being a serious ice user are almost zero and that's why it's so important that we ramp up our response and that's why we need an urgent stocktake of what's going on right around our country – an urgent stocktake that will be led by Ken Lay, who is an undoubted expert in this field – and based on that stocktake we will have a further national and state and territory policy response.
But right now, we are ramping up our response through our gangs work – our anti-gangs work – through our work on the borders, the additional money that we're pouring into Customs surveillance because much of it is coming in from overseas and we do have an ever increasing success rate when it comes to intercepting it. But in every way and at every level, we are ramping up our efforts because of the terrible damage that it's doing to our community.
QUESTION:
Recently [inaudible] was telling Seven News that he worked in the construction industry on building sites, various housing estates around Sydney and said that ice was available in every single suburb. Is that the sort of intelligence you're getting on how insidious the distribution of the drug is?
PRIME MINISTER:
Well, we know that criminal gangs are looking for all opportunities to take advantage of vulnerable people, to exploit people's needs, I suppose, and as both Fiona and Michael have pointed out, there is a very important and essential law enforcement response, but there is also a health and education response that is necessary. The Government will shortly have more to say on a major public awareness campaign when it comes to the dangers of ice because I guess the thing that we need to do most of all is reduce demand and the best way to reduce demand is to alert the community to the fact that while there might be a momentary high, there is a lifetime of pain and suffering if you get caught up in the ice culture. The trouble with ice is that it is more addictive than anything else – more addictive than heroin, more addictive than cocaine, more addictive than LSD, more addictive than ecstasy. It is the most addictive and the most dangerous substance that's yet been produced and that's why it's so important that we tackle it at every level.
QUESTION:
Mr Abbott, on another issue, was the word ‘dull’ the best choice to describe the upcoming Budget considering the blunt warning you've been given from nine business groups on economic reform?
PRIME MINISTER:
This is a Government which is serious about economic reform. We went to the election, as you know, promising to do four things: to stop the boats, to scrap the carbon tax, to build the roads of the 21st century and to get the budget back under control because a stronger budget is one of the essential prerequisites to a stronger economy and that's what this Government is always doing. We are always doing what we can to build a stronger economy and a safer society. National security, economic security are at the heart of the concerns of this Government for the betterment of the Australian people.
We want to build a better Australia. We want to work every day for the Australian people and a stronger budget is an important part of that. I noted the statement by various business groups yesterday and I'm quite encouraged by their concern to bring pressure to bear on the Labor Party to get away from the mindless negativity and the budget sabotage that we've seen from the Labor Party over the last 18 months.
The Labor Party were incompetent in government; they've been wreckers in Opposition. Having created the debt and deficit problem, they're now trying to sabotage the solution. So, I welcome the statement from business leaders and what we'll be doing in this Budget is building on the strong foundations that we've already put in place because, as you can see from the Intergenerational Report, even the measures that have already been passed by this Parliament have halved Labor's debt and deficit going forward.
So, there's a very strong foundation on which to build and that's why this Budget will not have to involve the same level of structural reform that last year's Budget did.
QUESTION:
On pensions, how confident are you you’ll be able to convince enough crossbenchers to support changes to the pension taper rate as opposed to indexation?
PRIME MINISTER:
Again, what we're talking to all responsible elements in the Parliament about is making the pension sustainable. We believe in a decent social security system. We believe in a strong retirement income system. We want to encourage people to save for their retirement; we want to ensure that the pension is adequate for people who need the pension. I'm really pleased that since this Government came to power, the married pension has increased by $78 a fortnight, the single pension is up by $51 a fortnight and, of course, thanks to this Government, pensioners have lost the carbon tax but they've kept the carbon tax compensation. So, I think that we've done the right thing by pensioners as best we can in these difficult fiscal circumstances but, obviously, we do have to ensure that the pension is sustainable for the long-term and that's what we're talking to the crossbenchers about.
QUESTION:
Prime Minister, on another issue, what are your thoughts on the latest developments in Indonesia regarding the two members of the Bali Nine?
PRIME MINISTER:
We are continuing to do everything we possibly can for them. That's what we're doing. We are continuing to do everything we possibly can for them and everyone knows Australia's position on the death penalty.
QUESTION:
Are you still waiting to speak to the Indonesian President on this issue?
PRIME MINISTER:
I've had a number of conversations with President Widodo on this issue. I'm not going to go into what was said, but I have certainly made our position very clear.
QUESTION:
Prime Minister, on another topic, what do you have to say to child sex abuse survivors who are disappointed the Federal Government has not backed a national redress scheme?
PRIME MINISTER:
What we're doing is we are strongly supporting the Royal Commission into this terrible, terrible problem. We're strongly supporting the Royal Commission and, obviously, when the Royal Commission brings out its report, we’ll have a strong and comprehensive response.
QUESTION:
Prime Minister, the headmaster of your old school, Riverview, made an appeal for 6,000 old boys to come out and help the school establish the extent of the problem historically there. Is that something you'd support?
PRIME MINISTER:
Look, any abuse of vulnerable young people is terrible and when that is at the hands of people in a position of trust and responsibility, it's even worse. Now, I had an outstandingly good education and in every way my memories of my education are good ones, but it seems that in some cases there was a breach of trust and let's get to the bottom of it.
Thanks so much.
[ends]