Source: Torres News

The Senate will hold what it describes as a “broad-ranging Inquiry” into the management and protection of Australia’s air, sea and land borders in the Torres Strait.

The Chair of the Senate Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade References Committee, Queensland Senator Russell Trood, said the inquiry will examine the many challenges facing the Torres Strait, including issues in relation to health, welfare and security of the region. The inquiry is believed to be the first of its kind.

A significant aspect of the Inquiry will be an examination of regional cooperation with Papua New Guinea and Indonesia.

Senator Trood, in a telephone interview with the Torres News, said he encouraged organisations and individuals from the Torres Strait to make submissions to the inquiry.

“I’d be delighted if people on the islands and the tip of Cape York were interested in making submissions.”
Interested parties will have to act fast, however, with a tentative deadline for submissions to be made by 30 October with the hope for the inquiry to conduct hearings in the Torres Strait “in early December”.

“The committee members would like to get to the Torres Strait before Christmas to do some inspections and take local evidence,” the Senator said.

He said the Terms of Reference for the Inquiry are deliberately broad because the geographical particularities of the region mean the term “border security” must be viewed differently to anywhere else in the country.

The Liberal Senator said he was particularly interested in the operations of the Torres Strait Regional Authority (TSRA).

“I’d like a thorough investigation of all the issues pertaining to the management of the TSRA, which has escaped the scrutiny of the parliament for a long period of time.

“I think it is a very timely inquiry on what is Australia’s front-line with the international community. The Torres Strait is the closest Australia has to a land border and serves as a buffer zone to a range of human security threats confronting Australia,” he said.

“The geographic isolation of the region and the cultural and familial links between the people of the Torres Strait and those of the Western Provinces mean that it would be difficult and impracticable to monitor the borders in the same way as they are monitored in Western Australia, for example.

“So the Inquiry will start from the premise that for the people and Commonwealth Departments in the Torres Strait, maintaining strong border security in the region requires significant consideration of issues relating to public health, air and sea transport linkages, immigration, customs, the management of fisheries and bio-security, ” Senator Trood said.

Senator Trood, who recently paid a visit to the region and met with the local heads of Federal Agencies, said the Torres Strait was long overdue for a broad-ranging Senate Inquiry.

“The Torres Strait is an incredibly important region of Australia and of my own State of Queensland, both strategically and culturally, but it is often overlooked due to its geographic isolation,” the Senator said.
“To the best of my knowledge, this is the first Parliamentary Inquiry of its kind in the Torres Strait, and the Committee’s hope is that it highlights the region’s significance to the rest of the country, and the complexities of managing Australia’s border security there.”

Senator Trood said transport issues will also be considered by the inquiry.  “Transport linkages are one of the items in the terms of reference for the inquiry. I am very interested in transport linkages and I am acutely aware that the airport at Horn Island needs upgrading,” he said.

The Senator said he also hoped that both the Indonesian and PNG governments will participate in the inquiry.  “I just happened to be in a meeting with a delegation from the Indonesian parliament and told them about the inquiry and they were very interested in it and said they would like to make a submission.”

By COREY BOUSEN