WHO GOES THERE?

The stories broke yesterday about the nocturnal Police raids, the arrests of suspected terrorists and an alleged suicide plot to murder soldiers at the Holsworthy Army base in Sydney. On 3AW I said I thought the security at our military bases had been farmed out to private security firms and that ‘you could drive a Mr. Whippy truck into a base without being stopped’.

It turns out it was worse than I thought. The civilian guards are unarmed. Opposition Defence spokesman Bob Baldwin said that if the alleged plot at Holsworthy had been carried out ‘Unarmed civilian guards would have been slaughtered, absolutely slaughtered’.

And that’s why I read in disbelief a story in the Herald Sun that Holsworthy is not only the home to thousands of troops including the Incident Response Group –one of Australia’s frontline counter-terrorism units – but also a $90 million special forces counter-terrorism training centre.

The article then naively says: ‘The size, security and firepower capability at the based would have madder any attack extremely difficult.’ Tell that to the Marines!

According to one text message intercepted by Police one alleged terrorist under surveillance at Holsworthy wrote ‘I strolled around. It’s easy to enter’.

Well, I’ve received some information about several other military installations. One Army, one Air Force. I’ll fudge the locations and some of the details.

Several months ago my informant spent four days on an RAAF base as an ex-serviceman visitor.

He says: ‘Our bases security around this country is an absolute joke, as they are controlled and manned by a civilian force, NOT the military as you would think. The RAAF security are hog tied in what they can do on their own bases, and are basically restricted to the flight line only. They're not even allowed to patrol the perimeter of their own base.

‘That's left to a very lax civilian group. They do it when they feel like it. My RAAF Police escort was so frustrated at the amazingly ridiculous level of security.

Every time we approached the Base main gate in his civilian vehicle he said ‘watch this’ and my jaw dropped as the boom gate was opened well before we even reached it. We could have been anyone! This performance is business as usual, so I was told.

‘I was also told by my escort that as a test, one of his RAAF Police members  actually got on to the base holding up a McDonalds Hash-Brown packet as his pass. This is the level of security our PM claims is high. I witnessed it every single time I passed through the main gate over the four days I spent there. The boom gate went up and I was just waved through. Nobody took a look at any of our passes. An ex-Army Major friend says this also goes for the Army. We are in desperate trouble here. If this worries you as much as it worries me Derryn, think of how vulnerable our serving members really are.’
And yet, after a special Cabinet meeting on security yesterday Prime Minister Rudd said ‘The advice I received from the Chief of the Defence Force was that based on our current knowledge, the security arrangements are adequate. On top of that however, I've requested that the Defence Force Chief and the Defence Department undertake an immediate and comprehensive review of adequacy, given these new developments.’
Well, they are either adequate or they’re not. And I’d say NOT. The most honest, scary comment comes from the head of New South Wales' counter-terrorism squad, Peter Dean. He says the plan to kill soldiers at Holsworthy could have worked.

‘These people had access to and were planning to get access to weapons before they actually went into the army base’.

So why aren’t soldiers guarding military bases? Money. By cutting budgets they’re putting soldiers’ lives at risk. And that’s unacceptable.

© Copyright Derryn Hinch 2009