Terrorists could easily exploit a serious weakness in Australia’s border protection regime. While the Howard government has committed substantial resources to ‘protect’ the public against the ‘security’ threat posed by unauthorised arrivals attempting to enter Australia through the ‘back door,’ less attention has been devoted to our ‘front door,’ which is wide open.

The Brigitte case has exposed a serious weakness in Australia’s border control system, which terrorists could readily exploit if they wished to cause harm to Australians on Australian soil.

Australia’s borders are actually better protected against foreign cheese and salami than against foreign terrorists.

• The Australian ‘Electronic Travel Authority’ system – a local equivalent of ‘visa waiver programmes’ operated by many developed countries, including the United States – has done away with the paper-based application forms or face-to-face interviews through which the suspicions of an alert official about an applicant’s real intentions might be aroused.
• While ‘Electronic Travel Authority’ applications are checked against a ‘Movement Alert List’, this provides no protection unless individuals with malign intentions have previously come to the attention of security or law enforcement authorities.
• The belief of immigration officials that states included in the ‘Electronic Travel Authority’ system are ‘countries that invariably present themselves as low risk’ has been outdated by recent developments in global terrorism: passport holders of such states have been implicated in some of the most dramatic terrorist outrages of our era.

Terrorists could easily exploit a serious weakness in Australia’s border protection regime. While the Howard government has committed substantial resources to ‘protect’ the public against the ‘security’ threat posed by unauthorised arrivals attempting to enter Australia through the ‘back door,’ less attention has been devoted to our ‘front door,’ which is wide open.

Professor William Maley is Director of the Asia-Pacific College of Diplomacy at the Australian National University.