A performance audit of the Australian Federal Police’s use of its statutory powers has found that while the police were “largely effective” in exercising their powers, they suffered from deficiencies in maintaining records.
In his report Australian Federal Police’s Use of Statutory Powers, Auditor-General Grant Hehir made three recommendations to the Australian Federal Police (AFP) around warrant review processes, record-keeping and quality assurance.
The AFP agreed to all of them.
Mr Hehir said the objective of the audit was to assess the effectiveness of the AFP’s framework to ensure the lawful exercise of powers was in accordance with applicable legislation.
“There are serious deficiencies in the AFP’s record-keeping practices and processes,” Mr Hehir said.
“The AFP met statutory reporting requirements under three key Acts examined,” he said.
“However, internal records relating to execution of section 3E of the Crimes Act warrants are stored in a way whereby retrieval is unable to be achieved efficiently or with an assurance of completeness.”
He said the AFP’s framework relating to training and guidance was largely effective, however it had not undertaken a training needs analysis at the whole-of-organisation level and there was limited quality assurance assessment of operational activity.
The Auditor-general’s report can be found online at this PS News link and an 83-page PDF report at this link.
The audit team was Julian Mallett, Amanda Ronald, Zoe Pilipczyk, Anne Kent, Sam Jones, Lesa Craswell and Alex Wilkinson.
