Overview

Civil surveillance of Australia's borders began in the late 1960s using Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF) and Royal Australian Navy (RAN) aircraft to patrol the newly declared 12 nautical mile fishing zone. In addition, RAN patrol boats assisted with the surveillance and acted as a response force.

During the early to mid 1970s a number of issues began to focus the Government's attention on Australia's civil surveillance needs including:

• an increase in foreign fishing vessel activity
• illegal immigration and people smuggling
• in August 1977, the Government announced its intention to declare a 200 nautical mile Australian Fishing Zone (AFZ) around Australia

In the late 1970s, Australia moved closer to a coordinated civil surveillance effort when the Government made the Department of Transport responsible for coastal surveillance. The Government increased the combined military and civil surveillance commitment to 27,000 hours annually.

A substantial part of the increase came from the use of chartered civilian aircraft, while monitoring of the AFZ continued to be carried by RAN Grumman Tracker and RAAF P3 Orion aircraft.

A number of reviews in the 1980s and 1990s saw many changes to coastal surveillance arrangements culminating in the 2004 Taskforce on Offshore Maritime Security report.

The findings of this report resulted in the formation of Joint Offshore Protection Command (JOPC), as central to the integration of Australia's overall counter-terrorism effort.

In October 2006, JOPC was renamed Border Protection Command to better reflect the organisation's maritime surveillance and response role.