Today’s joint media release by the Shadow Minister for Trade, Transport, Regional Development and Local Government, Warren Truss, and Shadow Minister for Justice and Customs Michael Keenan, which criticises the government’s latest steps to strengthen Australia’s aviation security, contains so many falsehoods and blunders that it can’t go unchallenged.
The media release suggests that Customs and Border Protection’s revised risk-based approach to the screening of imported air and sea cargo, which began in July 2009, is a ‘downgrading’ of security. Truss and Keenan make this assertion on the basis that the new program has actually cost the Australian taxpayers less money.
The facts prove the lie. Between July and the end of December 2009, while using the new risk-based approach to air cargo screening, there has been an increase in the number of major detections and in the number of drug detections; when compared to the six months prior to implementing the refined strategy.
Truss and Keenan continue with their blunders by claiming that the numbers of sworn police officers in the Australian Federal Police ‘have gone backward since 2007.’ Again, the facts speak for themselves. Since November 2007, there has been a 6.7 percent growth in sworn personnel. The 2008 Budget provided the Australian Federal Police $191.9 million over five years, commencing 2008-09, as part of the Government’s five point plan for an additional 500 sworn AFP officers over five years. This funding, and other measures, mean that the AFP is on track to meet this commitment.
The Truss and Keenan trifecta of tall-tales comes in when they claim that the Australian Government’s has ‘walked away from Air Security Officers or sky marshals.’ In fact, the government’s Air Security Officer program continues to provide an integral layer of aviation security where deployments are risk-based and adaptable to changing security threats. There has been no reduction in funding for the program which has an annual appropriation of $27.38 million for 2009/10.
Rather than spreading misinformation, Truss and Keenan would better serve the Australian people if they supported the government’s aviation security initiatives.
