Mick Keelty

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Australian Federal Police Commissioner
Mick Keelty APM
Portrait from AFP
In office 2001 – -
Preceded by	Mick Palmer

Born	1954 Australia

Michael Joseph (Mick) Keelty (born 13 July 1954), Australian police officer, is the current Commissioner of the Australian Federal Police. He joined the Australian Capital Territory police in 1974. The ACT Police and Commonwealth Police were merged in 1979, to create the Australian Federal Police.

He became an Assistant Commissioner in 1995 and Deputy Commissioner in 1998. Keelty was appointed Commissioner of Police of the Australian Federal Police on 2 April 2001.^[1]

1 Public statements
2 See also
3 References
4 External links

Public statements

In March 2004 in an interview with Jana Wendt, he was asked as to whether a Madrid-type bombing could happen in Australia. He said: "The reality is, if this turns out to be Islamic extremists responsible for the bombing in Spain, it's more likely to be linked to the position that Spain and other allies took on issues such as Iraq."

Subsequently the Prime Minister John Howard said that this was "not a conclusion" that he himself "would have reached". General Peter Cosgrove, Chief of the Australian Defence Force also publicly disagreed with the statement. The then Australian Intelligence chief Dennis Richardson then subsequently endorsed Keelty's statement stating that both Keelty and himself were privy to the same information and had drawn the same conclusion.

Keelty caused controversy in May 2005 when he criticised the leaking of allegations surrounding baggage handlers in the Schapelle Corby case. He indicated that he believed Corby's defence to be flimsy, "There is very little intelligence to suggest that baggage handlers are using innocent people to traffic heroin or other drugs between states." This statement, made during the ongoing trial, earned Keelty harsh words from the Law Council of Australia and from supporters of Schapelle Corby. ^[2]

Views on current events regarding Islam

Keelty's views seem to be somewhat independent of the Australian government. In a recent speech he said "If we are not careful, we risk raising a generation of Australians who will have a bias against Islam" in reference to the recent media attention to Islam in Australia. He said, "I hear more and more stories of treatment of the Islamic community that really is substandard by members of our own wider community" and "if we are not careful, the way we treat the issues of security and terrorism can, in fact, incite others to become involved". ^[3]

Family and social life

Raised as a Roman Catholic and very loyal to his family's Irish Catholic roots, Keelty has been moved to describe himself as "a practicing Christian" in an interview with the Australian Broadcasting Corporation's Four Corners TV program. ^[4]

Technology-enabled crime and virtual policing

Mr Keelty has warned that technology-enabled crime is a real challenge for future policing and that technological skills needed to respond to such crimes will have to be imported to policing from the private sector.

"We are watching people in the virtual world convert what they are doing in the virtual world to travel to some of these countries where children are at risk, this convergence from the virtual to the real world is a new phenomenon and makes evidence-gathering quite difficult."

"So this convergence from the virtual to the real world is a new phenomenon and makes evidence-gathering quite difficult. It will be a problem for us into the future."^[5]