Career
Kelty became the inaugural Chairperson of the Australian Crime Commission in 2003. Keelty joined the Australian Capital Territory Police in 1974, which was subsequently merged with the Commonwealth Police in 1979, to create the Australian Federal Police (AFP). During his policing career, Keelty had experience across organised crime and corruption whilst seconded to the National Crime Authority, intelligence, community policing, and drug operations.
He became an Assistant Commissioner of the AFP in 1995 and Deputy Commissioner in 1998.
Keelty was appointed Commissioner of Police of the Australian Federal Police on 2 April 2001 for an initial term of five years. At the time, aged 46, he was the youngest Commissioner and the first Commissioner appointed from within the ranks of the AFP. As Commissioner, Keelty oversaw the expansion of the AFP following the terrorist attacks in the United States of America later that year and the bombings in Bali, Indonesia in 2002.
The organisation quadrupled in size and budget in the eight-and-a-half years he served as Commissioner taking on new roles such as the International Deployment Group – a body of some 1,200 officers serving in Afghanistan, Timor Leste, the Solomon Islands and Papua New Guinea and expanding the AFP"s budget from A$370 million in 2001 to A$1.3 billion in 2009. He is unrepentant about the AFP"s role in the Bali Nine saga.
Keelty retired on 2 September 2009, on the 35th anniversary of commencing as a police officer
Since his retirement from the AFP, Keelty has become an Adjunct Professor at both the Australian National University and Charles Sturt University undertaking research into policy implications of social networking for covert operations by police and security agencies. In February 2011, Keelty was appointed by the Washington Government to lead the independent inquiry into the Perth Hills Bushfires.
