Tag Archive for: Home Affairs

Danger of scope creep in proposal to expand intelligence powers

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.

Organised crime is testing Australia’s onshore migration program

Since its inception in 2013, Operation Sovereign Borders has reduced the number of irregular migrants dying at sea and stemmed the flow of people-smuggling ventures to Australia. Unfortunately, this success has come at great cost to our nation’s finances, and possibly our humanity.

With Australia’s maritime borders secured, at least for the moment, our attention needs to turn towards strengthening our onshore humanitarian program against exploitation and reprioritising our temporary visa classes.

In 2016–17, 18,290 applications for protection visas were lodged; in 2017–18, the number jumped to 27,931. As the number of claims rises, the Australian Border Force and the Department of Home Affairs are spending an increasing amount of time and resources on processing applications lodged onshore, more than 80% of which are rejected.

Home Affairs’ 2017–18 annual report states that 99% of the 8,694,048 people granted temporary visas in that year maintained their lawful immigration status while in Australia. However, an estimated 86,940 people who entered Australia in 2017–18 breached their visa conditions. Many of them quickly left the country, but as of 30 June 2017, there were 62,900 unlawful non-citizens residing in Australia—a number that has remained roughly constant over the past few years.

As former immigration minister Philip Ruddock has said repeatedly, ‘a cohesive, resilient, multicultural Australia can be generous within our capacity to help those in greatest need’. But he has also acknowledged that this approach relies on strong border security.

Maintaining strong border security is becoming increasingly challenging in a world where the demand for protection and economic opportunity far outweighs the available supply.

The security conditions in Syria, Afghanistan, Central America, North Korea, Iraq and Iran continue to contribute to the globe’s unprecedented mass migration crises. However, most of the air arrival and onshore protection applications in Australia do not originate from those countries.

Unfortunately, the refugee and migration programs in destination countries can’t accommodate the level of demand from those who want to migrate to them. The demand for alternative migration pathways has grown, and it’s a demand that organised crime groups have been quick to exploit.

Limited economic opportunities resulting from factors such as ballooning youth populations, widespread corruption and surpluses of unskilled labour are creating waves of irregular economic migrants who, under normal circumstances, have no likelihood of being accepted into formal migration programs.

Australia’s onshore humanitarian program is composed of irregular maritime and air arrivals. While the boats have been stopped, the number of people travelling to Australia by air on student or tourist visas, for example, and claiming asylum on arrival has increased significantly over the past two years.

It’s not a crime, nor is it necessarily a national security risk, for someone to claim asylum or seek protection. But it’s critical to note that many of the people who abuse the temporary visa system are complicit in criminal activity in that they knowingly engage the services of criminal groups to obtain visas to which they would not be otherwise entitled.

Some air arrivals experience exploitation in some circumstances, including indentured labour arrangements. However, such conditions often don’t meet the threshold for human trafficking and modern slavery under Australian law.

Organised crime syndicates are facilitating unlawful migration on a fee-for-service basis, using methods such as fake identity documents to game Australia’s visa system. Australia’s border security arrangements are being subverted and individuals who have not been appropriately identified are at times entering the country.

Australia is facing very real challenges in resolving the issue of onshore protection claims and temporary visa non-compliance.

The demand for immigration detention and deportation, and their associated costs, exceed the current resourcing of the Department of Home Affairs and the Border Force. This is reflected in the growing number of bridging visas being granted. And administratively, managing cases is a long and expensive process.

Often, the Australian Border Force lacks the necessary legislative powers under the Migration Act to address serious and organised criminal activity. And while the Australian Federal Police has the legislative powers, it lacks the resources.

It’s easy to see why Home Affairs has used extraterritorial methods to assist Australia’s migration controls, including implementing strict visa requirements, imposing sanctions on carriers that bring incorrectly documented arrivals, deploying airline liaison officers, and using biometric technologies and the occasional excising of territory for the purposes of the Migration Act.

These measures are critical to reducing the number of onshore visa applications that are later denied, and the potential exploitation of other temporary visa classes.

In developing new responses, it’s important to resist the temptation to make small policy tweaks, especially with respect to risk-based decision-making.

While short-term measures might yield some initial successes, what’s needed is a long-term investment in integrating Home Affairs’ information systems, including those that process Australian visas. Attention also needs to be focused on developing the risk-modelling and big-data-analytics capabilities that inform visa and border decision-making.

Given the scale of the issue, there’s also a clear need for the Joint Standing Committee on Migration to conduct an inquiry into how current operational activity is disrupting irregular migrant channels in the air stream.

It’s time to turn Home Affairs green

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.

Australia’s future maritime surveillance capability: it’s not just about technology

Over the past four years, Australia’s border security framework has been subject to ongoing landmark overhauls. On 1 July 2015, the Department of Immigration and Border Protection and the Australian Customs and Border Protection Service were officially amalgamated into a single agency. At the same time, the Australian Border Force was stood up within the new department.

Then, on 20 December 2017, with the ABF reforms still in progress, the Home Affairs portfolio and the Department of Home Affairs were established. Along with further professionalisation of the ABF, Home Affairs continued to innovate and introduce new technologies focused on maintaining the integrity of Australia’s borders.

In the absence of any obvious consolidation period, it’s likely that many on the inside of the ABF are experiencing change fatigue.

All the while, the restructuring has generated volumes of public criticism.

It’s surprising, then, that precious little media attention was given to Home Affairs’ subtle signalling in October 2018 that it would be making a once-in-50-years shake-up of Australia’s civil maritime surveillance capabilities.

Australia’s current maritime surveillance arrangements are a product of slow evolution over five decades. Australia’s maritime surveillance began in the late 1960s, using Royal Australian Air Force and Royal Australian Navy aircraft to patrol the newly declared 12-nautical-mile territorial sea.

In August 1977, the Australian government announced its intention to declare a 200-nautical-mile exclusive economic zone around the continent. With a growing need for aerial surveillance, the combined military and civil surveillance commitment was boosted to 27,000 flight hours per year. A substantial part of the increase came from the use of chartered civilian aircraft.

By the late 1990s, the contracted civil maritime surveillance effort had progressed from a group of binocular-armed observers to encompass a cohesive fleet of contractor-supplied and -operated, purpose-modified aircraft, using modern search radar and communications systems and mature procedures originally adapted from the military maritime surveillance world.

Since then, civil contractors have provided around 95% of our civil maritime surveillance.

Last year, the Department of Home Affairs initiated the ‘future maritime surveillance capability’ project. The aims are to ‘provide the next generation maritime surveillance capability to counter current and emerging civil maritime threats to Australia … [and] provide surveillance capabilities that enable timely and effective deterrence, prevention and response operations to protect Australia’s borders and exercise sovereign rights’.

Home Affairs released a request for information to the market asking for ‘information on product solutions, indicative costings and potential suppliers’ and offering ‘an opportunity for industry to brief the Department on innovative options to achieve the project outcomes’.

Over the last decade alone, there have been dramatic developments in maritime surveillance technologies and their affordability. From small cube satellites and unmanned aerial vehicles to artificial intelligence and swarm technology, the options for Australia are almost limitless.

However, in delivering the project, Home Affairs ought to be mindful that a comprehensive maritime border security strategy depends as much on a multi-stage process as on technology. The surveillance process starts with detecting potential threats and finishes with disruption operations. Just as importantly, every surveillance capability has strengths and weaknesses that vary depending on the specific surveillance stage.

Searching involves surveying an area using active or passive technical or non-technical means. The aim is to identify anomalous behaviour in Australian waters. Effective searching involves using a mix of sensor types across the search area and integrating the different data feeds to produce a comprehensive picture of the situation so that other surveillance or response assets can be cued effectively.

Detection is the moment when an object or vessel is discovered. It’s achieved through one or more technical (active radar or satellite) sensors, visual detection or self-reporting.

The level of security risk assigned to a detected vessel depends on several factors.

Obtaining information about a vessel, such as its country of origin and any previous offences, assists border protection authorities to make further judgements and determine the level of urgency of the case.

The capability to track a vessel has several applications. Accurate tracking enables authorities to determine the vessel’s direction and possible destination, which may further elucidate the threat posed. If necessary, it also informs the planning of an interception at sea or on land.

Each step of the process contributes to assessing whether a vessel needs to be intercepted, disrupted, or both, by a navy vessel or an ABF patrol boat. If the vessel is involved in an illegal activity, the interception or interdiction itself may disrupt that activity. This process requires a manned patrol boat so that authorised personnel can board and inspect a vessel.

Ultimately, the aim of all of this activity is to increase decision-makers’ understanding of maritime risks and threats by layering information and intelligence collected from space, air, surface and subsurface assets to provide a rich picture of activity at sea that can be further analysed to identify threats.

With high staff turnover, and the rise of the public service generalist, both Home Affairs and the ABF will need to be careful that the allure of technology doesn’t get in the way of getting the capability mix right.

Border Force shortage shows need for a new approach to Australia’s civil maritime security

Recent reports in the Sydney Morning Herald and the Age of shortfalls in the manning and funding of the Australian Border Force’s Cape-class patrol boats and earlier exchanges in Senate estimates suggest that the seaborne element of our civil maritime security effort is facing serious problems.

This may be evidence that the concept of the ABF needs another look. When the ABF was formed in 2015, it included all the old operational elements of the customs service, including its seagoing forces, as well as enforcement personnel from other government agencies. The intent to create consistency in the enforcement of border laws through a single workforce was and is laudable. But it may not sufficiently recognise that ships involve more demanding specialist operator and maintainer skills, as well as much greater resources, than do many other activities of the ABF.

Whatever its benefits on shore, the ABF may also have been addressing a problem that never existed in the maritime domain. For many years, the ‘cloak’ of the wide-ranging Customs Act provided authority for both civil and military elements to enforce Australian law at sea. In 2013, this arrangement was succeeded by the equally powerful Maritime Powers Act, which allows ABF, Australian Defence Force and Australian Federal Police personnel to enforce the law in our maritime domains. In particularly complex situations, deep specialists, such as officers from the Australian Fisheries Management Authority, can also be used, and their advice is still available at the departmental level. That advice is vital because maritime security involves many agencies—a good number of which are not in the home affairs portfolio.

It’s also uncertain whether the agency that the ABF sits within—the Department of Home Affairs—is itself properly equipped to manage the sea and air capabilities that the ABF operates. The current controversy suggests that Home Affairs may have underestimated the cost of maritime security and been too ready to balance its budget by seeking economies in the sea and air programs.

The assets which Home Affairs currently manages represent a quantum jump from anything in the past, but they come at a price and the capability-management elements of the department are likely to be under considerable strain. This is not just a question of providing fuel, spare parts and crew wages; it also includes matters such as certification, training, configuration control and ongoing maintenance, all of which require sustained effort from technically expert staff working under knowledgeable senior executives—as well as a lot of money.

The Defence Department has experienced enough difficulty over many years in understanding and meeting the full requirements of ownership of its own increasingly sophisticated systems. With a much smaller workforce, Home Affairs must be challenged when so much is required of it.

Furthermore, the approaching end of the Coastwatch aerial surveillance program, centred on 10 Dash 8 surveillance aircraft, has required initiation of the ‘future maritime surveillance capability’ project. Given the evolution of remote sensors and unmanned vehicles since the start of the previous contract in 2006, the proposed solutions for the new project are likely to provide tremendous new capabilities, but they will also make it harder to select the right new options.  And  when that task is complete, there will be the challenge of bringing the chosen capability to fruition. One important issue will be whether the air crew and operators continue to be employees of the successful surveillance contractor or are fully incorporated into the ABF.

There are other matters to be resolved. In peacetime, civil maritime forces are vital components of the national security task that need to be readily identifiable as distinct from the ADF. In wartime, however, there need to be mechanisms for mobilising and incorporating these units into the military effort.

There’s also the question of whether the search and rescue (SAR) aircraft operated for the Australian Maritime Safety Authority (AMSA) should be managed under different arrangements from Coastwatch. The control of SAR must always occur in an open environment, separate from classified maritime security operations. However, given that both the ABF and the ADF immediately make assets available to AMSA whenever SAR requirements emerge, it’s questionable whether AMSA should operate its own aircraft when they could instead be fully incorporated into the national airborne surveillance and response effort.

The key problem for government is that any deficiencies in the availability of our civil maritime security forces must inevitably be made up by the ADF. This is not only uneconomic past a certain level of commitment, but also a misemployment of people and platforms that have many other things to do in the contemporary environment—increasing our presence in the South Pacific being only one.

The time has come to re-examine the structure for managing and operating our civil maritime security capability from first principles. We have got operational command and control largely right through the interagency mechanism of Maritime Border Command. Raising, training and sustaining the civil maritime surveillance and response capability must be put onto similarly firm foundations.

Australia’s other border security problem: visa overstayers

There’s been plenty of discussion lately about the challenges of onshore protection claims from people arriving in Australia by air. Last month, I wrote that air arrivals were Australia’s most pressing immigration border security issue.

The argument is simple enough. In 2016–17, 18,290 applications for protection visas were lodged by people who arrived by air, 1,711 of which were granted. In 2017–18, the number of claims jumped to 27,931, 1,425 of which were granted.

Another dimension of the migration debate now finding its way into the public discourse is the problem of Australia’s visa overstayers, who are officially known as ‘unlawful non-citizens’.

The Department of Home Affairs’ 2017–18 annual report states that 99% of the 8,694,048 people granted temporary visas in that year maintained their lawful immigration status while in Australia. However, an estimated 86,940 people who entered Australia in 2017–18 breached their visa conditions. Many of them quickly left the country, but as of 30 June 2017, there were 62,900 unlawful non-citizens residing in Australia—a number that has remained roughly constant over the past few years.

Finding publicly available data on how long this cohort of unlawful non-citizens has been in Australia is difficult. In 2017, the then Department of Immigration and Border Protection provided the Joint Standing Committee on Migration with the most recent detailed (correct as at 30 June 2016) data on the issue (see graph below). That same year, the department reported that the majority of these unlawful non-Australians arrived on visitor visas, nearly 15% of which were student visas.

The graph above clearly illustrates that over 50% of unlawful non-citizens had been in Australia for five years or longer. While popular media might portray the majority of ‘visa overstayers’ as European or American backpackers, remaining in Australia for five years or more hardly constitutes an extended holiday or gap year.

Australia’s response to these immigration challenges has been carefully developed. It’s based on a conceptualisation of the border as a ‘continuum’ and uses a layered approach. Under this model, Australia’s border protection measures start long before anyone boards a plane.

The forward edge of immigration border security begins with some of the world’s strictest visa requirements. The next level of security measures is undertaken in collaboration with air carriers that operate services to Australia’s international airports.

Airline check-in counters perform initial checks to confirm travel documentation and forward passenger details to Australia to support the Australian Border Force’s risk-based framework for processing overseas arrivals. Australia’s use of financial sanctions against air carriers that allow passengers to arrive in Australia with false or incorrect travel documentation—passports and visas—makes this an effective mechanism.

To further enhance collaboration, the ABF has deployed 28 airline liaison officers to 19 key airports in Africa, Asia, the Middle East and the Pacific region. Officially, the officers ‘work with airlines, airport security groups and host government authorities to facilitate genuine traveller movements and to identify and manage threats and risks’. The program has been an overwhelming success in enforcing migration rules. In 2017–18, the liaison officer network was responsible for preventing the arrival in Australia of:

  • 205 travellers with counterfeit or fraudulently altered passports, imposters and those holding bogus or fraudulently obtained visas (up from 174 the year before)
  • 555 travellers suspected of attempting to travel to Australia for purposes other than what they had declared.

At the border, the ABF has further enhanced its risk-based targeting, and in 2017–18 refused immigration clearance to 4,584 travellers, up from 4,132 the previous year. Most of these people are turned around and sent back to their last port of departure, or temporarily accommodated in onshore migration detention until the next available flight.

Behind the Australian border, the ABF conducts operational activities to identify unlawful non-citizens, especially those working illegally. However, most of the unlawful non-citizens (73% in 2017–18) who get in contact with the Department of Home Affairs do so voluntarily to resolve their status.

While the success of Operation Sovereign Borders and offshore processing in constricting the flow of irregular maritime arrivals may be fragile, it’s clear that the more pressing issue is the challenge that air arrivals present to maintaining the integrity of Australia’s borders. The graph below provides a comparative analysis of the breadth and scale of this challenge.

To respond to the issue, the Australian government needs to strengthen the border continuum to reduce temporary visa non-compliance. The temptation here is to make small policy tweaks, especially with respect to risk-based decision-making. While this might result in some initial success, what’s needed is a long-term investment in integrating Home Affairs’ information systems, including those that process Australia visas. Attention needs to be given to developing the department’s capabilities in the risk-modelling and big-data analytics that inform visa and border decision-making.

The cases of the 30,000+ unlawful non-citizens who have lived in Australia for five years or longer also need to be considered. Home Affairs has already sought to address the problem by raising employers’ awareness of the need to ensure that non-citizens have a legal right to work. Any additional efforts that are undertaken in the future need to carefully take into account the possible impacts on social cohesion.

Air arrivals are Australia’s most pressing border security challenge

By the end of last week parliamentarians and sections of the media (see here and here) had all offered opinions on whether independent MP Kerryn Phelps’ medical evacuation bill would restart the people-smuggling trade to Australia.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison went as far as to say that ‘the beast was stirring’. In my own analysis, I argued that the bill would spark hope of a future life in Australia in those ‘desperate souls lost across the region and the globe’.

Putting aside this binary and occasionally emotive discourse, it’s rather disturbing that for six years Australia’s public policy dialogue on asylum seekers and refugees has consistently coalesced around irregular maritime arrivals and offshore processing. These issues are important, but boat arrivals have slowed markedly, and those that are embarking on a journey to Australia are being turned around or towed back as part of Operation Sovereign Borders.

Unfortunately, the debate on offshore processing has drowned a much-needed broader discussion on the challenges facing our humanitarian migration program.

Australia’s humanitarian migration policies are delivered by two programs: onshore and offshore. The larger of the two is the offshore humanitarian program, which is divided into two categories. The first is the ‘refugee’ category, which is focused on ‘people who are subject to persecution in their home country and are in need of resettlement’.

Applications for these places are submitted to Australia’s overseas missions. The following graph provides a visual analysis of the visas granted in this category over the last five years. It seems odd that we haven’t debated why the number of grants for visa subclass 204, ‘women at risk’, is at a five-year low (from 1,043 in 2013–14 to 940 in 2017–18).

The second category is the special humanitarian program. This program is for those who are ‘subject to substantial discrimination amounting to gross violation of human rights in their home country and have a link to Australia’. The graph below provides a visual analysis of the overall composition of the offshore humanitarian program. Over the last five years, an increasing percentage of Australia’s offshore humanitarian visas have been granted to those with existing connections to or links with Australia. There’s been little in the way of public discussion on why these changes have occurred, or whether the government is looking to civil society to do more to assist the resettlement of special humanitarian category refugees.

Australia’s onshore humanitarian program is composed of irregular maritime and air arrivals. While the boats have been stopped, the number of people travelling to Australia by air on student or tourist visas, for example, and claiming asylum on arrival has changed significantly over the last two years.

In 2016–17, 18,290 applications for protection visas were lodged; in 2017–18 this jumped to 27,931. In 2017–18 only 18% of these claims were granted. As the number of claims rises, the Australian Border Force (ABF) and Department of Home Affairs are expending increasing resources on processing applications lodged onshore, more than 80% of which are rejected.

Most of the applications in both 2016–17 (59%) and 2017–18 (66%) were lodged by Malaysian and Chinese citizens. Surprisingly, there’s been little public debate as to why the number of Chinese citizens applying for protection jumped from 2,269 in 2016–17 to 9,315 in 2017–18.

In 2016–17, Australia granted 1,711 protection visas and 1,435 the following financial year. When it comes to successful applications, there’s been remarkably little discussion about why only 2% of Malaysian citizen protection visa applications and 10% of Chinese citizen applications are granted.

In his foreword to ASPI’s 2017 report People smugglers globally, former immigration minister Phillip Ruddock argued that ‘a cohesive, resilient, multicultural Australia can be generous within our capacity to help those in greatest need. That is reliant upon strong border security.’ I would argue that the integrity of Australia’s border security is now being challenged by the increasing number of rejected onshore applications originating from air arrivals. This, and not the prospect of more boat arrivals, should be seen as Australia’s most pressing migration and border issue.

It’s easy to see why Home Affairs has used extraterritorial methods to assist Australia’s migration controls, including the implementation of strict visa requirements, the use of sanctions for carriers that bring incorrectly documented arrivals, the deployment of ABF airline liaison officers, the use of biometric technologies and the occasional excising of territory for the purposes of the Migration Act. These measures are critical to reducing the number of onshore applications—whether they be maritime or air arrivals. They are important to maintaining the integrity of Australia’s border, but also serve to reduce the workload involved in processing and managing the growing number of onshore protection visa rejections.

The fact remains that the demand for humanitarian resettlement already far exceeds the places made available through resettlement countries’ humanitarian programs. Globally, the number of people needing humanitarian resettlement is growing by the day, and climate change is likely to accelerate this trend. While debate on whether the maritime people smuggler beast is stirring rages for a second week, discussion on the broader trends in Australia’s on- and offshore humanitarian program remains muted.

While we need to resolve what to do with those asylum seekers on Manus Island and Nauru, we also need to work out how to address the growing number of onshore protection applications. A bigger strategic challenge is how to work more effectively with the international community on ways to mitigate the factors that are undermining human safety and security across the globe.

Australian border security: hope against hope

Over the last six years, the hopes of asylum seekers on Manus Island and Nauru have been sacrificed by an Australian government policy designed to prevent broader loss of life and maintain the sovereignty of our borders.

Despite government objections, independent politician Kerryn Phelps’ medical evacuation bill passed through the House of Representatives yesterday, and the Senate today. It’s significant not just because it marks the first time in decades that an incumbent government has been defeated on the floor of the House. It also marks the first tangible challenge to Australia’s border security regime, based on an argument that the needs of the few may at times outweigh the needs of the many.

Over the past four years, I have often framed Australia’s asylum seeker public debate as a binary discussion (see here, here and here), but in reality tougher borders has been a rather one-sided affair—at least since the Gillard government reopened offshore processing centres in Nauru and Manus. Since then there’s been general agreement between the Labor Party and the Liberal–National Coalition that irregular boat arrivals must be stopped.

While our border protection strategies have a range of measures from advertisements in source countries, intelligence collection and joint disruption operations in transit countries, boat turnarounds and tow-backs at sea, and offshore processing, they are designed to send one clear message: ‘You won’t come to Australia’.

This message is meant to resonate with asylum seekers and refugees and crush any hope they have of ever making it to Australia. If the number of boat arrivals is the measure of success, then this strategy has been overwhelmingly successful. However, this success has come at a great cost to those caught in the limbo of offshore processing and those charged with making this system work.

Putting those philosophical debates aside, the drivers for the irregular movement of people globally, from human security to economics, are growing, not dissipating. In 2016, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees reported that there were 65.6 million ‘forcibly displaced people worldwide’, 22.5 million refugees and 10 million stateless people. Globally, there are some 767 million people living below the poverty line. In Africa alone, there are some 200 million people aged between 15 and 24, and their number will likely double by 2045.

While those figures are startling, the fact that in 2016 only 189,300 refugees were resettled highlights the scale of the likely demand for irregular migration. Refugee advocates are right when they say that these people face untold barriers that make them desperate and vulnerable.

The complicating factor for government policy changes is that the successful disruption of people-smuggling syndicates appears to have only a fleeting impact on smuggling trends more broadly. The evidence collected in ASPI’s 2017 strategy paper People smugglers globally was that people smuggling is often viewed as a means of supplementing income, as opposed to being a professionalised activity.

Unsurprisingly, then, there are limited barriers to entry into the people-smuggling market, and any void left by the disruption of one syndicate is rapidly filled by another. The fragility of enforcement success against people-smuggling networks supports the argument for policies that are more strategically focused on disrupting demand.

Australia’s experience in this area has illustrated the need for a strong evidence base for such policies. Furthermore, experience has shown that they must involve a whole-of-government approach that brings the full complement of policy levers to bear on the challenge.

While Australia’s ‘Operation Sovereign Borders’ has been a resounding success in dramatically reducing the flow of irregular migrants to Australia by sea, that achievement is brittle. There are still large numbers of refugees and asylum seekers across the region—for example, 13,829 in Indonesia, 163,860 in Malaysia and 593,241 in Thailand. To be fair, many of these people don’t have the means or intent to travel to Australia. But a lack of hope that they will ever be resettled in Australia likely has a marked impact on their selection of a destination.

If there’s no hope, then even the most desperate of asylum seekers or refugees is unlikely to risk coming to Australia. This is, of course, a policy position that neither the Australian Border Force, the Australian Federal Police nor the Department of Home Affairs has control over. With no viable third-party options for the remaining asylum seekers on Nauru and Manus, offshore processing looks unsustainable in the long run.

The content of the Phelps bill, especially with its amendments, does not mean that anyone on Manus or Nauru, now or in the future, will necessarily be resettled in Australia. But if the tweets of such outspoken asylum seekers as Behrouz Boochani and Abdul Aziz Adam are anything to go by, it could spark hope of a future life in Australia in those desperate souls lost across the region and the globe.

Regardless, it does seem rather ironic that the ‘lucky country’ is so heavily invested in fighting hope.

Drug onslaught is coming—despite the big busts

The human cost of illicit drug use in Australia—whether from heroin overdoses in the 1990s or, more recently, from methamphetamine (ice) and MDMA (the main ingredient in ecstasy)—makes the headlines because it personalises the issue. The latest deaths of young people at music festivals have sparked an overdue public debate on drug harm reduction, zero tolerance of drug use, and pill testing (see here, here, here and here).

Unfortunately, these deaths haven’t sparked a broader discussion on the strategic challenges of reducing the supply of drugs.

When the Australian law enforcement community continues to regularly break drug seizure records, it’s easy to assume that the supply of illicit drugs is being constricted. Alarmingly, that’s not happening, and serious strategic drug supply issues need to be addressed by governments in 2019.

Last year, the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) world drug report and wastewater analysis in Europe and Australia appeared to support a conclusion that levels of drug use globally were at best stable. It seems that despite record seizures, global wholesale prices of illicit drugs are decreasing.

The data also suggest that the markets for drugs like cocaine, heroin and synthetics are being oversupplied. The UNODC reported that opium poppy and coca bush cultivation is increasing and it appears that the global oversupply of illicit drugs may worsen in 2019. The implication here is that in 2019, law enforcement’s large seizures will have less impact on the availability of these drugs in our communities.

In 1969, while serving as a consultant to the US President’s Commission on Law Enforcement and Administration of Justice, Donald Cressey formulated the hierarchical model of organised crime that has dominated law enforcement strategy for 50 years. Cressey’s work, based on his analysis of the Italian Costa Nostra criminal syndicate in the US, resulted in strategies that focused on the arrest of senior crime figures. Law enforcement leaders believed organisational decapitation could disrupt whole syndicates.

Australia’s serious and organised crime threats continue to globalise through syndicate structures and supply chains. This evolution is giving criminals access to fee-for-service criminal facilitators who add new levels of operational complexity, especially through money laundering and technology. For today’s world, Cressey’s model of organised crime is far too simplistic to take account of the increasingly networked structure of criminal groups.

Today’s oversupplied and increasingly fragmented illicit drug supply chains appear increasingly immune from the impacts of large seizures and decapitation methodologies. In 2019, it’s likely that law enforcement’s conventional strategies will have even less success in disrupting supplies. Arrests and seizures won’t achieve the type of deterrence or disruption effects that reduce the flow of drugs—and that will necessitate a complete rethink of how law enforcement approaches the problem.

With user demand for heroin stabilising globally, and Afghan poppy cultivation increasing, many criminal groups in the Golden Triangle are shifting their focus to producing and distributing synthetic drugs. The UNODC’s World drug report 2017 noted that East and Southeast Asia had become the leading subregions for methamphetamine seizures worldwide.

The report noted that criminal groups in Laos and Myanmar had become significant players in the global production of synthetic drugs (primarily methamphetamines). The numerous ungoverned spaces in both countries provide criminal groups with safe havens for producing large quantities of both low- and high-purity methamphetamine.

Collectively, the ASEAN Economic Community reforms and the Chinese Belt and Road Initiative are increasing mobility through large parts of the world, but that is unintentionally strengthening transnational illicit drug supply chains.

Southeast Asia appears to be on the brink of an ice epidemic, with cheap and high-purity drugs being produced at an industrial level. Harm-minimisation safety nets are few and far between in the region, so the impact of this epidemic in 2019 is likely to be dire.

The region’s contribution to Australia’s illicit drug problems has been frequently highlighted in the Australian Criminal Intelligence Commission’s illicit drug data reports.

Given the drug supply situation, and its potentially catastrophic impacts in Australia and across the region, the office of the Commonwealth Transnational, Serious and Organised Crime Coordinator should be preparing a new national strategy for Australia’s whole-of-government efforts to help disrupt the manufacture, shipment and abuse of synthetic illicit drugs in the Mekong Subregion.

Over the past several years, Canada and the US have been devastated by a synthetic opioid epidemic. The crisis had its origins in a medical system, overseen by the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA), which between 1993 and 2015 allowed production of opioid and synthetic opioid-based painkillers such as oxycodone to increase 39-fold, hydrocodone to increase 12-fold, hydromorphone to increase 23-fold, and fentanyl to increase 25-fold. That, in turn, paved the way for easier access to prescription synthetic opioids and created a large population of people addicted to prescription painkillers.

In 2015, in response to a growing overdose problem, the DEA drastically reduced the annual quotas for production of synthetic opioids. Many of those addicted to the synthetics quickly switched to heroin, now a burgeoning illicit market in North America.

At the same time, organised crime groups from China to Mexico started manufacturing fentanyl to meet the demands of the new illicit market.

I must admit that, until late 2018, I had assumed that our domestic drug controls were sufficient to keep Australia from experiencing a similar crisis, and that the strength of drugs like fentanyl—which is 50 times stronger, and hence much more dangerous, than heroin—would discourage recreational drug users from experimenting with them.

The data presented in the report of the National Wastewater Drug Monitoring Program, released in September 2018, indicated that I may have been wrong. Instead of going down, fentanyl consumption was at the highest levels ever recorded in Australia.

Sampling indicates that consumption is consistent throughout the week, which may mean that much of this fentanyl could be prescribed for medical purposes. Given the strength of fentanyl, this usage pattern is a health concern.

In light of the American experience, Australian governments would do well to approach the problem with caution. Any sudden changes in policy or legislative measures that restrict access to fentanyl could displace users to other, illicit, drugs.

It’s critical that the public discourse on drug harm minimisation continues, and hopefully it will have a tangible effect on policymaking. Governments and law enforcement must rapidly engage with the emerging challenges of illicit drug supply in 2019. Without new thinking, the effectiveness of current law enforcement strategies will continue to decline.

Blank canvas: creating a Home Affairs portfolio

If much of the commentary on the recent announcement of a new Home Affairs portfolio has been misleading, that’s largely because the government has issued only broad statements about its intentions. In the press release announcing the new portfolio, it occupied a mere three of the 26 paragraphs.

The new organisation is a blank canvas: it’s primed, with some tints already on the palette. But the artists are still contemplating the first brushstrokes.

We know that the portfolio will have at its apex a new department that includes parts of the Attorney-General’s Department and the Department of Immigration and Border Protection (DIBP). That new department will act as a ‘portfolio agency’ for ASIO, the AFP, the Australian Border Force (ABF), the Australian Criminal Intelligence Commission (ACIC), AUSTRAC and the Office of Transport Security.

The Cabinet-level minister heading the portfolio will be assisted by two junior ministers—one for security-related matters and the other for immigration. The Attorney-General’s role in oversight of the intelligence agencies will also be enhanced.

The big question, though, is what is it supposed to achieve?

The government’s answer is that the new arrangements will ‘preserve the operational strengths and independence of our frontline agencies, but improve the strategic policy planning and coordination behind them’.

Home Affairs will be the central department that will ‘oversee policy and strategic planning and the coordination of the operational response’ in areas of national security, including counterterrorism and control of serious and organised crime.

Fourteen years ago, the federal government was developing its central role under the Intergovernmental Agreement on Australia’s Counter-Terrorism Arrangements. We argued then that the evolving system was weakest at Cabinet level, where the prime minister and attorney-general carried primary responsibility for policy development and operational activities, respectively.

We pointed out that both would seldom have time to fully discharge those roles. Other national security responsibilities fell outside Cabinet altogether, among junior ministers.

We suggested that the government’s responsibilities in this area should be unified and better coordinated through a minister for homeland security.

We’re pleased that the new Home Affairs portfolio will provide, as Attorney-General Brandis has acknowledged, just such a senior member of Cabinet, who will be able to give 100% of their time to the domestic aspects of national security.

The difficulty will be developing the structure and governance arrangements for the Home Affairs portfolio: in particular, improving the response to terrorism that Prime Minister Turnbull thinks isn’t adequately provided by current ‘ad hoc and incremental adjustments’ to our national security arrangements.

ASIO, the AFP, the ABF, the ACIC and AUSTRAC will remain statutory authorities: they’ll retain authority for their own management, mandated by existing legislation.

Importantly, the prime minister has committed himself to the agencies’ independence and indicated that they will report directly to the Home Affairs minister. That puts paid to the ‘mega-department’ scare that has been thrown around.

All this suggests that the Home Affairs portfolio won’t mirror the creation of the DIBP where existing authorities were absorbed into an existing department.

Whatever shape the new department takes, the portfolio should be served by a networked management system, a realisation of what the prime minister described as ‘a federation’ of border and security agencies.

To produce the unity of strategy, priorities and management in national security policy that’s required, advice to and directions from the minister must reflect the collective positions of the agencies constituting the portfolio.

Establishing a board of senior management to contest and consolidate the views of the minister, the constituent agencies and, potentially, other bodies closely aligned to the government’s objectives in national security would be sensible.

Governance arrangements should support coordination with the dispersed interests encompassed by national security, especially with the states and territories.

While governance arrangements for the portfolio are required to be in place by next July, it’s important that they allow the portfolio to continue to be shaped by the experience of its constituent agencies and provide for flexible development.

One of the government’s objectives is for Home Affairs to improve coordination of operational responses. This implies that the portfolio should contain many of those Commonwealth agencies that would be involved in operational activities.

The initial structure of the portfolio reflects that guidance. Yet the agencies that will be in it don’t cover the full extent of the Commonwealth’s involvement. This includes responsibilities for issues such as recovering from a terrorist attack, safeguarding critical infrastructure, and countering the development of ideologies hostile to Australian society.

Many of the elements covering these functions are in the National Security and Emergency Management Group of the Attorney-General’s Department. There’s good reason to move almost all of them to Home Affairs.

However, functions shouldn’t be passed on automatically. Influencing behavioural change is a delicate task based heavily on trust. Whether this can be maintained if the Attorney-General’s Countering Violent Extremism Centre function is linked to Home Affairs needs careful thought.

Neither should the new portfolio be burdened by legacy decisions. The DIBP is an amalgam of historical reorganisations made over time for a variety of purposes. Transferring it to the new portfolio would have Australia’s national security agency also responsible for functions such as customs tariff classification.

In addition, amalgamating the prime minister’s expectations of preserving operational strengths of frontline agencies with improved policy and coordination, with DIBP’s objective as ‘Australia’s trusted global gateway’ probably doesn’t cut it as a mission statement.

The Howard government moved Customs to the Finance portfolio in 1996. With its security functions now in the ABF, the remaining functions should return to Finance. More surgery could see the non-security functions of Immigration transferred elsewhere, perhaps to the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade.

The reorganisation of Australia’s national security functions into a single portfolio is long overdue. But improved efficiency won’t happen by itself.

Clear-sighted decision-making and effective implementation will be needed before Home Affairs can be declared a success. At the least, with the decision to establish the portfolio, an important start has been made.