[Peetwo]

JFK said it best:-

“In a time of domestic crisis, men of goodwill and generosity should be able to unite regardless of party or politics.”

I wonder, does Australian aviation realise what a strange and unusual phenomenon we have been gifted; let alone the general public; in this Senate Estimates committee? I doubt it. We have “men of good will”, which, of itself is peculiar enough; but to have men of good will ‘united’ in the common good, despite ‘party’ is; IMO, remarkable. These are ‘true’ statesmen, those who have ‘seen’ the ‘facts’ and unlike the simple ‘political animal’, honestly seek to address the glaring waste, outstanding debt and monstrous deception, foisted on the public, thinly disguised as “aviation safety”; at their expense.

These are all ‘practical’ men, well versed in not only ‘real life’ but also in the ways of ‘politics’ for party benefit – ahead of the general good. They have put ‘party’ aside, their differing political ‘philosophy’ away – for the time being. A group simply united in doing what’s best, properly – for the benefit of the nation.

Now is the time for all good men and true to come to the aid of the nations aviation sector  and those outstanding Statesmen who have simply had enough of the platitudes, deception and obfuscation from what should be, a world class aviation safety system, not some bloody fool bureaucratic passing the parcel game. It used to be; and, gods know we have thrown enough money at it; so why ain’t it?

This committee has driven the thin edge of a wedge under a pivotal point, at just the right time. Now, it is time for this industry to speak out, put a shoulder to the wheel and push like hell. There may never be a better time to place your trust – just for once – in the democratic system of government we hold so dear. We are currently in the committee’s debt; time to pay. Facts, support and evidence are now required to back up these ‘men of goodwill’.  Whinging and whispering in the hanger tea room  achieves nothing. Hit ’em with the facts, hit ‘em hard - have some faith and put an end to the misery this industry has endured.

“Experience keeps a dear school, yet fools will learn in no other.” (BF).

Toot – and yus, - us had a couple with TOM – tooty. Sow hat?

P7  - Edit - Twas more than a couple – no matter; home safe and in one piece, again, it sleeps now. All Hitch’s fault. Courtesy of and with thanks to - Australian Flying.

(ref: CASA Meets the press #378 )

To follow up your sentiments, on the 'men of goodwill' Senators, I happened to monitor the Drone Inquiry hearing in YMML yesterday and the tag team of Chair Sterlo & Deputy Chair was fully on display...  

Unfortunately the hearing was audio only and not recorded (unless requested), so we'll just have to wait for the Hansard to come out for what I think will be some golden moments...

However I do have another example from earlier in the week at the 'Increasing use of so-called Flag of Convenience shipping in Australia' public hearing, which IMO more than adequately amplifies the effectiveness of a Senate tag team inquisition:

CHAIR: But I might do then, is go to Senator O'Sullivan. He is bursting to ask a question. I am sure Senator Rice is too. Would you like to have a go?

Senator O'SULLIVAN:  I just want to come back to the statement that there was an awareness that Captain Salas was in country at that time. I imagine that statement reflects an awareness that he was in country at that time prior to the request. I want to assume for the purposes of this exchange that the first notification you had formally was from either the police authorities or the coroner's court. When you say that, does that mean that that information—that Captain Salas was in the country—was in a system and available to you if you chose to search for it, or was it in the fore of mind of someone within the departments because a flag, an alarm if you like, had been triggered when the data went in that he would be in country on particular dates? Let us assume an intel officer had it on their desk that Captain Salas was on his way back, he will be here tomorrow and he will be here until Friday. They are two very distinct—do you accept the question?

Mr Wilden : Yes, and I will answer it in both parts. Certainly, the fact that he had a valid visa and had obviously advised he was coming in country is stored in the system, but what we do need is, exactly as you have pointed out, a reason to have that in the forefront of our mind. That reason may be a formal request, as Mr Price went to earlier.

Senator O'SULLIVAN:  Mr Wilden, the burden of my question is quite specific. Mr Price gave evidence that we were aware that he was here. I want you to tailor the answer around that awareness, if you do not mind.

Mr Wilden : I will get Mr Price to address that.

Mr Price : It goes to the earlier opening comments of Mr Wilden. You have the MCV process, which is the application for a visa to come to Australia, so that is the first step. Then there is a requirement for an impending arrival report which tells us what vessel is coming ahead of time—up to 96 hours—and included in that report is a list of all the crew and their biodata. This is happening for every vessel at every port.

Senator O'SULLIVAN:  Accepted.

Mr Price : So Mr Salas appears and it goes into our system. At the same time as it goes into our system, it goes across our alerts database. I do not want to go into too much detail except to say—

Senator O'SULLIVAN:  Sorry, not all of that data goes across an alerts database?

Mr Price : It goes to if we have an interest in particular individuals as well.

Mr Williams : To clarify: all that data is checked against our alerts, but there is obviously not an alert on everybody.

Senator O'SULLIVAN:  So Captain Salas was on alert?

Mr Williams : No.

Senator O'SULLIVAN:  Sorry?

Mr Williams : At the time of those entries that Commander Price referred to, no, he was not on alert.

Senator O'SULLIVAN:  So Captain Salas, who is a suspect for these murders and events, confessed to gun running, which I think is a very strong term.

Senator RICE:  No, gun running and two deaths on board.

Senator O'SULLIVAN:  He did not qualify for a red flag within this alert system?

Mr Williams : That is dependent upon advice from the relevant investigating authority. So, at the point of—

Senator O'SULLIVAN:  I do not want to talk theoretically, and this may help explain why he was not on alert; this is an actual question. At the time that is relevant to the time frame of my questions, was Captain Salas on alert? Was there a red flag?

Mr Williams : At the time of his entry, he was not on alert.

Senator O'SULLIVAN:  You have heard the commentary from all of the colleagues. What does it take to get oneself on the alert? If a couple of suspected murders and gun running does not make one eligible, what does one have to do?

Mr Williams : We would need to be aware of the concern or activity. So we would need to be notified by the appropriate authority, and then we would put the individual on alert.

Senator O'SULLIVAN:  Do you mean that no-one within your organisation had been aware of the Captain Salas episodes? We need to put the shovel down here, because that is even more serious than that you did know and he was not on alert. Are you telling me that, within the security framework of our nation—all of you who share responsibility for various parts of it—you did not know about a Captain Salas who was involved potentially in a couple of murders and gun running?

Mr Price : Can I just clarify? At the time of the deaths, there was a joint operation conducted with the Australian Customs and Border Protection Service, as it was at the time, the New South Wales Police Force and the AFP. There were two days of activity on the vessel at on the vessel at the time of the deaths. All the information and intelligence collected was then forwarded for any assessment. So, of course—

Senator O'SULLIVAN:  Forwarded where?

Mr Price : To our intelligence holdings—

Senator O'SULLIVAN:  So intel gets this body of material, yes.

Mr Price : And we assessed the level of threat posed at the time. The assessment—I have got to be careful because we are getting into methodology here of how people—

Senator O'SULLIVAN:  No, I do not want to know the methodology, Mr Price.

Mr Price : And that is the issue.

Senator O'SULLIVAN:  What you are about to tell us is that, post an assessment, when all of this information—sorry, let me not make it descriptive. Any information that was available as a result of these investigations of deaths on board and gun running and the like is passed to your intelligence section. They assess it and then they make a determination whether something further should happen—such as, we will put Mr X or Mrs X onto an alert. So are you telling us that, post the assessment of the intel that had come from those other agencies in relation to these deaths and gun running, there was not a determination to put him on alert?

Mr Price : What I can say is that that is the case. The case is that the assessment, based on the available information and intelligence collected at the time—and we do not just place alerts for our own agency; any law enforcement agency can put out an alert if they wish to. So at that time it was not assessed, and I have to clarify—

Senator O'SULLIVAN:  So it was assessed, but it was not assessed to go on an alert.

Mr Price : It was not assessed as requiring that we needed to do an intervention. Remember, we had already done an intervention, quite comprehensively, and collected all the data, plus we had looked at the evidence provided to the coroner. What Captain Salas admits to is not the smuggling, and, in fact, he clearly states in his testimony he was not smuggling guns to Australia. What he was doing was taking commission from the crew, forcing them to buy weapons through him from a person who supplied those weapons to the crew back in the Philippines. So, it is certainly not—

Senator O'SULLIVAN:  Well, there is a bit of 'tomahto' 'tomato' in there, but—

Mr Price : But it certainly is a concern, we obviously take the information—

CHAIR: This may or may not assist, but I want to quote Hansard from 30 March 2016. Senator O'Sullivan, you and I were both asking questions. This is the answer that came back from the department:

'Yes, the department has holdings on Mr Salas'—I do not know what holding are but we will find that out—dating back to 24 December 1994.'  

This is you, Mr Williams, I believe.

Mr Williams : [inaudible]

CHAIR: 1994, I am quoting you:

These holdings relate to a range of interactions the department has had with Mr Salas and information we have received about his activities and movements.

I said:

So, he has been on the radar since 24 December 1994, is that correct?

You then said:

That is correct.  

Mr Williams : They were the routine transactions of entry and departure, and his signatures, for example, on the cargo reports and vessel reporting requirements that he made as master of the vessel. They were routine—

Senator O'SULLIVAN:  With respect, Mr Williams, that is not fit with him not being on the radar. The radar suggests that there is an alert looking for that little green blinking thing that is moving around; we know where it is at all times.

Mr Williams : I agree.

Senator O'SULLIVAN:  This is not going to end here for me. You have renewed my interest in this. This is not a question but an opportunity for anybody to comment: you have left me once more very concerned about the security arrangements in your agencies, if someone like Captain Salas does not qualify for a red flag. You might not want to know, but I suspect that ordinary Australians would want to know when the Salases of the world are in our ports, whether he is gun-running or he is clipping the ticket while someone else is gun-running or he bought guns. G-U-N-S—I do not give a rat's arse where they are coming from or where they are going. We need to know when these sort of people are in our company. I am happy for any of you to reflect on it.

Mr Price : Could I just add—

CHAIR: Yes, but before you do, let's not forget there was a man missing overboard and two days prior, when the ship was just out of Newcastle, one met an untimely death. So we had one missing and one dead as they were coming in to the port of Newcastle.  

Mr Price : When we talk about alerts, it relates to specific interest that an agency wants us to act on, to take some form of action or activity. When that incident first occurred there was a full operation. Subsequent to that and without being on alert, as an example, around January or February, again, when Captain Salas arrived on the coast, we ran the data through the system and the officers picked up the connection through our intelligence holdings of this previous history that Salas has. That initiated a further interdiction and examination of the cabin. So it does not necessarily require that there be an alert; it is to do with our intelligence holdings—and this is part of the assessment process we were talking about before—and when we put in the data on a vessel. A number of factors go into our risk assessment; it is not one individual necessarily, although that can be the case. It could be the vessel itself or the crewing agency—there is a variety of factors. In that instance, Captain Salas was subject to a further intervention where nothing was found. So that was post the initial event. We continued to have an interest once it came to our attention through the unfortunate deaths on board, the suspicious deaths; notwithstanding he was not on a formal alert per se.

Senator O'SULLIVAN:  In your own evidence before this committee on your intervention: you have this body of intel—and we all accept there that there is really nothing about Salas or the circumstances around the deaths or the allegations to do with the G-U-N-S, whatever they are; it is all at your disposal. It was not as if you were deprived of any of the intel; you have it all at your disposal. Is it your evidence that after an intervention that did not produce any further evidence that would promote concern for your agencies that that was it? That is what the evidence suggests to me. You have done your intervention, you have left Salas behind you on the boat, you have searched his room and there is no trace of anything—so Salas is no longer alive. Let me put it to you this way: if there were no coronial hearing and Salas did not do anything new to bring himself to the attention of other agencies with whom you have a relationship or your own people, you would never have known. It would have been in the system that Salas was in the country again for his bimonthly visit, but you would never have known. It was not: we will have a bow peep at Salas again in six or 12 months time to see whether he is a recalcitrant and may be back to his bad old ways. He just would never have come to your attention again.

Mr Williams : That is not our evidence.

Mr Price : That is not our evidence. As I said, he came clearly on the radar at the time of the unfortunate incident. We did the operation and collected the information jointly with New South Wales and AFP. There is an ongoing investigation into that—and not just into Captain Salas but into the entire crew—as part of the coronial. We are obviously interested in further intelligence or actions that—

Senator O'SULLIVAN:  You were at that time, yes.

Mr Price : Then, when the subpoena was issued for him to front to court, again, there was another intervention with Salas—a search of his belongings. That went ahead, so we had an interest then. Then, again, and this is through no other—

Senator O'SULLIVAN:  But that was not an interest generated by your system; an interest generated—

Mr Price : Yes, but just the third intervention—

Senator O'SULLIVAN:  Mr Price, we are going to run out of time today. But, I will tell you, one thing we have a lot of is time. We can come back again and again. I am not trying to trap you. I am trying to corner you. Just work with me on the burden of this question. If the coronial request had not come to you during that particular visit of Captain Salas, you would not have consciously known he was in the country. He was in your system, for certain. Had you typed in 'Salas' and clicked search, you would have gone: 'Bang! He's in Newcastle at 3 pm tomorrow.' But, without the subpoena request, you would not have consciously known. There was nothing in the history of Captain Salas nor in the body of intelligence that we have all agreed you have access to that warranted, 'We really want to know when this guy is in the country at particular intervals.'

Mr Price : Apologies, I have clearly not communicated clearly enough. On the third intervention, there was no subpoena; there was no coronial requirement.

Senator O'SULLIVAN:  No; I appreciate that.

Mr Price : It was an assessment done by officers in, I think, January or February, but we can clarify that date, and the information holdings that we had led them to believe we should search Captain Salas on that ship.

Senator O'SULLIVAN:  I agree with that. That is agreed. Let's get—

Mr Price : They did that, and that was not at the request—

Senator O'SULLIVAN:  No. So that is good.

Mr Price : That was from—

Senator O'SULLIVAN:  I will tell you something: that would give me great confidence if were happening. And it did happen.

Mr Price : It did happen.

Senator O'SULLIVAN:  You need to be congratulated. I think it was a good decision and a good manoeuvre. But, Mr Price, forgetting the subpoena request, after you did that action, he was not booked in the diary. Look, I am a retired detective. I used to keep a diary. If I came to search your house for drugs and I was not satisfied, I went back to my office and I put you in my diary for four months time so I did not forget you. I would find you again and I would come and pay you a visit. Salas was not in any system that would promote further action by any of the agencies, based on the intel you had at that time.

Mr Williams : No, because our activities and our interventions occur when the individual concerned or the vessel they are on comes back into our—

Senator O'SULLIVAN:  Which is what happened here.

Mr Williams : Yes. If, at some point in the future, he had come back in as a master of the vessel—

Senator O'SULLIVAN:  Which he did on this day, Mr Williams.

Mr Williams : Can I just finish the answer to your question? The same risk assessment process would occur and, it is possible—probable—that some intervention would have occurred as a consequence, similar to the one Mr Price was describing.

Senator O'SULLIVAN:  Hold on. You are perhaps hearing something I am not. Mr Williams, we already have evidence on the occasion when the subpoena was served. From information buried in your database with the other million bytes of information, your agency knew that Salas was coming back into the country. But you, Mr Williams, and you, Mr Price, and you, Mr Wilden, and you, Mr Chandler, and you, Ms Poidevin, would never have known, because there was no flag on him.

Senator RICE:  No red flag.

Senator O'SULLIVAN:  No flag, so you would not have known. Had the subpoena not been issued, there is every real chance—unless you want to give me evidence to the contrary—that Captain Salas would have made his way in, had his couple of days around port and left this nation without you ever having consciously known he was there. Does someone want to contradict me on this occasion? We know the subpoena prompted you to go to a keyboard—'Salas is here. We'll go and serve the subpoena.' But, without that, he was not in your detective's diary, he was not flagged, he was not in a bring-up system.

CHAIR: I am going to add something here.

Senator O'SULLIVAN:  Just don't let them off the hook for this.

CHAIR: No, I am not letting them off the hook. But this may become very helpful, Senator O'Sullivan. Captain Salas, after the third death in Japan, was transferred to an Australian FOC coastal tanker. Are you aware of that? You are. There is nod there. You said Captain Salas and the other crew were placed on a watch list or something like that. You had them all on that. But Captain Salas was able to remain in Australia on his dedicated domestic ship for nine months on a crew visa while he was a person of interest in the inquest and identified with gun issues. Am I wrong there?

Mr Wilden : I would have to check that last detail—

CHAIR: I am not wrong.

Mr Wilden : I do not have that off the top of my head.

CHAIR: Nine months, Senator O'Sullivan.

Mr Wilden : To perhaps try to assist, I think we are straying in and out of different lanes here about how the department does its business. I spoke earlier about preparing a chronology for the committee. As part of that chronology, we will go to these issues around at what point we were using—if you like—an alert list, which is a very formal mechanism where we have been advised we want to do things, versus intel, which is live information that we manage for anyone coming in and out. We will explain, as part of that chronology, the actions we took at each stage and what we were relying on, because I just think we might be bouncing across each other.

CHAIR: I will make it easier for you, Mr Wilden. What about, with my fellow senators here, we give you two weeks for the questions on notice, which is normal—27 June. So you take that back. But bear in mind—and, just so you are very clear, you are going to put your chronology out to us—if Owen Jacques had not flown at his expense from the Sunshine Coast to Sydney because he was following the coronial inquest and then, at the smoko break, walked up to, I think, the prosecutor at the time and said, 'Hey, this bloke's in Gladstone or coming in today or tomorrow.' If he had not said that, Captain Salas, by your own admission, the very next or the day afterwards, would have been on the plane and gone.

Mr Wilden : We will address that.

MTF? - Definitely, when I can get my hands on yesterday's Hansard...P2