Industry Summit – Melbourne
19 November 2015
Michael Pezzullo
Secretary, Department of Immigration and Border Protection
Welcome address
[The following transcript is an edited and abridged version of the speech delivered]
Can I begin by thanking colleagues, particularly our partners in industry. You are our indispensable partners as will become increasingly apparent over the next day and a half. I thank you for your participation. Can I also thank Linda and her staff – very hard-working staff – in our Traveller Customs and Industry Division, who have put this event together. As you can all appreciate from the various enterprises in which you work, it’s always the unseen work that toils away behind the scenes that allows these events to come together. So, through you Linda, to your staff, thank you very much for all the hard work that you’ve done.
As Linda mentioned, this is the first time, indeed in history, that industry has come together with the Federal Government to discuss issues of common concern amongst the expanded remit that this portfolio now entails – immigration, trade systems, the actual operation of those trade systems and customs processes, the collection of revenue, the facilitation of travellers and goods crossing our border, and of course border security and protection issues. This, of course, is a consequence of the merger of the former Immigration and Border Protection Department as it was then known, and still is known, but now with a wider remit, with the Customs and Border Protection Service, formerly the Australian Customs Service, which in various guises has been in existence since 1901.
On 1 July this year, by Government direction and through legislation, these two entities came together as a single Department. You see that manifested today with me being present here as the Secretary of the Department, and with my co–leader of the enterprise, the Commissioner of the Australian Border Force, Roman Quaedvlieg. I also welcome Roman – and I look forward to hearing from him in a moment – who also serves as the Comptroller–General of Australian Customs in a dual–statutory role. We very much have been looking forward to and anticipating ahead of this industry summit. It does build on the event that was held last year under the guise and auspices of the Australian Customs and Border Protection Service. But, for reasons that are now evident with an expanded remit, this second industry summit has a much wider focus.
We’re very conscious in the Department that you can begin to form a very distorted view of our activities and our priorities if you just simply look at us through the media headlines. Every day, and regrettably most recently of course in France – as recently as last night with the operation in Saint–Denis – there are stories of terrorism globally manifested but with very much local horrific impacts, as was evident in Paris over the weekend. But also, most recently of course in the Sinai, and not to forget other tragedies in Beirut, in Iraq, and elsewhere. You also read many headlines about transnational crime, the drugs that are harming our society, killing our children regrettably, and our relatives and loved ones. You can see the headlines around people smuggling, the scourge of illegal maritime trafficking of human beings, exploiting their desperation for monetary gain, as occurs with people smuggling by sea. You see that not just off Australia – thankfully now reduced to, since July of last year, a zero arrival rate – but also in the Indian Ocean, and of course tragically in the Mediterranean.
If you just looked at this enterprise, this public enterprise through that lens, you would think that we’re just a security agency. Well of course we are. Our fundamental mission is to protect Australia by securing its borders. But we’re also the conduit that Australia has into the globalised world, whether for purposes of trade, travel, the movement of people, the movement of workers, the movement of students, and so on and so forth. So you see us very visibly – in visa processing centres, at airports obviously, at sea ports, in mail centres, in air cargo facilities. Increasingly you are seeing us in cyberspace as we move many of our business lines and our operational activities onto digital platforms. Of course, this is a manifestation of the underlying phenomenon of truly global globalisation. What do I mean by that? We have seen in previous periods of human history, including before the First World War, a degree of globalisation start to occur, particularly as the European powers start to expand their markets. But this era – the era that has emerged since the end of the Cold War some nearly 20 years ago – is truly global. Particularly as patterns and networks of trade, travel, labour mobility, business, capital investment, study, tourism, et cetera, encircle the whole globe. You see the enrichment of societies and the creation of new middle classes that are outward looking and globally connected in Asia, in Africa, the Americas, as well as of course in the traditional hub of globalisation, which of course was Europe and the United States.
As a result of truly global globalisation, there is a massive increase in volumes across all of those areas of economic activity. Global supply chains are expanding and encircling the whole world. As I said a moment ago, the middle class of the entire world in those different regions is expanding rapidly. They’re globally connected, they’re globally mobile, they’re digitally savvy. They like to travel, they like to trade, they like to invest, they like to have overseas experiences in terms of business, tourism, recreation, and the like. There’s a rapid uptake of technology all around the world; it is disrupting traditional ways of doing business, including how the nation states of the world therefore need to interact with each other across their borders.
Immigration and Customs authorities all around the world – and in our case in a single merged entity – are therefore grappling with a conundrum: how do you facilitate the legitimate movement of people and goods across an increasingly connected world – in a world of truly global globalisation – while still providing the security, the assurance, and the community protection that our publics rightly expect?
In the Department, therefore, we are focused on four strategic objectives. First, without any hesitation, without any apology, is to protect Australia. Second, however, we need to promote responsive migration; third, we need to advance trade and travel and collect revenue; and fourth, we need to do all of these things in an increasingly innovative way in order to deal with different customer and consumer expectations, new forms of technology, and rapid and growing volumes as previously mentioned. Now we can only achieve this – this degree of innovation, this degree of change, this degree of dealing in a disruptive world – by working with industry. We have to innovate with industry. And we have to assume – and this is the working assumption we have within our executive – that our traditional business models of how to issue visas, of how to clear passengers, of how to clear cargo, and so on and so forth, will most likely not work, certainly as they did in the past, and almost certainly will not work in terms of dealing volumes into the future.
Therefore, we are placing a very high emphasis on, and priority on co–development and co–design – co–development of solutions and co–design of the practical business processes that underpin those solutions. We very much want to work with our industry partners across all sectors, both at the firm level, with industry associations and through the intermediaries with whom we deal with on a daily basis.
In this summit you will find different areas of interest that suit your particular business and professional areas of focus through the different work streams. We’d ask you obviously to concentrate on those matters that are of most interest, but we also ask you to come together in the plenary sessions to think more strategically about what truly global globalisation means for trade, travel, labour mobility, and the like. During this conference we’ll be launching two industry engagement strategies that will provide a road map and a framework that will be our guarantee to you of our future collaboration. One strategy focuses on trade, customs, and travel; the other engagement strategy – and these two documents are complementary, one to the other – will focus on immigration and labour mobility issues.
We are very keen on your feedback; we’re very keen on your ideas. Yes of course we want to hear about any practical concerns you have about the near–term and indeed maybe even the medium–term, but above all we want to work with you on solutions to those problems.
Thank you very much.
