Protecting Australia's Maritime Borders: The Operational Aspects

This chapter will consider the operational aspects relevant to protecting Australia's maritime borders. For the purposes of this paper, border protection in the Australian law enforcement context is, essentially, enforcement of Australia's immigration, customs and quarantine law.The scope of the paper will be from a national perspective and not from the view solely of the Australian Defence Force (ADF), which is but one agency involved in the national response, and will consider briefly the maritime environment, the existing mechanisms which are in place to ensure the integrity of Australia's borders, the legislative framework within which Australia's law enforcement agencies must operate and, finally, the challenges associated with current and future maritime border protection operations.