Outgoing Australian Border Force boss Michael Outram warns foreign nations will target Australia via gangs

Australia faces a rising threat of hostile foreign nations using international gangs “to do their dirty work,” outgoing Australian Border Force commissioner Michael Outram has warned in his valedictory speech.

The retiring border boss — who began a decades long career in law enforcement as a British “‘Bobby” — addressed the National Press Club on Wednesday, ahead of his retirement next month.

Mr Outram said Australia was still failing to grasp the threats to our border and warned a failure to spend now to protect it would cost much more in the long term.

“I don’t think we fully understand, as a nation, how the challenges that lay ahead will require a shift in thinking,” he said.

“If we don’t become more strategic in our approach to managing our border, and investing in it, we’ll be unable respond effectively to those future challenges, or crises.”

Australia is expected to see a 70 per cent increase in cargo and a 50 per cent increase in passengers arriving in the next decade.

This will mean one in five jobs will be related to trade at the border, the commissioner said.

Labelling the border a “strategic economic asset”, Mr Outram said foreign regimes were “blurring the lines” to avoid Australian border controls and using proxies to bribe Australian officials.

Such threats will continue to escalate in the years ahead

“If a foreign regime calculates that it is too risky to try to cross Australia’s border directly, they might use a proxy or a criminal organisation to do their dirty work,” he said.

“Foreign intelligence services and their agents also use transnational crime to facilitate acts of espionage and foreign interference.

“This includes smuggling money through Australia’s trade system, including to pay Australian agents.”

He said international gangs will increasingly try to exploit our open trading system to traffic human beings, drugs and weapons.

“Such threats will continue to escalate in the years ahead and we need to keep pace in order to reduce economic and social harm,” he said.

Mr Outram said initiatives launched during his tenure had included a doctrine of command, control, and coordination, which led to the set up of the Australian Border Operations Centre to provide a constant a unified approach with other agencies.

He said this had worked well in protecting WA’s Kimberley Marine Park from illegal foreign fishers, in partnership with Aboriginal rangers.

As of last month, authorities had detected 57 illegal fishing vessels in waters of Broome, with the ABF revealing illegal fishing was at an 18-year high.

Before helming the border force, Mr Outram led operational responses to downing of Malaysian Airlines Flight 17 over Ukraine in 2014 at the Australian Federal Police.

As ABF Commissioner he oversaw the closing and then reopening of the country’s international border during COVID.

Lieutenant General Gavan Reynolds has been named as Mr Outram’s successor from November 9.