Profile - Border stars shine
NSW Compliance Manager, Roger Allen, was stopped by a ticket booth operator at his local railway station in Sydney but it wasn’t a problem with his ticket. The operator said, ‘I saw you last night … you guys are doing a great job – keep it up.’
Roger is one of a number of departmental officers surprised to be recognised in their communities after featuring in Border Security, one of Australia’s top-rating television programmes in 2006-07.
Now into its fifth series and averaging around two million viewers each week, the Channel Seven documentary programme takes viewers behind the scenes and follows the work of immigration, customs and quarantine officers at airports, mail centres and along Australia’s vast coast line.
Departmental airport officers say the programme shows what they really do at work and feedback has been good.
The Great Chase which aired in August 2006 proved a very popular episode showing departmental compliance officers in an operation on a Sydney building site following a tip off. They detained five people from the People’s Republic of China who were working illegally.
‘Participants in the programme all agree the show has had an overwhelmingly positive effect on how the Australian public sees the work we do,’ Roger said.
Satinder Pastricha, Deputy Manager Sydney Airport, said that before the programme screened, the work the department does at migration entry points ‘wasn’t known to the public on the street.’
‘It raised awareness, and made them appreciate the kind of work that we do – the good work that we do in fact,’ Satinder said.
And having television cameras around did not change the way departmental officers did things. ‘What you see on television is pretty much what you see happen in most jobs we do,’ Roger said.