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.

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.

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.

While Australians are often hawkish about community safety and border security, they’re far less accepting of their security agencies being given new domestic surveillance powers without government making a strong case for their use. You need only look to the public reaction to Annika Smethurst’s 2018 report in the Daily Telegraph that Home Affairs and the Australian Signals Directorate were ‘discussing radical new espionage powers that would see Australia’s cyber spy agency monitor Australian citizens for the first time’ for evidence of this.

As public trust in politicians and democracy continues to decline, the government is well aware that the old ‘trust us’ plea for more powers doesn’t work.

Perhaps this is why last week Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton argued that because of the threat of child exploitation it’s now time for a public debate on our law enforcement agencies’ use of ASD’s electronic surveillance powers.

ASD maintains a range of cutting-edge capabilities focused on the collection, decryption and exploitation of foreign signals intelligence, including in the cyber domain. However, these powers cannot, for the most part, be used domestically.

The day that Dutton called for this new debate, the heads of three of the Commonwealth’s most powerful law enforcement agencies—the Australian Federal Police, AUSTRAC and the Australian Criminal Intelligence Commission—delivered a joint speech on the issue at the National Press Club.

Collectively, our top law enforcement officers discussed the challenges of dealing with an increasing number of investigations involving child exploitation material and the abuse of children. They made a case for using ASD’s cyber capabilities domestically by revealing the challenges associated with the global nature of child exploitation networks, increasingly younger victims, the growing technical complexity of these groups’ activities and the legislative difference in access to ASD assistance for foreign and domestic offenders.

Dutton wants the AFP to be able to access and search bulk datasets in the same manner that AUSTRAC can examine financial transaction data. Yet law enforcement doesn’t have many of the necessary technical capabilities, especially given the widespread use of encrypted apps.

To solve this problem, he’s suggesting that the AFP should be able to access ASD capabilities to support the identification, investigation, arrest and prosecution of child exploitation networks in, or with connections to, Australia.

However, legislation prevents ASD from using its powers to collect information and intelligence on systems based in or linked with Australia. So, the government is proposing a public debate on legislative change to allow law enforcement access to ASD capabilities to save children from exploitation.

Dutton makes the point that ‘at the moment, if there is a server in Sydney that has images of a five- or six-month-old child being sexually exploited and tortured, then that may not be discoverable, particularly if it’s encrypted and protected to a point where the AFP or the ACIC can’t gain access to that server’.

Dutton is driven by an admirable philosophy that police should be given every power possible to relentlessly pursue paedophiles. And he challenges the electorate to consider ‘whether we think it’s acceptable for our society to tolerate the presence of these criminal networks right next door to us’.

No one can disagree with the power of this argument, or the implications of any failure to act. However, changes to Australia’s national security arrangements need to be underpinned by a nuanced policy discourse that seeks to reinforce open government and good governance, not impassioned arguments.

Although the government is only talking about using ASD capabilities to deal with paedophiles, there are already murmurs of their need in organised crime, terrorism and bikie gang investigations.

Everyone wants to save children from exploitation, but there must still be space in the public discourse to consider the unintended consequences of such a proposal, including the possibility of scope creep.

Unfortunately, Dutton’s use of such disturbing and personalised examples limits the opportunities for the kind of public debate that’s needed to make sound fundamental changes to our intelligence legislation.

Any public debate on the issue needs to give greater recognition to the fact that Australia’s intelligence arrangements are the result of both open government and good governance. They’re the outcome of two royal commissions, and two further independent reviews in 2004 and 2011.

Australia’s increasingly contested and uncertain strategic environment is without doubt creating an unquenchable thirst for intelligence. Similarly, the threats to Australia from terrorism, espionage and foreign interference continue to grow to historic highs—which again draw heavily on finite intelligence resources.

The Australian intelligence community’s services are in high demand, and perhaps already oversubscribed. ASD, like all our intelligence agencies, faces an almost unprecedented demand for its services. Any unfunded role changes will result in very real impacts somewhere along the line.

This is not to say that the full powers available to the Australian government shouldn’t be brought to bear to save children from exploitation. Rather, the debate requires its participants to step above the emotive nature of the issues at hand. And, in doing so, it’s important to acknowledge that rapid legislative change to Australia’s intelligence arrangements should be avoided.

If a debate is to occur, government needs to provide specific details on exactly what it’s proposing, and how it will ensure accountability for these new powers.

And, at the very least, this debate should be informed by former Defence secretary Dennis Richardson’s unclassified report on his comprehensive review of the legal framework governing the national intelligence community, which is due for public release this year.

In ASPI’s Agenda for change 2019, I argued the case for reforming the Department of Home Affairs. Despite its many successes, the department’s establishment hasn’t been smooth and a significant number of budgetary, legislative and machinery of government challenges need to be resolved. However, these challenges pale in comparison to some of the broader ideological debates underway on issues like the securitisation of citizenship and migration or the centralisation of security policy.  It seems clear that whoever wins the next federal election will need to consider what to do next with the Home Affairs construct.

Whatever comes next shouldn’t be driven by overly simplistic binary choices between keeping or dismantling the department, or between security or freedom. Cooler heads may be tempted to call for a more deliberate policy approach, perhaps even a white paper. I suspect that even if a white paper were to be produced it would be viewed by many as a rigged game. The incoming government can do better than making binary choices or attempting negotiated compromises. Before making any decisions, it ought to be mindful of two overarching factors when resolving this policy challenge, the cost of change and public support.

As highlighted in December by the secretary of the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet, Martin Parkinson, the public service isn’t a Lego set that can be painlessly rebuilt by each incoming government. For all of the questions that have been raised about the performance of Home Affairs, any further departmental and legislative changes are likely to be costly in terms of resources.

Perhaps of equal concern will be the impacts that further changes will have on those responsible for migration, border security, national security and community safety. While change is a familiar companion for any modern bureaucracy, our public servants, police and intelligence staff within the Home Affairs portfolio are likely to be feeling more than a little fatigued by the breadth, depth and speed of the altered work circumstances they’ve had to deal with in recent years. Another swathe of changes will bring with it further uncertainty that could well create new security vulnerabilities for Australia.

Polling indicates that over the past decade there’s been a steady decline in Australians’ trust in government. Between 2012 and 2017, that trust declined from 47% to 37%, placing us 10 points lower than our US counterparts. Future policy initiatives will need to make a compelling public case when changing the balance between security and freedom.

While policy and strategy are important in the home affairs space, success in law enforcement, security, intelligence and community safety is predicated on community support. But the Turnbull government failed to make a strong enough case for the establishment of the department at the start, and this has haunted the portfolio ever since.

If Home Affairs, or whatever follows it, is to be successful, then a strong, evidence-based case must be presented to the Australian people. This case will need to be even stronger if any future policy initiatives seek to further change the balance between security and freedom.

Whoever forms the next government needs to engage in further public policy dialogue and consultation on migration, domestic and border security, and community safety. The most obvious option here is for the government to commission a green paper. In recent years the green paper has fallen out of use by governments and the public service in Australia. But with falling public confidence and ideological battle lines drawn, a more consultative approach is needed.

A green paper could outline and explore all of these issues and its authors could engage with old and new thinking to generate a series of policy options. The success of a Home Affairs green paper will be predicated on its authors being able to develop an unclassified and understandable case for any changes.

The added bonus for a government that adopted such an approach would be that it would not need to commit to follow up on a green paper’s findings, as is the case with a white paper.

The green paper could then be used to stimulate a much healthier and more informed public discussion. With the green paper, and its subsequent policy discussions, the government could then commission a more prescriptive white paper to help determine its final policy decisions.

Under normal circumstances, the government would direct the portfolio or department responsible for an issue in flux to prepare a green paper. Unfortunately, the issues surrounding Home Affairs have become so politicised and toxic that anything produced by the department or its portfolio agencies is likely to be viewed as tainted. Because of this, the government should consider engaging an independent party, or parties, to prepare this document.