Tag Archive for: Home Affairs

Australia’s security architecture must evolve, not regress

The Independent Intelligence Review, publicly released last Friday, was inoffensive and largely supported the intelligence community status quo. But it was also largely quiet on the challenges facing the broader national security community in an increasingly dangerous world, in which traditional intelligence is just one tool of statecraft and national power.

After the January discovery of a caravan laden with explosives in Dural, Sydney, confusion emerged around what federal and state governments knew and when. The review was completed before the caravan was discovered, and the plot was likely beyond the review’s scope. However, government responses to the event should prompt a discussion about Australia’s national security architecture.

Australia faces an unprecedented convergence of threats. We are confronted simultaneously by the rise of aggressive authoritarian powers, global conflict, persistent and evolving terrorism, foreign interference and the normalisation of cyber warfare.

Luck will not protect us; we need structure and certainty. Australia saw these threats early and began to modernise its security architecture in 2017, including the establishment of the Home Affairs portfolio.

But the government has gradually reversed some elements of the consolidation, returning various security responsibilities to the Attorney-General’s portfolio, including for the Australian Federal Police and the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation. This reversion to an outdated model risks leaving the system ill-equipped to confront the challenges of the 21st century.

Debate on Home Affairs seems fixated on the leadership style of its former head, Michael Pezzullo. Leadership is crucial, but obsession with individual style over substance, distracts from both strategic thinking and the fundamental issue of resurrecting a system that had structural inadequacies and was demonstrably unfit for purpose. We are not simply revisiting a past model; we are resurrecting a failed one.

The Attorney-General’s portfolio, in its traditional guise, was designed for a simpler, less dangerous era. Domestic threats were minimal and tended to come one by one—for example, after the end of the Cold War, security focus shifted from espionage to the emerging threat of Islamist terrorism. The Attorney-General’s oversight was appropriate, as it focused primarily on the legal framework while security agencies executed operations.

However, the proliferation and intersection of modern threats have overwhelmed this antiquated model.

When confronted with asylum-seeker boat arrivals, global terrorism, China and hybrid threats including cyber, the previous system—notwithstanding highly talented people—struggled as the Attorney-General’s portfolio held both the legal and security responsibilities. Having public servants working on legal considerations and intelligence officers doing operations is no longer adequate.

The system’s limitations were evident well before the 2017 restructure. In 2011, prime minister Julia Gillard moved cybersecurity from the Attorney-General’s purview into her own department. Similarly, the 2012 review of illegal boat arrival policy was managed within the prime minister’s department, reflecting that the framework was not up to the task. And as a result of a review after the 2014 Martin Place terrorist attack, the Abbott government created a Counterterrorism Coordinator within the prime minister’s portfolio.

The rise of the Islamic State terrorist group in 2014 exposed policy deficits. While terror laws rightly fell under the Attorney-General’s remit, the broader policy response demanded a more strategic perspective and decisive approach. Changes were needed, partly because laws were so out of date.

But it was China’s rise that finally revealed the urgent need for a dedicated focus on national security policy. The 2016 review into foreign interference was a direct consequence of Australia’s evolving threat landscape.

Few of our closest partners’ chief law officers also function as security ministers. Typically, a dedicated security minister focuses on threat assessment and policy development, while the Attorney-General ensures that all actions are lawful.

Australia’s Home Affairs model strengthened the legal checks and balances by separating security policy and operational functions from the legal oversight function. It ensured that a single minister could not simultaneously identify a threat, determine the appropriate response and authorise the necessary actions without independent scrutiny. The previous system essentially allowed a single minister to mark their own homework.

Dividing security responsibilities between the Attorney-General and Home Affairs portfolios limits the effectiveness of both departments.

If this gradual dilution portends a future abolition of Home Affairs altogether, that would be a mistake. As the Dural caravan controversy unfolded, no one seemed able to agree on what was an appropriate amount of information-sharing between police and security agencies, and state and federal governments. This underscores the need for clarity that Home Affairs is responsible for setting, coordinating and implementing national security policy.

Home Affairs was created because the threat environment was evolving and, within our national security architecture, foreign and defence policy were covered but the third aspect of national security—domestic security—was lacking. So, what security evolution has justified its regression? The Attorney-General’s department has not shown itself to be more capable than Home Affairs in terrorism, cybersecurity or foreign interference.

Home Affairs—to the government’s credit—led the world by banning DeepSeek from government devices. Could we count on such decisive action if lawyers were doing all the work and then reviewing it themselves? Would you allow your lawyer to run your business, rather than provide essential legal counsel?

Technology amplifies threats and is advancing much faster than new laws can be written. Terrorists use encrypted apps to plot attacks and social media to attract recruits. China spreads propaganda through social media and has already begun using cyber intrusions to prepare to conduct sabotage operations in future conflict.

Australia must not only reinstate the separation between the security minister and the attorney-general; it must evolve further to confront 21st-century threats. This should include establishing a National Security Council or Secretariat, like those of many of our partner nations, including Quad countries. This body should be led by a national security adviser who provides strategic coherence and policy coordination.

To navigate the increasingly complex and dangerous global security landscape, we need to evolve, not regress.

Stopping anti-Semitic terrorism in Australia

In the next six months there is a greater than 50 per cent chance of a terrorist attack being planned and possibly carried out in Australia. The Director-General of Security told us so on August 5, 2024, when the terrorist threat level was raised to “probable”. The Jewish Australian community has every right to be gravely concerned that Jewish people and places, such as synagogues, might be the targets of such an attack. That this is even a possibility should shock all Australians.

We can be very confident that ASIO, the AFP, state and territory police and other agencies will do everything in their power to stop such an attack. However, history shows that while many terrorist attacks are stopped, some attempts succeed. Afterwards, commissions of inquiry typically find that governmental structures and processes were deficient, responsibilities were not clearly assigned, and information flows had broken down. Those were the lessons, for instance, of the institutional failures that occurred in the lead-up to the 9/11 attacks.

We must not minimise the gravity of this situation by thinking that this threat has little to do with the lives of Australians generally. Were a mass casualty terrorist attack to occur, perhaps on the scale of the bombing of the Jewish community centre in Buenos Aires in July 1994, which killed 85 people, Australia would never be the same again afterwards. Our idea of Australia as being a peaceful and cohesive society would be transformed overnight, for the worst.

The federal government is charged with the defence of the nation, the protection of its sovereignty, and the maintenance of the “peace, order, and good government” of the commonwealth, the latter phrase being contained in the Constitution. If the government fails in any of these first duties of state, no amount of success in other fields will protect it from condemnation, today and in history’s enduring judgment.

While police and security intelligence officers, and other officials, have to grapple at the operational coalface with the complex challenge of counter-terrorism work, it is the government that has the higher and prior responsibility to prevent matters developing to the point where the nation is being riven by polarisation and social fractures, and where there is a risk that hateful beliefs might be acted upon through terroristic violence.

As in war, countering terrorism requires active and involved ministerial leadership, and the wielding of the power of ministerial office to ensure that institutional failures are remedied before tragedy strikes, and not in the aftermath.

In counter-terrorism work, it is vitally important that the architecture of roles and responsibilities is clear, especially in a federation, that governmental structures reflect this clarity, that functions are distributed accordingly, and that there is integration and unity of effort across agencies and jurisdictions. Institutional failures are more likely to occur when the assignment of roles and responsibilities lacks clarity. Reporting lines become tangled. Information flows are impaired. Coherence of effort breaks down.

At the most foundational level, it is not even clear who is the lead federal minister of the government. Under the current Administrative Arrangements Order, the document that sets out the responsibilities of ministerial departments of state, the responsibility for “law enforcement policy and operations” is vested with the Attorney-General, while the responsibility for “national security policy and operations” is vested with the Minister for Home Affairs. So, who is the minister for counter-terrorism?

This blurring of responsibilities, and the associated transfer since May 2022 of the AFP, other law enforcement agencies, and then ASIO from the Home Affairs ministry to the Attorney-General’s, were retrograde steps. They unravelled the clarity and unification of effort that had been put in place by the Turnbull government in December 2017, when the Department of Home Affairs was established in its modern form. Were there to be a major terrorist attack, this blurring of responsibilities, and the consequential weakening of the nation’s counter-terrorism machinery, would be key exhibits in any resultant commission of inquiry.

In the same way that the Minister for Defence would be expected to take the day-to-day lead in matters of war – and we would not have separate ministers for the navy, the army, and the air force pulling in different directions – the Minister for Home Affairs should lead in all matters of domestic security and federal law enforcement. The minister should have “authority over the whole scene”, as Winston Churchill used to say.

Sound arrangements were in place during the period December 2017 to May 2022, when the minister, the department, and ASIO, the AFP, the Australian Criminal Intelligence Commission and AUSTRAC were able to work together as a cohesive team, with the minister having “authority over the whole scene”.

This is not a theoretical claim. It was our lived experience. The relevant machinery of government was integrated. Information flows were seamless. Effort was unified. Australia was safer.

In the absence of a senior minister having such authority, and the information, so that they are able to set strategic directions and to give lawful directions as might be necessary, too much of the burden of accountability in counter-terrorism is being borne by officers who, while being highly diligent and resolutely determined in their work, are not charged with being accountable to the parliament, and the people.

Only an empowered minister who has full command of all of the facts of an evolving situation can probe, question, nudge and – at times – overrule, subject to having the legal authority to do so.

This is the basis for the successful governance of Operation Sovereign Borders. It is how we would fight a war. Why is counter-terrorism being treated differently? It should not be.

Here is what needs to be done, without delay. These measures might strike the reader as being concerned with technical matters of governmental machinery. They are. Getting the machinery and processes of counter-terrorism right keeps us safe, and it is precisely these matters that any future commission of inquiry into a major terrorist attack would have to examine in painstaking detail.

First, the AAO should be amended this afternoon, assigning explicit ministerial responsibility for counter-terrorism to the Minister for Home Affairs. Accompanying instructions should be issued, also this afternoon, to the Director-General of Security and the AFP Commissioner directing them to report to the minister with immediate effect. In due course, the Department of Home Affairs should be reconstituted fully.

Second, the Prime Minister, consulting with first ministers, should declare the existence of a National Terrorist Situation, under the provisions of the National Counter-Terrorism Plan. That plan is the agreed national arrangement for dealing with terrorism, and it should be fully activated, without the government waiting for an attack to succeed. Some might quibble that a “terrorist incident” has not yet occurred. Let them. They can answer before the judgment of history.

The declaration of an NTS would open the way for the commonwealth to assume full strategic leadership of the overall anti-Semitism effort.

The states and territories have vital supporting roles to play in this regard, as they would in any national crisis. However, the severity of the situation has reached a point where the commonwealth now has to lead. Imagine no one bothering to tell Churchill in 1940 that German-speaking parachutists had landed in Sussex, because detective chief superintendent Foyle had the matter in hand!

Had the recent caravan bomb plot succeeded, it would have been an attack on Australia, not an attack on an individual state.

Accordingly, and third, the government should immediately establish a multi-agency, multi-jurisdictional taskforce within the Centre for Counter-Terrorism Co-ordination in the Department of Home Affairs. This should include state and territory officials. The taskforce should be led by the commonwealth Counter-Terrorism Co-ordinator within Home Affairs. The office of Co-ordinator was established in the wake of the Martin Place siege of December 2014, and the subsequent review that was undertaken of Australia’s counter-terrorism machinery.

The taskforce should be built around these three missions: “prevent and protect” (led by Home ­Affairs); “intelligence” (led by ASIO, working with the AFP, ACIC, AUSTRAC, and other intelligence agencies); and “disruption” (led by the AFP, working with ASIO and state and territory police). This model would mirror the successful Operation Sovereign Borders model that has been in place since late 2013, with a key additional element being the integration of state and territory police, who would retain primacy for the investigation of offending that was related to state and territory laws, under the umbrella of the disruption mission.

The “battle rhythm” of the taskforce should be driven by the provision by the co-ordinator of a daily situation report to the minister, which would provide him with the latest information regarding the threat picture and the operational situation. Nothing more focuses the mind of officers than the need to work to the steady beat of ministerial oversight. This is what happens in war, and in other domestic security crises such as dealing with illegal boat arrivals. It should drive action here too. The report should be suitably classified and constructed such that those few with a comprehensive need to know everything would be able to be fully informed, while those with a lesser need to know would be informed of only those matters that fell within their responsibility. On advice, but in the end exercising his own judgment, the minister should decide what should be said publicly, and when – always balancing the obligation to inform and reassure the public with the imperative to protect operations.

Fourth, national cabinet should agree to the establishment of a national crisis committee of relevant state and territory ministers, to be led by the Minister for Home Affairs. This committee should meet weekly, or more frequently as might be necessary. It would provide a regular opportunity for the co-ordinator and others to brief ministers, and to act as required on any collective decisions that they might take. National cabinet should be primed to meet urgently, as circumstances require it.

Fifth, the co-ordinator should develop a strategy for a national community engagement campaign, in consultation with commonwealth departments and agencies, the first secretaries of the states and territories, the Executive Council of Australian Jewry, and others with particular expertise in the field. Special Anti-Semitism Envoy Jillian Segal should be appointed to be the principal strategic adviser to the co-ordinator and the taskforce in this and all other regards, while retaining her direct reporting line to the Prime Minister and the Home Affairs Minister. She should be given special intelligence and other briefings so she can better perform her functions.

Drawing on the best practice in countering violent extremism, and combatinganti-Semitism, including by way of better Holocaust education, the aim of the campaign would be to counter the very particular and pernicious narratives and ideologies that underpin and sustain anti-Jewish hatred.

Success in this regard will not be achieved by generalised anti-racism and anti-discrimination efforts, and well-meaning pleas for the maintenance of social cohesion, as important as these are. Anti-Semitism has to be countered specifically at the level of narrative and ideology, having regard to the particulars of this ancient hatred. Such a campaign should expose and challenge anti-Jewish tropes, memes, conspiracy narratives, signifiers, and so on. It would have to be mounted across a wide array of social media platforms, and it would ideally involve prominent Australians, including faith leaders, calling out this hatred, and standing with Jewish Australians.

Sixth, the taskforce should work with technology companies and other data providers to generate a better online “dragnet” of anti-­Semitic content, built on more powerful, lawful AI-assisted searches for such material, to address the data problems that were recently identified by Mike Kelly in these pages.

A better “dragnet” would generate more leads for intelligence and investigative work, support takedown efforts by the eSafety Commissioner, and assist in the shaping and targeting of the community engagement campaign.

Seventh, the co-ordinator, working in conjunction with the commonwealth Department of Education and the vice-chancellors of universities, should prepare a plan for the minister’s consideration on making our universities safe for Jewish staff and students. Some universities have become hotbeds of hatred. This should not be tolerated. Perpetrators should be dealt with decisively. Sit-ins and encampments should be shut down. This is not an issue of free speech. It is intimidation that has no place in civil discourse.

Eighth, the minister should convene an urgent meeting of the Five Country Ministerial grouping, which brings together the security ministers of Australia, Canada, New Zealand, Britain and the US. This forum has worked very effectively to crack tough domestic security and public safety issues, doing so on the basis of the very highly classified intelligence that is shared among the Five Eyes partners. The Five Country Ministerial group should focus especially on the foreign state and other actors who are almost certainly operating in the shadows to seed and amplify anti-Jewish hatred. Special attention should be paid to Iran, which has a record of sponsoring attacks against Jewish people and places around the world. The FBI and MI5 warned of the threat of Iranian-backed terrorism in the immediate wake of the October 7 attack on Israel.

Ninth, the minister should reassure himself that effective plans are in place to deal with mass casualty bombing attacks, active shooter contingencies, siege/hostage recovery situations, and car-ramming attacks. With the Minister for Defence, he should satisfy himself that the call-out arrangements under Part IIIAAA of the Defence Act are in order, and that the ADF’s Tactical Assault Groups can be quickly deployed.

He should also instruct the co-ordinator to ensure that the guidance for the protection of crowded places, schools and places of worship is current, and has been promulgated effectively to the Jewish community, and to the owners and controllers of relevant physical places. Similarly, access to dangerous chemicals and explosives should be reviewed and tightened as required, and preparations made for the lawful deployment of counter-drone capabilities at certain locations, to defend against drone-mounted attacks.

Finally, the minister should direct Home Affairs to expedite the cancellation on character grounds of the visas of any non-citizens who espouse extremist anti-Semitic viewpoints. A new ministerial direction to decision-makers should be promulgated to ensure that consistently decisive decisions are being taken in this regard.

These measures have a single theme. We know, from the findings of commissions of inquiry, terrorist attacks are more likely to occur where there has been a failure of central co-ordination and direction, a fragmentation of effort, and a breakdown in information flows.

What is suggested here could be set in motion this afternoon. Doing so would not reflect any criticism of officials, and certainly not of the operational teams who are doing their job. However, they do not bear the onerous burden of being responsible for “the whole scene”. That charge falls to the government, which also needs to do its job.

Drifting into danger: will we ever see the independent intelligence review?

The road to hell is apparently paved with good intentions. But often, it’s tarmac laid with thoughtlessness and passivity.

Two years ago the Albanese government described Australia’s immigration policy as broken, owing to unplanned, temporary migration flows since 2005. It claimed this ‘happened without any real policy debate or discussion. It happened not through thoughtful planning and strategy, but by negligence and continental drift.’

Today, a similar drift threatens to break a model of intelligence review, strategic direction and public engagement that has served Australia well for more than two decades.

It’s been more than 210 days since the 2024 independent intelligence review report was given to the prime minister. As noted in The Strategist back on the first anniversary of the review’s commencement (and two and a half months after the review was completed):

The Albanese government did well by instituting this latest review … but the job isn’t finished until the report and recommendations are made public. Then the hard work of implementation and accountability begins.

Back in August 2024 the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet confirmed the report’s receipt before its 30 June 2024 deadline. There’s no public indication of anything abnormal or deficient about the report or its findings—hardly surprising given the eminence of the authors, Heather Smith and Richard Maude. There’s also no hint of a great clash of competing visions or principles to guide our National Intelligence Community (NIC), or of a fundamental intelligence failure requiring remedying, not least given the transformative investments in and fundamental restructuring of the NIC following the last review in 2017.

This only exacerbates frustration with the government’s failure to respond to the review and release a public version of the report. There are two possible explanations. Either it’s timidity or they’re unable to exercise sufficient direction to end this damaging delay.

It bears repeating that the world has not stood still since June 2024—and certainly not since the last inputs into the review, which date to late 2023. Since September 2024 alone we’ve seen civil and military unrest across the globe, including the most audacious intelligence operation in recent history—Mossad’s supply chain attack on Hezbollah—as well as the eruption of antisemitic violence in Australia and the change of administration in Washington.

One interpretation is that for seven months the NIC has been beavering away implementing the classified report. But even this ignores the importance of the public report, including to the NIC itself.

The benefits of public intelligence review reports were outlined in a Strategist article last year.

In short, they enable intelligence reform and transformation, given the NIC’s reliance on the public for workforce recruitment, technology and industry partnerships and social licence. Public reports also help hold government accountable for the implementation of recommendations.

Also, an unclassified version of an otherwise very sensitive and restricted top-secret document is the best way of engaging not just the public but all the NIC’s staff, and officials across the broader bureaucracy.

While Australian voters will make their call at the ballot box later this year, we suspect few votes will turn on this issue alone.  But there is now a much, much bigger problem, which doesn’t just affect the value and future utility of this particular review.

The implication that the Smith-Maude review may never see the light of day places us all on the precipice of a government, albeit without malice aforethought, breaking the system of public intelligence review that has existed in Australia for over 20 years.

Before the 2004 inquiry by diplomat Philip Flood, Australian governments’ understandable but unsustainable historical refusal to engage publicly on intelligence resulted in a series of crisis-response, judicially led inquiries: two Royal Commissions, led by Justice Robert Hope in 1974–77 and 1983–84, and the Samuels-Codd Commission of Inquiry in 1994–95.

Other reviews were also carried out entirely behind closed doors, such as the post-Cold War Richardson and Hollway reviews (both 1992), and the Cook 1994 counter-intelligence inquiry.

It was Flood who gave Australia the significant benefits of intelligence review through scheduled check-ups focussed on the future, and an effective balance between secrecy and openness. Since then, we have had the 2010–11 Cornell-Black review, the 2016–17 L’Estrange-Merchant review and now the Smith-Maude review, as well as the Richardson review of the NIC’s legal framework.

This is an invaluable, internationally unique, bipartisan system that would be sorely missed.

In the 1970s and 1980s, complete nonsense filled an intelligence community-shaped information hole in Australian public life—and that was in a more regimented media ecosystem.

Without the substantive public engagement built into the independent intelligence review system, what’s going to happen in tomorrow’s misinformation hellscape?

Countering foreign interference: the government should name names

It didn’t receive much publicity amid summertime’s distractions, but Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke unveiled on 14 January what’s been described as the ‘first ever analysis of foreign interference and espionage threats’. It’s safer to say the first publicly released by the Australian government. It’s a step towards what we need: political leaders explaining these threats and naming the sources of these dangers. But it’s only a step, because the document still doesn’t name names.

Since 2020, Australia’s Director-General of Security, Mike Burgess, has raised public awareness through annual threat assessments. In 2024, Burgess said that if we had a threat level for espionage and foreign interference it would be at ‘certain’—the highest level. The threat was ‘deeper and broader’ than we might think, he added.

Burgess’ ground-breaking assessments have been a vital source of information. They have raised public awareness and built confidence in Australia’s operational response through the Counter Foreign Interference Taskforce, which is headed by an officer from the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO). The taskforce combines ASIO’s and the Australian Federal Police’s sophisticated capabilities, along with those from other National Intelligence Community agencies.

The government’s new guide is called ‘Countering Foreign Interference in Australia: Working together towards a more secure Australia’. It covers the basics of what foreign interference is, how it manifests and how it adapts. The document also identifies contact points for reporting suspected interference. The guide borrows heavily from the earlier threat assessments.

So, what is foreign interference? The guide defines it as activities carried out by, on behalf of, directed or subsidised by, or undertaken in active collaboration with, a foreign power and involving either a threat to a person or being clandestine or deceptive and detrimental to Australia’s interests. Espionage is relegated to a subsidiary activity in this regard.

Like previous official statements, the guide distinguishes foreign interference from foreign influence, which refers to activities conducted by foreign governments openly and transparently.

This distinction matters in a society and economy as open as Australia. Assertions that Elon Musk has engaged in foreign interference demonstrate how the concept is misunderstood: Musk’s comments are far from clandestine, so they’re not foreign interference.

The guide also describes typical warning signs of foreign interference for those who might be at risk: communities (especially foreign diasporas), democratic institutions, the higher education and research sector, industry, and media and communications.

The highlighting of media and communications as targets (and vectors) for foreign interference is important. In this regard, it’s important to distinguish misinformation from disinformation. The source of misinformation is just mistaken; the source of disinformation aims to deceive. Disinformation then becomes foreign interference when foreign powers seek to exploit societal divisions or amplify false narratives to manipulate public opinion, destabilise societies or influence decision-making processes.

The guide fails to consider that foreign interference isn’t a temporary or new aberration. In fact, it’s an intensifying threat that we’ve faced for decades. We just thought we were exempt from this foreign interference.

Precisely because it is pervasive and sophisticated, foreign interference requires our political leaders—not just senior intelligence leaders, who have long been active in this regard—to explain the threat and how we should adapt to what’s coming.

We say we live in the most dangerous time since World War II. In such times, history tells us we need to prepare ourselves—as political representatives such as Winston Churchill and Franklin D Roosevelt explained to their people in the lead-up to WWII and successive leaders did through the Cold War.

While the guide commendably seeks to do just that, it does not identify perpetrators. This is a problem. While senior intelligence and departmental officials must be circumspect, we need elected governments to speak plainly and directly to their publics.

Unfortunately, Western governments, including Australia’s, are increasingly reluctant to come clean publicly about who, in Burke’s own words, is threatening ‘our most valuable national assets—our social cohesion, our trusted democracy, our security and prosperity and our freedom of thought and expression’. It’s been almost a decade since Malcolm Turnbull explicitly cited Chinese activities when introducing Australia’s foundational counter-interference laws. Marco Rubio’s testimony in his nomination hearing for the position of US secretary of state bucked the trend of avoidance: he identified espionage and interference as key enablers of Chinese ascendency.

Australian government responses to the threat, as comprehensively as they’re outlined in the guide, will ultimately be sub-optimal unless the government finds the courage to publicly name those who are interfering. Having established an attribution framework, Australia has only used it once: to call out Iran, a safely egregious pariah. On the worst offenders—China and Russia— the government remains silent.

Rest assured: actual, attributable threats underpin security decision-making within the government, in high policy but also in personnel matters and issues such as procurement. Attribution informs policy stances behind closed doors. The concern is that few Western governments similarly take ordinary citizens into their confidence.

This returns us to the consideration that foreign interference is in fact the new normal—not an aberration, not temporary, and not something that can be solved once and then ignored thereafter. In these circumstances the current agnostic approach across Western governments to publicly countering foreign interference is unsustainable. It will continue to confuse the community, shield bad actors, divert resources and undermine compliance—as ASPI research has explained in relation to the Foreign Influence Transparency Scheme.

Australia’s next intelligence review must learn from the past

Independent reviews of Australia’s intelligence community are undertaken every five to seven years—a schedule set by 2004’s post–Iraq war Flood report, which replaced reactive post-mortems with proactive check-ups. July will mark six years since the release of the report of the 2017 independent intelligence review, led by Michael L’Estrange and Stephen Merchant. With funding allocated for another iteration in May’s federal budget, the government will likely announce the next review shortly. That review should learn from, and build on, L’Estrange and Merchant’s work.

A review isn’t just due, it’s timely. The strategic context for Australian intelligence is shifting rapidly. International power politics is heating up and intelligence will be a key tool for government in navigating those choppy waters and achieving the goal of national defence described in the defence strategic review.

A general once-over that simply confirms business as usual will be insufficient. The upcoming review will need to grapple with some revolutionary changes already happening in the intelligence world, as well as those on the horizon. Foremost among them will be technological game-changers, such as generative artificial intelligence and the enormous growth in open-source intelligence opportunities.

As a starting point for the next review, ASPI’s statecraft and intelligence program has taken a deep dive into the 2017 review. In a new report, released today, I examine the review’s implementation and the relevance of its assessments and recommendations. This includes considering the impact of the establishment of the Home Affairs portfolio in July 2017 and other developments. The report offers some lessons learned that can inform the terms of reference, approach and focus of the next review.

The 2017 review’s 23 recommendations have had far-reaching consequences for the national intelligence community. The Office of National Intelligence was established to lead enterprise management in addition to all-source analysis, with its director-general serving as community head and principal intelligence adviser to the prime minister. A joint capability fund and intelligence capability investment plan were instituted to underpin integrated capability development. The Australian Signals Directorate was given statutory independence from the Defence Department. A comprehensive review of national security legislation was undertaken in late 2020. The review also recommended expanding the roles of the Office of Inspector-General of Intelligence and Security and the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security, though that has yet to be implemented in full.

More fundamentally, the 2017 review reconfigured Australian intelligence into a 10-agency-strong national intelligence community by incorporating AUSTRAC (the Australian Transaction Reports and Analysis Centre), the Australian Criminal Intelligence Commission and the intelligence components of the Australian Federal Police and the new Department of Home Affairs. This reconceptualisation promised a truly national enterprise bringing together all the elements of intelligence—security, foreign, law enforcement and border protection. Achieving this ideal of integration remains a work in progress.

By examining the 2017 review, I’ve identified three broad topics central to the future of Australian intelligence. These are the areas in which the next review can most profitably ground its work. First is attracting, building and retaining a skilled workforce—an existential-level challenge. Second is adapting to rapid and profound technological change. And the third is leveraging more and closer partnerships across agency boundaries, Australian society and internationally.

The report highlights how the past six years have raised important and challenging questions and identifies opportunities to further advance the intelligence community’s performance. It also makes specific recommendations to inform planning and preparation for the new review.

The next review’s strategic context should be aligned with the defence strategic review’s assessments on accelerating strategic circumstances and planning timeframes. It should also consider carefully the relative decline of counterterrorism as an intelligence priority and the increasing centrality of China to intelligence planning, and whether those developments necessitate changes to the model initiated in 2017.

The terms of reference for the next review should not pre-emptively constrain its consideration of future investment in intelligence capabilities. The reviewers should be free to identify resourcing requirements within the bounds of fiscal realism, but also on the merits and without undue limitation, noting that the final decisions are always on the government, where they belong.

In the same vein, the review needs to consider the ‘return of the portfolio’. Integration of the intelligence agencies has been constrained by stubbornly entrenched portfolio- and agency-based capability development and funding. The review should consider how to achieve a more comprehensive, efficient and joined-up approach in the spirit of its 2017 predecessor. This needs to include making good on the original promises of a joint capability fund and intelligence capability investment plan.

The 2004 and 2017 reviews both produced substantive and substantial public reports in addition to their classified reports. The forthcoming review should do the same, including making public recommendations, replicating the open approach to public dialogue and explanation offered by L’Estrange and Merchant. Given strategic developments since 2017, future reporting should include a suitable level of candour with the public about the intelligence challenges posed to Australia by China’s rise.

I join with other commentators in recommending that least one of the principal reviewers appointed be female, which would be a first for an Australian intelligence review. Also, when considering prospective reviewers, the government should heed the past and ensure that at least one reviewer has detailed knowledge of, and first-hand experience in, Australian intelligence.

Finally, the great worth of the 2017 review has been obscured by the absence of comprehensive public accounting of the implementation of its recommendations. While there will always be elements of implementation that must remain classified, failure to communicate with the public over the past six years has been disappointing and has limited accountability when it comes to delivery. This time around, the reviewers should be tasked with delivering a public follow-up evaluation of implementation 18 to 24 months after the review’s release.

Infrastructure operators need access to intelligence to protect their assets

Home Affairs Minister Clare O’Neil launched the government’s ‘critical infrastructure risk management program’ yesterday. The minister is clearly focused on preventing a repeat of last year’s high-profile and publicly contentious hacks of Optus and Medibank. The new program’s broad, all-hazards approach to the resilience of our critical national infrastructure illustrates an enhanced security posture in response to the heightened security threats that Australia now faces.

Unlikely due to coincidence, O’Neil launched the program hours before ASIO Director-General Mike Burgess released his annual threat assessment. It revealed espionage and foreign interference now surpass terrorism as Australia’s most significant security threats. Protective security, including physical, and cyber security, will be critical to the government’s policy responses to this assessment. The government cannot ensure that protection without collaboration with the private sector.

The risk-management program rules are the third and final security obligation legislated in recent amendments to the Security of Critical Infrastructure Act 2018.

The rules apply to a range of critical infrastructure assets, from energy and medicine to food and communication.

For operators of these assets, especially their directors and boards, the program introduces new obligations for protecting critical infrastructure from cyber and physical attacks and disruptions. In government-speak, these responsible entities must ‘take a holistic and proactive approach toward identifying, preventing and mitigating risks’.

In the past, the federal government’s critical infrastructure resilience has had a sharp cyber focus, and this should remain a strong priority. But Australia needs an integrated approach to critical infrastructure security and national resilience. The new risk-management program understandably adopts an all-hazards approach encompassing the full spectrum of security risks—physical security, cyber and information security, and personnel security—along with supply-chain risks.

Physical security risks relate to protecting parts of an asset critical to its functioning, including protection against physical access to sensitive facilities and natural disasters.

Cyber and information security encompass the risks to digital systems, computers, datasets and networks that underpin critical infrastructure systems. These risks include improper access, misuse and unauthorised control.

Personnel security relates to the ‘trusted insider’ risk posed by critical workers who have the access and ability to disrupt the functioning of an asset.

Supply-chain risks relate to disruption directly affecting a critical infrastructure asset. The threat could be naturally occurring, malicious or purposefully intended to compromise the asset.

It’s clear that the program places obligations on entities responsible for relevant critical infrastructure assets. But the government has stopped short of providing definitive security requirements. Instead, it has adopted a principles-based approach that places the onus on the industry to act to mitigate risks, but only ‘so far as is reasonably practicable’. In determining what is reasonably practicable, entities are advised to ‘appropriately balance the costs of risk mitigation measures with the impact of those measures in reducing material risk within their own operational context’.

To identify reasonably practicable measures to mitigate a risk, operators must undertake detailed risk assessments that consider the consequences and likelihood of an event occurring. Central to this, especially for malicious, non-natural-disaster risks, is an understanding of the threats they face and of the capability, intent and opportunity of an individual, group or country to carry out those threats.

Under the risk-management program, operators, not the government, own the risk. Ensuring that the private sector—which now largely owns and operates such critical infrastructure—takes responsibility for due diligence is a vital requirement. However, with the program’s introduction, the government now has an implied enhanced obligation to provide industry with clear, concise and actionable assessments of the threats they must deal with. Implementing the risk-management program will be challenging given that much of the collaboration between the private and public sectors will require access to government information that is often highly classified. This problem will become even more complicated because our nation’s security and sovereignty will require the government to provide industry guidance on issues such as the material risk of Chinese artificial-intelligence-enabled products and services, for example.

The risk-management program mandates an annual reporting requirement for entities to provide assurances to the government of their management of security risks. And noncompliance comes with civil penalties. Without regular access to threat intelligence, it is unclear how entities can make risk-mitigation assessments or identify their vulnerabilities.

The government, while avoiding highlighting specific threats publicly, is enhancing the nation’s security posture. The new risk-management program is a positive step forward for Australian national security and resilience. Still, it will require significant further steps, in particular to ensure that collaboration goes beyond consultation and becomes genuine public–private sector partnerships, to fully counter the threats and realise the full benefits.

Strengthening Australian democracy: is Home Affairs up to the challenge?

Democracy has been increasingly securitised in recent years, but that’s set to change, as outlined in Home Affairs Minister Clare O’Neil’s National Press Club speech earlier this month. The big question is, what does the Department of Home Affairs need to do to shift away from its muscular enforcement stance to a more forward-leaning policy posture?

O’Neil highlighted the previous government’s emphasis on ‘boats and borders’, ‘terrorism and child exploitation’ and ‘bikies, organised crime, illicit drugs and deportations’, saying it was ‘an oddly narrow view of Home Affairs’. Her argument was that today’s national security environment has changed fundamentally since 2017, when the Home Affairs Department was created. Australia is now contending with the impacts of climate change, with more frequent and increasingly severe cyberattacks, and with the undermining of democracy through ‘online misinformation and disinformation campaigns which spread like viruses around our communities’.

Home Affairs’ focus will continue to be on cybersecurity, foreign interference, immigration and resilience, but in a different way. The new way requires a whole-of-nation fight to protect our citizens and our economy. On countering foreign interference, O’Neil said that the ‘policy response will be to open up a bit, and focus on arming the people’, including ‘politicians, academics and community leaders’, who ‘desperately want to fight back’.

What’s new is a broader resilience agenda that emphasises climate change and democracy as two key elements of national security. Of note is a ‘new generation of initiatives in civics and social cohesion’ that will be developed to counter misinformation and disinformation aimed at undermining our democracy. A focus on civics has been absent for many years, but it is needed. A 2016 assessment of Year 10 students found that only 38% were proficient in civics. It’s likely that a survey of Australian adults would unearth an even less promising result.

Such a significant policy shift will necessitate a big change in culture and capability in the department.

The management of Australia’s border over the years provides a tangible example of the scale of the required shift. Until about 2004, the emphasis was heavily on enforcing at the border, characterised by a suspicion of everyone crossing it and an overt focus on compliance. From there the language changed to passenger facilitation, which saw a greater focus on pre-travel passenger analysis to achieve early identification of people of potential concern. The investment in biometric technology and the development of SmartGate was a visible indicator for international travellers that a different approach had arrived.

However, increasing community concern about unauthorised boat arrivals and home-grown terrorism drove an aggressive enforcement approach and increased securitisation of immigration that focused on keeping people out. Migrants were characterised as a challenge to democracy, our economy and all things Australian. O’Neil noted that this approach had resulted in a large underclass of undocumented migrant workers who are extremely vulnerable to exploitation. ‘That is not what a world-class migration system looks like,’ she said.

It will take time for Home Affairs to achieve the promised shift given its results in the Australian Public Service Commission’s 2022 employee census. The department scored lower than all other agencies with more than 100 employees on most staff satisfaction indicators, including engagement and wellbeing. Satisfaction with immediate supervisors dropped across all indicators and satisfaction with senior executives also dropped markedly. Only 44% of respondents agreed that internal communication was effective and just 31% considered that the department managed change well. A small 38% said they felt inspired to seek new ways of doing things and 26% thought the department embraced the notion that it was okay to fail when innovating. Again, these results represent a significant drop when compared across the Australian public service.

Many in the department will welcome the government’s whole-of-nation, sum-of-the-parts policy approach.

The big question is whether the department has the level of policy grunt needed and is sufficiently agile to make the shift. The policy capability of the APS has diminished in recent years particularly because the previous government directed public servants to leave ‘policy’ to ministers. Also, 39% of Home Affairs staff are pursuing external employment options and 6% are planning to retire. That’s a sizeable chunk of the department considering other options. This policy shift may encourage some of them to hang around, but not all will be convinced.

Key criticisms of the department are that it is bureaucratic, unnecessarily process-rich, lacks strategy and is slow to act. Those outside the ‘Canberra bubble’ agree and add that the department values process more than achieving outcomes. Even if this were not the case, it’s an indicator of a problematic external perception.

But other expectations being placed on departments will also affect Home Affairs, including a renewed emphasis on stewardship, which as Minister for the Public Service Katy Gallagher notes ‘can encompass building a service that is committed to the public interest and sustains genuine partnerships and is the holder of institutional knowledge, throughout changes in government and societal shifts’. The secretary of the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet, Glyn Davis, placed a few more expectations on departments for 2023: ‘Alongside our roles of policy, impartial advice and service delivery, there is another key responsibility for the public service—stewardship.’

While the Home Affairs website has already received a refresh in anticipation of its new policy direction and the inevitable suite of fresh strategies, the absence of meaningful information is stark. The government expects the department to quickly fill this new policy void. But how? Big transformation agendas tend to slow progress at least initially and add layers of top-down bureaucracy. What’s needed here is rapid cultural change driven by empowered non-executive levels connecting, bottom-up, with the government’s agenda.

Securing Australia from the perpetrators of atrocities

The war in Ukraine is exposing Australians to alleged atrocity crimes in near real-time. With this heightened awareness, there’s a timely opportunity to review Australia’s security posture towards threats posed by the people behind those crimes.

Atrocity crimes—also known as core international crimes—is the collective term used to describe war crimes, crimes against humanity, genocide and, increasingly, ethnic cleansing. United Nations affiliates are monitoring at least 12 countries where atrocity crimes are ongoing, and another six where such crimes are at high risk of occurring. Closer to home, the University of Queensland’s Asia-Pacific Centre for the Responsibility to Protect lists five locations where atrocity crimes are ongoing or at high risk of occurring in our region.

Successive Australian governments have struggled to sustain an effective threat management capability for perpetrators of atrocity crimes. This is partly driven by a poor understanding of the threat landscape resulting in poorly set objectives and inappropriate risk treatments. To help rectify this and support a new line of policy debate, I apply a border-security lens to explain the threat posed by perpetrators and offer a model for enhanced collaboration across the national security community.

Here’s the rub: perpetrators are a persistent threat, operating across the border continuum. They exploit diplomatic, migration, citizenship, trade and customs pathways. Their intents are diverse, but they exact social, economic and reputational costs for Australia.

What does it look like when these threats manifest? Unfortunately for us, examples abound. In 2022, 2GB examined a recent report from the Australian Federal Police claiming that 70 people from the Balkans in Australia are wanted for war crimes. These perpetrators illegally circumvented the character test for migration that prohibits war criminals from entering the country and seeking citizenship.

Once onshore, perpetrators use Australia as a safe haven from prosecution, compromising our ability to meet international obligations under the Rome Statute—as was the case in 2007, when it was discovered that a large cohort of war criminals from the former Yugoslavia had found safe haven here.

This creates a dilemma for the government, which may be pressured to hold perpetrators to account, or otherwise manage scandalous injustice. In 2011, for example, an Australian citizen tried to press charges against a visiting Commonwealth head of state for crimes committed in Sri Lanka.

Perhaps worse still, these criminals threaten social cohesion by engaging with victims of crimes and the broader community. This has consequences at both an individual and community level, as we saw in 2020 when hundreds of Australian Armenians travelled to Canberra calling on the government to speak out against war crimes perpetrated in the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict.

Beyond the trauma perpetrators cause, they often create transnational networks of criminal activity. In 2018, a South Sudanese general was found living in Melbourne having fraudulently claimed nearly half a million dollars in welfare payments. And in 2019, a Liberian war criminal exploited the migration program numerous times to enter Australia with millions of dollars.

This criminal activity can go beyond migration and financial crime. Perpetrators may circumvent customs controls to import and export both illicit goods and licit goods used for illicit purposes—such as the perpetration of further atrocity crimes.

Finally, Australian organisations may be perceived as enabling or ignoring the perpetration of crimes. As ASPI reported in 2020, one factory that received Uyghur forced-labour workers listed CRRC—the Chinese state-owned rail manufacturer that was building trains for the Victorian government—among its customers.

Australian governments have historically focused on achieving justice as a core objective, setting up costly and short-lived multiagency taskforces to track down perpetrators. As a persistent presence, the Department of Home Affairs maintained a dedicated war crimes capability tasked with screening migrant and citizenship applicants.

Screening of visa and citizenship applicants ahead of the border and prior to conferral of citizenship is considered international best practice. It provides an opportunity for public officials to identify perpetrators and collect information.

Unfortunately, screening as a control for managing risk has inherent limitations. Screening only high-risk cohorts requires significant persistent dedicated technology and labour, controlling for migration and citizenship pathways only. It also fails to capture corporations, networked actors and government entities. Screening is also reliant on the intuition of processing officers to refer applicants for assessment.

The tools needed to mitigate risks and act on the growing threat already exist within Home Affairs. It has access to a war crimes screening service, a counterproliferation unit, a modern slavery unit and a federal police war crimes investigative unit.

In addition, agencies across the Foreign Affairs and Trade, Defence, and Attorney-General’s portfolios manage sanctions, export controls, prosecutions and collaboration with international partners, and provide funding to local academics and non-governmental organisations.

We need a reset in policy thinking. By focusing the discourse on the cost to Australian national security values, we can build an intentional security architecture that aligns accurately to the threat.

Pandemic and protests mean it’s time for a domestic security white paper

No one denies the need for a capable, well-resourced Australian Defence Force. The federal government has responded to Australia’s changing strategic circumstances in part by providing the Defence Department with an additional $270 billion over 10 years to upgrade the ADF’s capabilities and increase job growth in defence industries. But equally important to defending our country is the need to consider domestic safety and security.

Protecting the nation includes supporting the very community we seek to defend. Any reimagining of Australia’s strategic outlook should incorporate consideration of how we support and maintain the social fabric at home. The best way to do that is through a comprehensive white paper that takes a broad perspective on domestic national security, policing and law enforcement.

The Covid-19 pandemic has sparked considerable discussion of the ‘Where to from here?’ implications of the crisis. Much of this has focused on strategic considerations such as our over-reliance on China as a trading partner, the fragility of globalisation and issues of sovereignty.

Maintaining the social fabric encompasses many facets of society, including health services, aged care and agriculture, for example. Other areas that also need in-depth consideration are national security, policing and law enforcement. Fears are growing that protests and violence have the potential to increase and are likely to be exacerbated by the prospect of high levels of unemployment, increased homelessness and anti-government sentiment.

Policing today can also be understood in the context of social peacekeeping. The role of police is to maintain, ensure and restore community order. Social stability is the bedrock on which economic activity stands. We don’t need to look far to see economies failing where social unrest is the norm and corruption flourishes. Societies and their economies need effective policing to survive and thrive. The vast economic impact of Covid-19 is being realised and raises questions about the potential for a related surge in crime and social unrest.

Modern policing is about much more than responding to crime. Police now perform extensive crime-prevention functions on behalf of, and with, professionals such as social workers and psychologists. Managing people with mental illness and providing first aid until paramedics arrive for those severely affected by drugs and alcohol are examples. Here, police use their authority, and often their coercive powers, when other designated authorities cannot or will not.

Policing is not a static endeavour. New crimes and challenges emerge. Old crimes are committed in new ways; terrorism, slavery and people-trafficking, while as old as society itself, have come to the fore again in new guises in recent years. Online financial crime and corruption are reaping millions and debilitating global economic systems. Police struggle to keep up with rapid technological changes and issues arising from jurisdictional boundaries. Formal, ongoing cross-jurisdictional and multi-agency (public and private) efforts to successfully address these emerging crimes require broad consideration and innovative responses.

In July 2017, Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull announced the creation of the Department of Home Affairs to improve the coordination of domestic security arrangements. The stated aim was to address the increasingly complex national security environment and threats Australia faces. This mega-department was created with no burning need and without a major review or public consultation process. It was expected that the new department would coordinate cohesive domestic responses to national security challenges, particularly in protecting Australians from foreign and domestic threats.

The Department of Home Affairs is responsible for Commonwealth policy, legislation and coordination of support across federal, state and territory governments for all national security responses. It also has responsibility for Emergency Management Australia. The resourcing and capabilities of the department’s national coordination functions have diminished, despite the requirement to respond to rolling crises since late last year.

There is no longer a national security adviser and the role of the counterterrorism coordinator has been broadened in Home Affairs to encompass several other major areas of focus, including social cohesion and countering foreign interference.

Areas such as counterterrorism, foreign interference, transnational organised crime, cybercrime, anti-corruption, money-laundering and financial crimes require strong leadership and effective national coordination. These challenges have been eclipsed somewhat by the significant effort required to secure Australia’s borders, manage the social cohesion and immigration programs, and effectively govern transport security. The Covid-19 crisis has highlighted the need for different policing and security responses at maritime, air and land borders, and in hotel quarantine, for example.

Now, more than three years after the inception of Home Affairs, a thorough review of the national security architecture is warranted. It’s time to conduct a wide-ranging examination of the department’s resourcing, capabilities and ability to effectively cover the vast array of functions it is charged with delivering.

While governments regularly release defence and foreign affairs white papers, no similar consideration is given to policing or domestic national security, even though policing and national defence could be considered two sides of the same coin. In 2015, David Connery called for a law enforcement white paper in his ASPI report A long time coming: The case for a white paper on Commonwealth law enforcement policy. His approach should be supported.

The constitution allows states and territories to create and regulate laws regarding criminal activity, but crime doesn’t respect jurisdictional boundaries. The construct of national security, policing and law enforcement needs to be considered more broadly, including, as Connery pointed out in 2015, how it needs to adapt to the environment over the next 10 to 20 years.

We shouldn’t wait for a crisis or smoking gun to provoke governments into thinking more comprehensively about their fundamental obligation to keep Australians safe and secure. Without this stability, key economic drivers such as education, health and trade cannot prosper.

Recent major protests and calls for police to be defunded have also called into question the trust, role and legitimacy of policing in Australia. A deep analysis of these issues, coupled with extensive community and business consultation, would provide opportunities for innovative approaches to national security, policing and law enforcement.

Keeping Australians and their civil liberties safe: The future of the Hope model

On the whole, the Australian intelligence agencies emerged from the early 2000s with a better reputation than those of the United States or United Kingdom. The terrorist attacks on 11 September 2001 demonstrated the catastrophic impact of rivalry and poor coordination among the American agencies. The strategically disastrous invasion of Iraq in 2003 owed much to the fact that in Washington and London, as the then head of MI6 put it, the intelligence was fixed around the policy, not the policy around the intelligence.

In the climate of the ‘war on terror’, Australian agencies received a substantial boost in resources, including a prominent headquarters building for the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation. Governments made, by some counts, more than 80 amendments to national security legislation, some of which gave executive powers to ASIO. The establishment of the office of the Independent National Security Legislation Monitor, a position held successively by three distinguished lawyers, has only partially eased concerns about the extent and nature of the new legislation.

In recent years, events such as the raids by the Australian Federal Police on an ABC office and the home of a News Corp journalist, the secret prosecution of a former military intelligence officer, and the largely secret prosecution of a former agent of the Australian Secret Intelligence Service and his lawyer, have raised considerable unease in the media, the legal profession and the general public.

It can now be seen that the Hope model for the structure, operations and accountability of the intelligence and security agencies has been under challenge from another model, principally advocated by the public servant Michael Pezzullo. The tension between the Hope and Pezzullo models came to a head in July 2017, when the government announced two decisions at the same media conference.

First, it said that it accepted the recommendations of the 2017 Independent Intelligence Review. The authors, Michael L’Estrange and Stephen Merchant, paid great respect to the Hope model, but recommended that it be updated to meet new geostrategic circumstances. The Office of National Assessments was to be upgraded to the Office of National Intelligence, with its role in the supervision and coordination of intelligence to be strengthened. The existing Australian intelligence community was to be broadened to a national intelligence community, with the inclusion of the intelligence sections of the AFP and the Department of Immigration and Border Protection.

At the same time, the government announced that the Department of Immigration and Border Protection would become the much larger and more influential Department of Home Affairs, including both ASIO and the AFP within the home affairs portfolio. L’Estrange and Merchant had not been advised of this change, which did not emerge from an independent, carefully researched and argued report comparable to their intelligence review. On the contrary, a 2008 review of an earlier version of the home affairs proposal had recommended strongly against it, instead urging that a national security adviser be appointed within the prime minister’s portfolio, to coordinate national security policy.

These two announcements led to the creation of a national intelligence community that was markedly different from the one proposed by the review and supposedly endorsed by the government. Its 10 members include five bodies associated with home affairs—ASIO, the Australian Criminal Intelligence Commission, and the intelligence functions of the AFP, AUSTRAC and the Department of Home Affairs. Commentators speculated that intelligence assessments would not be prepared on a ‘whole-of-government’ basis, coordinated by the ONI under the director of national intelligence, but would be dominated by the new department. L’Estrange and Merchant had warned, in general terms, of the danger of assessments being unduly influenced by ‘pre-ordained policy priorities and preferences’.

Whither from here? It is clear that, as Australia emerges from the Covid-19 crisis, many policies and policymaking structures must be reassessed. National security must be redefined, to include health, environmental and other non-traditional threats, as well as long-term economic security.

As part of the process, there should be a reassessment of the structures, legislation and operations of the whole intelligence community. The next independent intelligence review, which normally would have been expected in 2022–23, should be upgraded to a royal commission and initiated in coming months.

While much has changed in the international and transnational environment, the principles outlined by Hope remain fundamentally important: effectiveness must be matched by accountability; intelligence assessment must be separated from policymaking; intelligence and law enforcement should also be kept separate; and, most importantly, both intelligence assessment and national security policymaking must be whole-of-government processes, based in the prime minister and cabinet portfolio, with no single department or minister to have undue influence.

The commission should be conducted by a panel, be chaired by a current or former judge, and include experienced practitioners from within and outside the national security sphere. At least one member should be a woman. The research and evidence should include not only oral and written submissions from current and recent practitioners, but also a substantial historical review of the Hope royal commissions, the 1995 inquiry into ASIS, the 2004 Flood report, the 2008 Smith review, the reports of the Inspector-General of Intelligence and Security, and all reports of the INSLM.

The commission should have far-reaching and open-ended terms of reference, comparable with those of Hope’s two royal commissions, but it should be encouraged to address such questions as:

  • Should ONI have its role reaffirmed as the central agency for supervising and coordinating a whole-of-government intelligence network?
  • If so, how would that affect its role in making strategic assessments?
  • Should the position of national security adviser be reinvigorated, to coordinate whole-of-government policymaking?
  • Should ASIO be returned to the attorney-general’s portfolio?
  • Should the AFP and the ACIC be overseen by the justice minister?
  • Should AUSTRAC be a responsibility of the finance minister?
  • Should the roles, responsibilities and interagency relationships of the ABF be reassessed, to give appropriate balance to keeping Australians safe from threats to human, plant and animal health, as well as terrorism?
  • Should much of the coordination of intelligence capability built up in the Department of Home Affairs be transferred to ONI, with a whole-of-government rather than whole-of-home-affairs remit?
  • Should the scope of national security legislation be reassessed in the light of not only the report by Dennis Richardson but also the views of successive INSLMs?
  • Should the resources of the IGIS be assessed, perhaps creating separate inspectors-general for the operational (as distinct from the intelligence) sections of the AFP and ABF?
  • Should responsibility for the IGIS and the INSLM come under the portfolio of the attorney-general or of the prime minister and cabinet?

Any major reforms from such an inquiry would inevitably meet huge resistance from those whose bureaucratic and political interests were challenged. But the national interest would be well served if a new inquiry had the breadth of wisdom, the historical depth and the commitment to good public policy that underpinned Hope’s royal commissions in the 1970s and 1980s, and if future governments had the political courage to implement well-founded reforms.

To paraphrase the old hymn, we need our Hope for years to come.