Coastguard proposal is first Australian election spat

With Australian Prime Minister John Howard believed to be just days away from calling a general election, defense minister Peter Reith has taken the battle to the opposition Australian Labor Party (ALP).

Reith published October 2 a 40-page position paper arguing against a proposal in January last year by the ALP leader Kim Beazley to establish an independent Coastguard service to carry out policing and para-military surveillance duties around Australia's coast.

Maritime surveillance and policing has become a hot issue in Australia with increasing numbers of immigrants and refugees of mainly Asian and Middle Eastern origin trying to gain illegal entry to Australia by boat from Indonesia and other regional jump-off points.

Among measures proposed by ALP are the transfer of the RAN's 15-strong fleet of Fremantle-class patrol boats to Coastguard control and the establishment of a single unified authority combining the roles of Coastwatch and the Australian Maritime Safety Authority, with the equipment and powers to enforce Australian maritime law on people smugglers, narcotics smugglers and illegal fishermen.

However, Reith argues that an independent Coastguard would be no more effective than the Australian Customs Service's existing Coastwatch service which coordinates surveillance and response by a range of Australian government agencies, including the Navy and Air Force. According to Reith, establishing a new Coastguard could cost up to 2 billion Australian dollars a year.

This claim is disputed by both the ALP and Melbourne-based think tank the Australia Defence Association (ADA), whose 1984 submission to an enquiry chaired by Beazley when he was Minister for Defence formed the basis for the ALP's Coastguard proposal.

"Reith's costing are ridiculous," Mike O'Connor, executive director of the ADA, told Defense News October 4. "The notion that [a Coastguard] could cost one sixth of the current defence budget is arrant nonsense. In our view, a properly resourced Australian Coastguard would not cost more than $500 million, much of which is already being spent through other agencies."

A lot of this money is already being spent by the RAAF and RAN whose patrol boats and P-3C Orion maritime patrol aircraft are frequently tasked by Coastwatch, O'Connor said. The current arrangement is unsatisfactory, he argued, because too many different authorities such as the Navy, Customs Service and Australian Federal Police are involved and there is no common policy on equipment and armament. There is a pressing need, he told Defense News, for a single, properly equipped and funded organisation whose primary tasks are law enforcement and search and rescue.

A source close to shadow defense minister Dr Stephen Martin told Defense News October 4 that the ALP estimates the operational cost of border surveillance and protection to be between 220 and 240 million a year. This figure includes aircraft flying hours and patrol boat time at sea, but doesn't include administrative overheads from the organisations contributing to this effort. Combining these into a single integrated Coastguard operation would deliver significant economies of scale and eliminate much current duplication of resources and effort, the source said.

But Reith argues that the need for a dedicated Australian Coastguard service has been studied and rejected several times in recent years. Prime Minister Howard in April 1999 ordered the Head of the Australian Public Service, Max Moore-Wilton, to lead a task force scrutinising Australia's coastal surveillance capabilities, Reith said.

Moore-Wilton's June 1999 report stated, "The Task Force does not consider that the threats involved justify the considerable additional expenditure of establishing a coast guard [sic], nor would a coast guard in itself solve the problem of effective coordination. The US Coast Guard with an annual budget of around US$4 billion still finds it necessary to operate in tandem with other agencies. Coastwatch, with its links to Customs, Defence and other assets already provides an adequate structure to conduct the coastal surveillance function. The measures and additional resources recommended in this report will improve Coastwatch's ability to perform that function without the need for large-scale structural and administrative change."

On the basis of Moore-Wilton's report Howard agreed in 1999 to a four year, 124 million Australian dollar program to fund extra aircraft, ships and crews for Coastwatch and establish a new National Surveillance Centre in Canberra to coordinate the intelligence-gathering and surveillance effort, Reith said.

"Australia already has a world-class coast guard service," Reith said. "Coastwatch intercepted an impressive 96% of suspected illegal vessels in 2000-01 and achieved a detention rate of 98.6% of people suspected entering illegally. [The ALP's] plan for a new bureaucracy is not an approach that can match existing results."

Coastwatch is run by an Admiral from the Royal Australian Navy and some 60 per cent of its patrol boat capability is provided by the Navy, Reith added. "To implement its policy, [the ALP] must either strip Defence of important assets, or spend big on an expensive duplication of Naval vessels and Air Force aircraft. This is an irresponsible policy that downgrades not only Australia's peacetime coastal security, but also threatens its Defence Force capability," he stated.

Australia's defense procurement agency, the Canberra-based Defence Materiel Organisation (DMO) issued a request for tender (RFT) in early-September for a new fleet of patrol boats to replace the RAN's Fremantle-class vessels. Tenders close November 23 and if the ALP wins the election, which is currently expected on November 10the new Labor government would not delay the procurement process or attempt to change the specifications or operational requirements for the patrol boats.