NSW Government Senator Bill Heffernan today pulled out a fake pipe bomb in front of Australia’s top cops at Parliament House to slam loopholes in new security screening measures.

Senator Heffernan was quizzing Australian Federal Police Commissioner Tony Negus and other AFP officials during a senate Budget estimates hearing examining the agency.

The Department of Parliamentary Services has begun a 12-month trial of new security arrangements allowing MPs and senators, families and staff and public servants to enter the Canberra building without being screened by metal detectors or X-ray machines.

However, the public, working journalists based in the building, contractors and diplomats would still be required to be examined.

Senator Heffernan today said there was a risk of entrapment by carrying something into the building for someone else and there were people who could be compromised.

“This building is no longer secure,” Senator Heffernan said, adding it was a “joke”.

“To demonstrate that, I brought in what could be … I brought this through security, a pipe bomb.”

He held the object up to the AFP officials.

Senator Heffernan said when he was a kid he used to blow stumps out on the farm, getting the ingredients and a detonator and lighting it to “go to buggery”.

“You could blow a tree the size of this building out of the ground,” he added.

“There is nothing to stop anyone bringing those ingredients in here over a period of time.”

Oh dear. Has Bill Heffernan got a suspicious pipe through Federal Parliament's new (discriminatory) security? pic.twitter.com/roG8JglSgm — Andrew Probyn (@andrewprobyn) May 26, 2014 Sub-type: comment CAPTION: Oh dear. Has Bill Heffernan got a suspicious pipe through Federal Parliament's new (discriminatory) security? pic.twitter.com/roG8JglSgm— Andrew Probyn (@andrewprobyn) May 26, 2014 Sub-type: comment CAPTION: Oh dear. Has Bill Heffernan got a suspicious pipe through Federal Parliament's new (discriminatory) security? pic.twitter.com/roG8JglSgm— Andrew Probyn (@andrewprobyn) May 26, 2014

Later Senator Heffernan told news.com.au he believed security precautions at Parliament House were being reduced because of cuts in the Federal Budget.

“Cancelling a couple of trips overseas by the Senate President and the Speaker would provide enough money,” he said.

Senator Heffernan said he had checked with Australian Federal Police before producing his exhibits – an empty pipe and three candles tied together.

Quizzed by the senator, Mr Negus said under the current arrangements there was a risk and he had expressed concerns with the departments involved.

“We’ve briefed the presiding officers of parliament on our concerns and what we put forward with an appropriate level of security,” he said.

Mr Negus later explained that the officers did not react when Mr Heffernan pulled out the pipe because the MP had showed it to them before the hearing got underway this morning.

Department of Parliamentary Services secretary Carol Mills said the new screening regime was saving $400,000 a year.

She said it helped the department allocate resources to other “higher risk strategies”.

“This is a very important building, the people who work here are very important, we are extremely cognisant of that,” she said.

“There are many ways in which we protect the building, not just at the gateway, not just by x-raying people’s bags coming into the building.

“You have to look at this as an overall picture.”

Opposition Leader Bill Shorten said Senator Heffernan made his point “in a particularly unusual and unconventional sense”.

“I have to say, though, for me today it’s about the security of Australian pensioners, it’s the security of Australian income earners against unfair taxes of the Abbott government,” he told reporters in Canberra, turning his attention to budget measures.

Senator Heffernan is no stranger to controversy. In 2007 he caused an outrage by saying Julia Gillard was not fit to be Prime Minister because she had chosen to remain “deliberately barren” and in 2011 he called Qantas CEO Alan Joyce “an old Irish bomb maker” in a Senate Estimates hearing.