5AA

SUBJECTS: Government cuts to Customs budget; Importation of illegal firearms into Australia

E&OE…………

Leon Byner: Member for Sturt, Chris Pyne.  Chris, tell me how did you get onto this?

Christopher Pyne: Well, Leon, yesterday the New South Wales police and the New South Wales Government went into some detail about the sting operation they had affected on the Sylvania Waters Post Office the day before in which they had intercepted illicit weapons, up to 220 Glock pistols that had been smuggled into Australia through Sylvania Waters Post Office under the nose of the customs and border protection service.  It emerged that New South Wales police had begun their investigations in December of last year and hadn’t even bother to include Customs until February of this year and the reason why the Government bears responsibility for this is, or some responsibility for it is the same time they’ve increased spending on intercepting illegal boat arrivals, which wouldn’t be coming if they’d kept the Howard Government policies in place, they’ve cut Customs budget by $60 million, laid off 340 Customs staff and dropped air cargo inspections by 75 per cent and sea cargo by 25 per cent.

Byner: That’s mad.

Pyne: It’s not only mad.  It’s placing our citizens at risk and while this has been discovered in Sylvania Waters in Sydney you would have to be terribly generous to conclude the same thing wasn’t happening all around Australia.

Byner: Chris, there’s something that I don’t understand.  Lets say a person from anywhere sends a firearm via the post in a container.

Pyne: Yes.

Byner:  Particularly from overseas.  I always understood, and this could be an old wives tale for all I know, but I always assumed and belived Australia Post x-rayed most of these materials just to ensure you haven’t got all sorts of cargo, which could be contaminated food or some other thing which shouldn’t get into Australia and if that is the case, how the hell did Australia Post not pick this up? ....How the hell would Australia post not pick this up?

Pyne: Well you would be wrong if you assumed that Leon.  The truth is that hardly any of these containers or postage items are x-rayed and in fact the weapons are bought into Australia by taking them apart and sending them as individual pieces and lately in many cases as tools.  Customs and the border protection services simply sign the certificates and allow them through because they don’t have the resources to check what is in them and in those circumstances this federal government decided that that area was an area for cuts.

Byner: I would have thought that illicit firearms are a bigger risk then people coming in boats seeking asylum.

Pyne: Well people are bringing in firearms, not because they want to put them on their shelf and admire them, but because they want to use them against their rivals, and what we have seen in South Australia is an escalating war between criminal gangs in our state which is placing innocent people at risk.   Beatings and murders like the murder of Giovanni Focarelli recently, let alone as you pointed out in your introduction the shoot out at Caffe Paesano in North Adelaide and the shootout at the Findon Hotel not long before that, where gunfire was exchanged between rival gangs. I think Steve Pollard, you actually mentioned him as well, he made a very sensible remark recently when he said Adelaidians are becoming inured to these stories because they are so regular and common.  But we can’t be, we have to be very vigilant and the federal government should restore this funding to customs and bring the staff back and do the job that they are supposed to be doing.

Byner: We rang the minister’s office today, to let them know that we were doing this story, but we haven’t had a response.  So we give them the opportunity, if they chose not to use it that’s up to them. Are you going to raise this in the parliament?

Pyne: Well the primary responsibility of any government is to protect its citizens and protect its borders Leon.  We raised it in parliament yesterday, we tried to suspend standing orders.  The Prime Minister again scurried from the chamber.

Byner: What was their reaction when you said all this?

Pyne: They just dismissed it, dismissed it as basically nothing to do with them and talked about how they had created more facts sheets and more information and taken more notes and had more conferences and that other stuff that is actually meaningless.  And the real action would be to restore the funding to customs and protect our citizens from the importation of illegal weapons.  There are no weapons made in Australia anymore Leon. So every single weapon that is being used in these gangland wars is imported.

Bynes: Christopher Pyne, thank you for joining us, the Member for Sturt.  I think it’s sad that the government cuts funding from a department, gets rid of staff... and then says it’s got nothing to do with us.  You’ll pay... you people who think you’re smart running governments, you can’t do that.  You can’t disresource, or under resource or deliberately take away from a department, monies that it needs to do its job.  And when there is an unfortunate outcome, somehow believe that it’s got nothing to do with you. Very bad.

ENDS