A year ago some people were questioning whether the creation of the Australian Federal Police was such a bright idea after all. After all, there were six state forces and lots of specialist agencies dealing with enforcement of Commonwealth law and crimes against the Commonwealth.
The uneasy question was why do we need both a National Crime Authority (ital) and (end ital) an Australian Federal Police? And as well as this we have the Australian Customs Service checking on illegally imported and exported drugs, wildlife and contraband; the Australian Tax Office chasing tax dodgers; the Australian Securities Commission chasing corporate crooks, the Trade Practices Commission chasing other corporate crooks, various investigating officers within federal agencies and a Federal Director of Public Prosecutions to prosecute them.
This plethora of federal crime busters has come about mostly in the past 15 years.
Some argue that it has come about because of a general Federal extension or grab for power and the bureaucratic empire-building that goes with it. Others argue the nature of crime has changed _ simply that crime does not confine itself to one state or one nation.
Whatever the reason, the increased number of agencies resulted them sometime tripping over each other or, worse, allowing criminals to slip between agencies. It has also resulted in confused roles, different and sometimes conflicting objectives or different approaches to the same end.
It was exemplified in the robust public exchange last year between the Director of Public Prosecutions, Michael Rozenes, QC, and the then head of the Australian Securities Commission, Tony Hartnell, about pursuing corporate crooks.
If that was going on in public, imagine what was being said and done in private.
There was certainly a great deal of rivalry between the AFP and the NCA.
It came to a head with the Review of Commonwealth Law Enforcement Arrangements earlier this year. In that exercise there was at least mild speculation that the AFP should go.
In was into this environment that Mick Palmer was appointed top cop: commissioner of the AFP.
Palmer, 53, began his career with the Northern Territory police in 1963 and left in 1979 to do law. After practising at the Queensland Bar he returned to the Northern Territory police in 1983 and became commissioner five years later. Since his appointment to the AFP in May, Palmer has sensibly kept what clichewrights call “”a low profile”.
Now he is slowly making his presence felt publicly more often.
Perhaps he feels he can put his head over the parapet more because as a result of the review the disparate federal bloodhounds are now formed in more organised pack.
Palmer argues there is no need for inter-agency rivalry.
“”The games is bigger than the players,” he said this week. “”And that is recognised by law enforcement agencies. We’re not fighting for turf here. There is more turf than we’ll ever mow. This is now the time for the widest and highest level of co-operation and collaboration between law enforcement agencies.”
He recognises that while the agencies used to be concerned with jurisdiction, criminals are not. The criminals are more flexible than the agencies chasing them. The criminals are unlikely to change habits, so the agencies must if they are to be successful.
“”We have to develop skills so that we can deal with problems that cut across jurisdictions,” Palmer said. “”Australians have a right to expect it. Governments need it. And we’ll be judged on our ability to achieve it. The future must be one of joint investigative forces, joint task forces.”
That is going to be a big job because some of these agencies have a different view of life. For example, the Trade Practices Commission has a stated aim of promoting competition. It therefore will happily “”settle” cases and will sometimes use civil penalties. It’s aim is not to punish crooks, but to put the market back on an even competitive keel.
The Australian Securities Commission main mission is to ensure confidence in the share market. Putting crooked directors in jail, though important, is secondary to that.
The Department of Social Security is much more interested in quietly getting the money back than putting defrauders in jail. Who wants to publicise how easy it is for unemployable yobs to defraud the system.
And so it goes on.
So Palmer makes a very solid point when he says there is a need for a national policing agency to enforce Commonwealth law and to police and prevent breaches of general criminal law directed at the Commonwealth.
He said, “”There is a clear recognition that there is a need for a national policing agency.”
He argues there is also a need for an effective national crime authority, disagreeing with the view that the NCA was only created to overcome the jurisdictional problem of the federation and that if the states were not there one agency could do both the AFP’s job and the NCA’s.
“”There is a need for a national authority in which the states have ownership which can clearly be seen as not being owned totally by the Commonwealth, but being a shared resource that is in fact staffed and to which references are given by the states and Commonwealth. And there is a need for and enormous value that flows from the coercive powers that the NCA has that wouldn’t be likely to be given to any traditional policing agency.” _ a reference to wide interrogation, phone-tapping and search powers that go beyond what traditional police have.
Palmer said there was tremendous co-operation between states and the AFP but unavoidably there were going to be sensitivities between the states and the Commonwealth.
“”The AFP is seen, if you like, as the Commonwealth’s police force and I think that that will always create an environment which may not allow things to occur which could occur within the NCA arrangements.”
As to other Commonwealth agencies he acknowledges some ad-hockery about the timing of references to the AFP which can depend a lot on workloads in different places at different times, but that individual relations were good.
Palmer thinks the review (which brought down a 437-page report in February) was unnecessary.
“””It shouldn’t have needed, and don’t think it did need, a law-enforcement review to tell the AFP, or law enforcement more generally, that there really is a need for much more interaction and co-operation and interagency-task forces and multi-agency investigations and in international joint investigations,” he said.
“”The change in the nature of crime and criminality speaks for its self. It is more mobile and more international than its ever been.”
So while jurisdictional boundaries were becoming less of a problem for criminals, it was important that they became less of a hindrance for law-enforcement agencies.
“”We have to find ways to maximise the information exchange and minimise duplication and demarcation lines,” he said.
It was early days for the new Commonwealth Law Enforcement Board. It had been largely taken up with NCA-AFP alliance at first. In sharing corporate resources like information technology and so on.
“”Criminals have loose affiliations,” he said. “”Their boundaries are only limited by their imaginations. So with the mobility that goes with travel these days criminals can cross boundaries, cross jurisdictions, cross countries very easily.
“”We are seeing evidence of loose affiliations between criminal cartels and enterprises that until recent years worked much more in isolation. We are seeing much more flexibility in the way criminals work. . . . Not so long ago it would be likely that a criminal group would be involved in only one sort of criminal activity with little if any forays into other activity. They now have a much more opportunistic approach. . . . So today they may be involved in cannabis tomorrow it may be some other form of drug activity and the next day it may be some completely different form of crime.”
Perhaps there is some irony in what Palmer says. While the crims are generalising and becoming cross-jurisdictional, the cops are specialising and getting themselves in cross-jurisdictional strife.
Palmer wants to end that by stressing co-operation rather than competition.
“”Criminals have got a very good feel for the market and maximising their advantages and the opportunities that go with international trade international tourism and democratisation of various new countries,” he said.
“”This is not all doom a gloom, but just a recognition that there is a change in the nature of crime. I think corporate crime and white collar crime has always been with us, and we saw classic examples of that with the mining booms days of the 60s and the share boom days of the 70s and 80s. but the nature of crime is changing to the extent that is it likely to be more opportunistic and flexible where it is more likely to be interjurisdictional and international.”
And because international trade is now a more important part of the Australian economy, this sort of international crime was more likely to be more economically damaging than was the case a few years ago, he said.
Palmer acknowledges to some degree the public has to take the police force’s word on the extent of crime. Crime statistics have not so much been political football, but political surfing, with politicians from both sides riding an ever-increasing crime wave _ and as with a lot of surfing the size of the wave is quite imaginary.
Of course, it suits police forces not to disabuse the politicians of their belief because therein lies the source of funding. There is no doubt there has been a large increase in the reporting of many classes of crime, but whether the actual crime rate is going up is another matter. Institute of Criminology statistics based on surveys of whether people have been a victim, suggests not, and that the rate for some crimes is falling.
A good test has been the homicide rate because you do not get a distortion from under-reporting. Basically, if someone is dead it always gets reported. And homicide rates have remained fairly constant in Australia since World War II.
But what concerns Palmer is the changing nature of crime and the nature of its economic impact. He is also concerned that police forces can be judged on arrests alone. He argues that good police work can result in an uncomfortable climate for criminals without necessarily getting lots of arrests or convictions.
He said the real cost of fraud in Australia is between $6.5 billion and $14 billion a year.
“”The cost of fraud cost is indirect doesn’t threaten like home violation, homicide serious assault,” he said. “”It is more difficult to attract the attention of people to than to public-disorder crimes.”
Lots of arrests of small fries did not mean success in countering fraud. It was sometimes better to concentrate on making the climate for large-scale fraud more difficult.
“”It is not just about putting bodies in the back of paddy wagons and making arrests,” he said.
The Commonwealth was creating a national fraud database which would provide a better information base from which to launch investigations.
“”It will always be difficult to make arrests in regard to sophisticated computerised and similar fraud but with efficient and effective investigations it is very likely that we can create a climate to cause people to cease to do business and indeed to leave the jurisdiction,” he said.
“”Australia has a lot of things going for us in that regard: we are an island nation we have a strong and supportive government, an educated public, a small population, which are advantages over other nations.”
“”We need to be patient in the way we investigate white collar and similar crimes so we are not obsessed with or over-concerned with early arrests but rather with closing down the criminal enterprise, because that’s the way by which Australia will be best served.
“”In that process we will make arrests and assets and proceeds of crime will be seized, but that mustn’t be the sole purpose of the exercise and we must ensure that we, governments and wider community do not judge us solely on the number of arrests and make comparisons on the basis of arrests. . . .
“”We get judged too simplistically: if the arrest is made for the rape and murder we’re successful and if the arrest is not made we’ve failed. Life is sadly not that simple. Some of the best police work goes into investigations that sadly don’t quite get where they should.
“”But you can put people out of business. The paedophilia arena is good example. You might not get conviction . . . but you are achieving same aim.”
But there were no nice statistics to trumpet.
“”You may not be able to even talk about what has been achieved,” he said.
On drugs, Palmer did not want to buy into the decriminalisation debate, but he warned that even if decriminalisation ended the drug problem, the organised crime associated with it would move elsewhere.
“”In my role as commissioner I should not get involved in those policy issues,” he said. “”The debate on sq(making drugs available on sq) prescription and decriminalisation is one that will rage for some time to come and it is quite easy to mount strong arguments on both sides. There is simply no easy answer with the enormous difficulties involved with drugs.
“”What everybody, what the reformists, must realise, though, is that if we were to change the current arrangements it won’t ease the obligations on law enforcement or solve problems for the wider community in that those people who are presently involved in illicit illegal activities which happen to be drug-related will move to another agenda.
“”We are not going to stop top the criminals being criminals,”
Palmer clearly rejects the view that the combination of addiction and prohibition causes people to engage in crime _ who otherwise would not engage in crime _ just to feed the habit. He also appears to reject the view that prohibition creates a large source of revenue for those engaged in organised crime _ which would otherwise not be there _ because it leaches out large sums of money from people who must feed an addiction, who would otherwise not contribute to the income of organised crime.
Palmer said that those issues, from a law-enforcement perspective, were a matter of policy.
“”But it must be recognised that the sort of people we are pursuing in relation to serious drug offences will not turn up at the department of social security looking for a job on Monday if you decriminalise; they will simple find other ways to continue their criminal pursuits,” he said.
That sort of criminal flexibility “”is part of the challenge coming out of the Commonwealth Law Enforcement Report”.
The challenge was for the AFP “”to make ourselves operationally as flexible as we possibly can to make sure we have a general level of investigative expertise that allows us to move according to demands of the time which is going to be a very unpredictable demand.
“”As new criminal activities emerge we have to make sure we are in a position to respond quickly to it and deal with it,” he said. “”sq(drug reform sq) is not likely to decrease the level of criminal activity of an organised nature.”
He cited several examples of changes in criminality over the past decade, suggesting that more unpredictable changes were to come.
Fraud was being committed by people who did not set in foot of jurisdiction. There was burgeoning credit card fraud which had come on the scene sooner than recognised. Home invasions and violation of weaker victims in present proportions were new for Australia. Organised tax evasion was more apparent than a decade ago.
Tourism and easy travel had created an environment for crimes in the paedophilia area.
On terrorism he said: “”I suspect that Australia will remain largely free of the sort of problems that beset more closely grouped nations and more heavily populated areas. Terrorism is driven by strong emotion and senses of nationalism and other issues as well as opportunity.”
It was more likely where people had been dispossessed over time. Because Australia was well-policed, it was not a good country for terrorists to make their point.
“”Australia is well policed,” he said.
It was not a case of being too complacent, but Australia was better policed than most places in the world.
“”One problem in Australia is that police leaders have tended to be quiet achievers,” he said. “”We haven’t done enough to promote the sophistication, the diversity, complexity and success of policing in Australia. We have tended to be involved in publicity too much on the back foot.”
This was because allegations of corruption and malpractice tended to get prominence.
“”Australian policing has a much better reputation over seas than at home,” he said. “”Australia is highly regarded internationally _ whether it is with Interpol or generally across the countries we have most dealings with.
“”But we have to get better at marketing the positives of policing.”
On the ACT, he said, “”ACT policing reflects on the country as a whole. It is the place where more foreign dignitaries come than anywhere else in Australia. It has a large number of diplomatic and consular people and they see the level of Australian policy through ACT eyes.
“”It is the window of Australian policing on behalf of all of Australia, not just the Commonwealth. Certainly is the public window of the AFP.”
At present the ACT Government contracts its policing to the AFP. Over the years there has been arguments about whether the ACT should have a separate force, as it did before the AFP was created.
Palmer said it would be a tragedy if it were separated. It gave the AFP a community policing role and gave people in the ACT force exposure to wider range of jobs.
If the ACT were separate it would lock people into a narrow range and give them a poorer career.
At least ACT policing prevents any jurisdictional problems in one of the eight states and territories. And it will give the AFP a chair (if the smallest) in state a territory policing.
This will be important in the next couple of years because just as the jurisdictional squabbles are being sorted out among federal agencies, the states want to do their own thing _ largely because of politicians wanting to surf the imaginary crime wave for political purposes.
Last month, the states (in the absence of the Commonwealth) agreed upon a “”united” crime strategy which will duplicate much of the co-operative national effort on things like information pooling. But politicians have to be seen to be doing something.
Palmer’s job fight will be as much against bureaucracy and politics as against criminals.