Australian airports have sufficient security

– World news selected by Gazette editors for Phuket’s international community

SYDNEY: Australia’s airports have sufficient security in the wake of the deadly attack in Brussels, Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull said on Wednesday, although a planned strike by immigration workers ahead of the busy Easter holiday weekend was suspended.

Islamic State has claimed responsibility for suicide bomb attacks at Brussels airport and on a rush-hour metro train in the Belgian capital on Tuesday that killed at least 30 people.

Australia is on heightened alert for attacks by home-grown radicals, but the threat level has not been raised following the Brussels attacks and Turnbull said the country was in a better position than Europe.

“I can assure Australians that our security system, our border protection, our domestic security arrangements, are much stronger than they are in Europe, where regrettably they allowed them to slip,” Turnbull said on Australian Broadcasting Corp television.

“That weakness in European security is not unrelated to the problems they’ve been having in recent times.”

Turnbull, who described the Brussels attacks as “cowardly”, said he would hold further meetings with security officials to discuss the Brussels attack, but initial guidance indicated that “the threat level is at an appropriate level”.

Although Turnbull said airport security was sufficient, fears of an increased threat had been stoked with immigration workers planning a series of strikes at international airports across Australia.

However, the union representing the immigration workers said today it had decided not to proceed with the strikes.

Easter is a peak travel time at both domestic and international airports in Australia. Immigration and Border Protection workers had planned to walk off the job tomorrow, hoping to end a two-year contract dispute between public sector workers and the federal government.

— Phuket Gazette Editors