Tag Archive for: ASIO

Technology can make Team Australia fit for strategic competition

In the late 1970s Australian sport underwent institutional innovation propelling it to new heights. Today, Australia must urgently adapt to a contested and confronting strategic environment.

Contributing to this, a new ASPI research project will examine technology’s role in fostering national security innovation, particularly in transcending business as usual.

Australians love sport, especially the Olympics. They particularly love winning—even if they only beat New Zealand. Between 1956 and 1972 Australia won at least five golds (and 17 medals) at each summer games. This seemingly confirmed how effortless national success, prosperity and development were for the post-war ‘lucky country’.

And then the world changed.

Australia returned from Montreal 1976 with zero golds and just five medals. Humiliation was exacerbated by it being the first games broadcast in colour on Australian television. Worse, the Kiwis won two golds—even beating the Kookaburras at hockey.

Australia had missed the global shift in sports to professionalism and (sometimes questionable) sports science. Post-Montreal disquiet motivated Malcolm Fraser to reverse planned cuts and to establish the Australian Institute of Sport in 1981. Beyond the dollars, Australian sport underwent a profound cultural and psychological shift and continued to evolve: in May 2024 the Albanese government invested almost $250 million in the sport institute’s modernisation.

The result? Since 1981 Australia has won at least 20 medals at each summer games except 1988’s. We’ve even become regular winter medallists. Adaptation, innovation and commitment paid off.

Today much more consequential shockwaves are bearing upon Australian prosperity and sovereignty: the prospect of Chinese hegemony in our hemisphere; convulsions in US policy and relationships; and the metastasising threat environment described in the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation’s 2025 Annual Threat Assessment.

Since the late 2010s, governments of both persuasions have rhetorically recognised the magnitude of the challenge. In 2020, the then prime minister said Australia was facing ‘one of the most challenging times we have known since the 1930s and the early 1940s’. According to a press release from Defence Minister Richard Marles, ‘Australia faces the most complex and challenging strategic environment since the Second World War.’ Prime Minister Anthony Albanese describes ‘a time of profound geopolitical uncertainty’. Foreign Minister Penny Wong says it’s ‘nothing less than a contest over the way our region and our world work’.

So, where’s the imperative to address this ‘new world disorder’? We’re still not organising like a nation under this sort of challenge—despite warnings in ASIO’s threat assessments, the Defence Strategic Review and the National Defence Strategy. How do we create traction? How do we overcome the capacity gap of a nation of 26 million in a region of 4.3 billion?

Like after the 1976 Olympics, this isn’t just about budgets. It’s about creating cultural shift and encouraging and implementing novel, innovative ways of working—particularly through opportunities presented by technology.

A new research project by ASPI’s Statecraft & Intelligence Centre, in collaboration with Australian technologists Penten, is exploring the application of Australian sovereign technologies (including secure mobility) to business-as-usual work practices inside national security agencies. This aims to show how technology may foster innovation, bridge the capacity gap and sustain capabilities.

The project also explores how agencies and staff can access effective, secure tools so that ‘working better’ doesn’t become ‘working around’—which would introduce security and governance risks highlighted in a recent report by the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner and shown by the Signalgate debacle in the United States.

Agency-level focus recognises that national adaptation will need to be comprehensive, including not just big-picture government and societal changes but organisational and workplace-level reforms. What’s more, it comes as historically significant investments are creating opportunities to transform default ways of working. This is also happening as the recently released Independent Intelligence Review finds that ‘the business model for meeting the intelligence needs of executive government is no longer keeping up with demand and needs re-imagining’ and, separately, that the National Intelligence Community must ‘work hard at recruitment and retention’.

Using internationally tested secure mobility options inside and outside high security spaces doesn’t simply promise convenience and speed. They offer possibilities for better bridging the interface between intelligence producers and consumers—moving beyond pieces of paper (and electronic versions of pieces of paper) to meet actual information preferences of a new generation of ministers, officials and war fighters. This in turn will transform how intelligence is generated, presented and evaluated.

Making IT use and IT-linked work practices inside national security facilities look more like 2025 and less like 1995 isn’t a nice-to-have. It’s an important shift towards meeting expectations of current and future workforce talent. Meeting their needs would improve retention and thereby addresses a key national security vulnerability.

These are just two examples of possibilities being explored as part of the ASPI-Penten project, which will report later this year and provide practical, implementable advice to the broader national security community – while building on the IIR’s findings and recommendations.

Business as usual didn’t cut it in sport 50 years ago. It definitely won’t cut it in the unforgiving international arena today—or tomorrow.

The 2025 Annual Threat Assessment: ASIO makes the case for ‘national’ security

Australian Security Intelligence Organisation Director-General Mike Burgess called on Wednesday night for national security that’s truly national. Only through such a broad-ranging and joined approach across governments and society can Australia navigate the deteriorating security outlook to 2030, as assessed by ASIO.

Burgess was delivering his sixth public Annual Threat Assessment. Since he introduced them in 2020, the annual assessments have become something of a genre—deadly serious yet interspersed with humour. They present concrete facts in a circumspect but calculated way, acknowledging that adversaries are also a target audience and sometimes even addressing them directly. It’s not how the public service usually talks, and that’s by design.

From the outset, Burgess intended to use these statements ‘to move beyond the bureaucratic language of annual reports and help everyone understand the significant threats we see directed at Australia and Australians’. Since then, it’s become increasingly clear that the operative word was ‘everyone’.

Over the past six years, Burgess’ public statements have tracked the shift in ASIO’s foremost concerns, from the war on terror to the reemergence of espionage and foreign interference. At the same time, he has made the case that today’s violent extremism can’t be thought of, or fought, with concepts and methods inherited from last decade’s fight against Islamic State. As he said last year, ‘threats, circumstances, technologies and people all change’.

But a persistent through-line has been the emphasis he places on security responsibilities beyond ASIO’s walls. That’s an emphasis Burgess has deepened and extended over the years.

In 2020, he chose to underscore how ASIO’s officers are not apart from, but part of, the Australian community: ‘The point is’, he said, ‘we are you’. This time, he might well have said ‘you are us’.

The message was clear that it’s no longer appropriate to think of national security as something a security agency provides for the public. National security is something the Australian public provides for itself, and ASIO is just one, though an important one, of many ways in which the Australian public does that:

You cannot arrest your way to social cohesion. You cannot regulate your way to fewer grievances. You cannot spy your way to less youth radicalisation. In this environment, national security is truly national security—everybody’s business.

That business is unfortunately not in a downturn. This year’s assessment, as the director-general noted, was ‘the first of its kind’. In previous years he’d spoken about ‘past and present threats’; on this occasion he declassified part of a strategic outlook produced by ASIO’s Futures Team, charting broader trends out to 2030. The outlook is unpromising: more security surprises, more threat diversity and fewer effective norms to constrain state and non-state behaviour.

The future Burgess paints is one that is under pressure from great-power competition, the diffuse post-Covid-19 constellation of anti-authority grievances and ever-mutating radicalisation pathways, all accelerated by technological advances. The most confronting thing about this future is not any particular security concern, but that there may be no particular security concerns. Australia in 2030, this outlook suggests, will find it far more difficult to establish security priorities at a strategic level, readily trading emphasis on one source of threat for de-emphasis on another.

The ASIO Act includes seven ‘heads’ of security:

—Espionage;

—Foreign interference;

—Politically motivated violence (of which terrorism is a subcategory);

—Promotion of communal violence;

—Sabotage;

—Attacks on Australia’s defence system; and

—Serious threats to border integrity.

The first three, according to Burgess, are ‘already flashing red’. Excluding threats to border integrity, which he expects to remain manageable under current policy settings, the others are all trending upwards.

Burgess noted the ‘normalisation of violent protest’ following recent events in the Middle East as an example of the increasing ease with which overseas conflicts resonate in Australia as violence between, or consciously targeted at, particular communities.

He identified sabotage, a major concern in the early Cold War, as primed for a comeback. While physical sabotage never goes out of style, cyber-enabled sabotage of critical infrastructure ‘presents a more acute concern for Australia’. Meanwhile Defence, already a priority target for foreign intelligence agencies, is expected to become more so as the AUKUS submarine project matures.

Burgess argued that this security environment of ‘everything, everywhere all at once’ requires a whole-of-society—not just an ASIO—response, and urgently.

When Burgess said ‘we cannot leave our responses too late’, it was clear that the ‘we’ meant all Australians, not just those with ‘security’ in their job title.

ASIO’s outlook, as presented, doesn’t make for pleasant reading. The director-general described it as his ‘most significant, serious and sober address so far’. Indeed, he seemed less inclined to spin yarns or make wry asides than in previous years.

Fortunately for his audience, Burgess ended on a positive, rousing note.

I can assure you ASIO will use all of the tools we have available to identify and counter these threats. Our powers are significant, our capabilities are exceptional, our resolve is resolute.

Now the challenge falls to us as a nation—individuals, communities, governments and security agencies alike—to make good on ‘national’ security.

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?

Australia must pick a ministerial lane for counter-terrorism responsibility

Which cabinet minister has responsibility for counter-terrorism in Australia? Our national security dictates that it shouldn’t be a difficult question given, to misquote Mark Twain, reports of terrorism’s demise have been revealed as exaggerated.

In the past week we’ve seen the terror threat level in Australia raised to ‘probable’ due to an increase in multiple violent ideologies, and the shocking but thankfully thwarted Islamic State plot in Vienna targeting a Taylor Swift concert.

Australia has had a successful counter-terrorism track record, thanks to highly capable intelligence and law enforcement officers, as well as effective strategy and administration. Operations and policy, as the success shows, go hand-in-hand.

But last week’s machinery of government change in which ASIO, and therefore control of CT operations, returned to the Attorney-General’s portfolio has added confusion rather than clarity—not because of the debate about whether ASIO should work to the security minister or the first law officer but because Home Affairs has kept CT policy and co-ordination, which means multiple ministers now have counter-terrorism responsibilities. This split across the government on who has authority for counter-terrorism is not what we need when ASIO assesses the security environment as more challenging than ever.

Since 2022, when terrorism was judged to be a reduced threat, incremental modifications to Australia’s CT framework have divided the legal, intelligence and investigative functions from the co-ordination and policy functions. The centralisation of CT efforts in the Home Affairs portfolio has been gradually unpicked but the functions haven’t fully gone back to the Attorney-General, leaving them spread over portfolios and leaving Australia with an unsatisfactory foundation for effective national security.

The problem is exemplified by the plight of the CT Co-ordinator position, which was originally established within the Prime Minister’s Department. This both recognised that the Attorney-General’s portfolio wasn’t the right place from which to co-ordinate Australia’s top security threat and invested the role with responsibility as the principal adviser on CT to the prime minister with direct access to the National Security Committee of Cabinet and influence over national CT policy and strategy.

The Co-ordinator role was moved to the Department of Home Affairs when it was created in 2017—along with the Australian Federal Police (AFP) and ASIO. This maintained separate lines of effort on CT policy and operations, but within the same portfolio and responsible to the same cabinet minister as the key agencies.

But in June 2022, the government moved the AFP from the Home Affairs portfolio back to the Attorney-General, for the first time splitting the peak law enforcement agency from the primary security agency, ASIO. Then, in July this year, ASIO returned to the Attorney-General’s portfolio.

Yet this latest shift has left the CT Co-ordinator and CT policy functions within Home Affairs, isolated from the key agencies and lacking direct insight into the immediate issues faced by the key operational agencies. The reality of the bureaucracy is that agencies within one portfolio will keep their minister informed of issues before they advise other portfolios.

It leaves a series of difficult but important questions about CT responsibilities, including on the mandate of the CT Co-ordinator. Do the CT agencies in the Attorney’s portfolio have any obligation to brief the Co-ordinator on CT operations in a crisis, or to support its broader co-ordination function? And where does responsibility sit for briefing the government on an emerging CT crisis if ASIO and the AFP are obliged to first brief the Attorney? How is the Home Affairs Minister briefed, not to mention who is responsible for briefing the PM? If there’s any confusion here it is sub-optimal for the co-ordination of such a key national security issue, whether in terms of co-ordinating agencies to prevent terrorism or, in those devastating situations, when having to respond to it.

Given we are being told counter-terrorism is once again the principal security threat to the nation, clear lines of responsibility under a single minister would bring streamlined decision-making and a more cohesive and strategic approach.

If Home Affairs continues to exist as the central security ministry, then it should fully embrace this role and re-integrate all related functions. Alternatively, if the Attorney-General’s portfolio is to resume primary responsibility, then the framework should revert to its former state, in which the Attorney-General’s office takes over all CT responsibilities. A half-way measure is not in the national interest.

If the split between policy and operations is here to stay, the CT co-ordinator should return to the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet as the central role with the imprimatur of the PM—seen neither as the Attorney’s nor the Home Affairs Minister’s. After all, ministers responsible for topics being co-ordinated by other ministers is rarely a recipe for openness and trust.

The lack of clarity we now see also highlights the pressing need for an update to Australia’s CT strategy. Former Home Affairs Minister Clare O’Neil vowed to revise and update the strategy, yet we still have no new framework—a concerning delay given the evolving nature of the terrorist threat and the accompanying risk that we are left unprepared for the next evolution. The fact that ASIO has been effective in preventing individual attacks does not diminish the urgency of updating the strategy.

It should acknowledge the persistent nature of the threat and outline a robust approach to mitigating risks over the long term. Policy agencies must be responsible for actively identifying trends and setting long term strategies. Otherwise, too much burden is placed on the intelligence community with all care and no responsibility taken by the policymakers. This is a recipe for eventual disaster and shows the need for a cross-government National Security Adviser—though that’s a story for another day.

As we continue to confront the challenges of terrorism, a cohesive and well co-ordinated approach will be vital for safeguarding Australia’s future. Confusion aids no one except our adversaries, so let’s not wait for the next review of a terrorism incident to recommend the need for clarity on which minister is responsible for counter-terrorism, a clear mandate for the CT Co-ordinator and an updated national strategy that reflects the evolved and current threat.

Official histories of Australian and British Intelligence: lessons learned and next steps

Unclassified, official histories of secret intelligence organisations for public readership seem a contradiction in terms. The official works are commissioned by the agencies in question and directly informed by the agencies’ records, thus distinguishing them from outsider historical accounts.

But while such histories are relatively new, sometimes controversial, and often challenging for historians and agencies alike, the experiences of the Australian and British intelligence communities suggest they’re a promising development for scholarship, maintaining public trust and informed public discourse, and the functioning of national security agencies. Furthermore, these histories remain an ongoing project for Australia’s National Intelligence Community (NIC).

In May 2023 John Blaxland and Clare Birgin published Revealing Secrets, a project commissioned by the Australian Signals Directorate (ASD), cancelled in 2020 amid controversy, and continued without official backing by the authors. Less heralded was the publication three months earlier of the first volume of the original project’s replacement: John Fahey’s The Factory.

The ASD history was the latest in a string of single and multi-volume unclassified histories of Australian and British intelligence agencies published over the past two decades. The three-volume history of ASIO was released between 2014 and 2016.

The British experience with official intelligence histories began in the late 1970s, focused on World War II. This was a response to looming proliferation of (sometimes lurid and usually critical) unofficial histories of British intelligence, culminating in the spectacle of British government legal action to restrain publication of the book Spycatcher by former Security Service officer Peter Wright. Britain has now published official histories of the Security Service (MI5), Secret Intelligence Service (MI6) and Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ, ASD’s counterpart), as well as a history of the interagency assessments and community leadership body, the Joint Intelligence Committee (JIC).

The latest report from ASPI’s Statecraft & Intelligence Centre, released today, analyses the experiences of the Australian and British intelligence communities in contemplating, planning for and executing these official history projects, with a view to informing future decision making, especially within Australia’s NIC.

Many challenges are identified, including inherent sensitivity of the subject matter, accentuation of typical historiographical challenges (not least due to the state of records held by operational agencies), the recent seismic shift to electronic generation and storage, and the critical question of trust (between agencies and partners who have shared sensitive secrets with them, between official historians and agencies who have engaged them, and within the history profession).

Also identified and weighed are various mitigations and techniques adopted to address these challenges—including particular approaches to information access, careful selection of what’s in and out (both topics and periods), defined review processes and use of intermediaries, and deployment of supporting historical materials.

The report concludes that these histories have proven valuable for explaining and building social licence for intelligence agencies’ work, honing and improving actual intelligence practice, recording social histories of these unique organisations, contributing positively to staff morale, and advancing historical scholarship on an important but previously obscured element of democratic statecraft.

There is also a broader point about history’s role in professionalisation of intelligence work, akin to that provided by professional military education.

There remain missing pieces in Australian official intelligence history: namely, accounts of the Australian Geospatial-intelligence Organisation (AGO), principal assessment agencies (Office of National Intelligence [ONI] and Defence Intelligence Organisation [DIO]) and the Australian Secret Intelligence Service (ASIS). In addition, there is a strong case for a fourth volume of ASIO’s history, to cover the 35 years since the third volume’s conclusion—especially given ASIO’s role in Australian security since the Sydney Olympic Games and the terror attacks of 11 September 2001.

The second volume of ASD’s official history is expected soon.

Official histories would bring AGO and the assessment agencies out of the shadows of their more prominent peers. For ASIS, publication of an official history, building on public statements and appearances made by successive directors-general since 2012, would be a chance to address persistent misunderstandings about this most secretive of organisations.

Moving forward, Australia’s intelligence agencies should engage proactively with the prospect of future official histories. As a first step, they should start scoping studies and engagement with professional historians (including on specific historical elements of agency activities more conducive to future release). A prime candidate to be the first mover would be ONI, since 2027 will be the 50th anniversary of the establishment of its predecessor, the Office of National Assessments. Furthermore, in its NIC leadership role ONI can marshal both classified and non-classified lessons learned in preparation of British and Australian intelligence histories so far (and in other government commissioned historical projects) and provide the space for a coordinated and supportive multi-agency approach to the future of Australia’s intelligence past.

ASIO: We love it when the A-Team’s plan doesn’t come together

Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO) Director General Mike Burgess’ Annual Threat Assessment highlighted the principal threats to Australia’s security—in ASIO’s 75th anniversary year.

One of the positives from these public announcements, and this was Burgess’ fifth as DG ASIO, is the documented evolution of national security priorities year to year.

Burgess spoke of the enduring but morphing terrorism threat, as violent extremist ideologies (religiously inspired or racist ‘accelerationists’) switch and merge in the face of current events to create ‘new, hybrid beliefs; a perverse ‘choose your own adventure’ approach to radicalisation’. In ASIO’s assessment ‘there is the realistic possibility of a terrorist attack or attack planning in the next 12 months. POSSIBLE does not mean negligible’.  (The national terrorism threat level remains unchanged at POSSIBLE).

Contrary to subsequent newspaper headlines, that doesn’t mean terrorism has re-eclipsed espionage as a threat. In fact, Burgess was categorical: ‘if we had a threat level for espionage and foreign interference it would be at CERTAIN—the highest level possible’. Furthermore, ‘the threat is now, and the threat is deeper and broader than you might think.’

Burgess illustrated this reality by speaking of the ‘A-team’. Not loveable rogues of 80s television nostalgia but rather the Australia Team from an unnamed country’s foreign intelligence service, tasked with recruiting Australians with access to privileged information and the opportunities to covertly influence Australian policy.

On Burgess’ account those efforts, starting in the on-line space, have been persistent, wide-ranging and, unfortunately, sometimes promising. Some Australians have responded positively, either naively or venally, to apparent consultants, researchers and others, promising handsome pay for ‘inside information’ on Australian trade, politics, economics, foreign policy, defence and security matters. The ‘A-team’ then tries to take these new relationships clandestine, shifting to encrypted communications platforms and seeking to meet in foreign locations.

Burgess even recounted the ‘A-team’s successful recruitment of an unnamed Australian politician (and their subsequent proposal to introduce a prime minister’s family member to these spies). As well as an elaborate fake overseas conference orchestrated by the ‘A-team’ specifically to cultivate politicians and academics.

In late 2023, ASIO took counter-intelligence action to disrupt the ‘A-team’, dangling a promising lead to get in front of and then confront their leader, warning them off from targeting Australians. Burgess acknowledged that his publicisation of this hitherto secret information was itself a form of disruption. Turns out the ‘A-team’ leader had neglected to tell his masters of these events and would now need to explain this compromise!

Importantly Burgess, including in response to later Q&A, reflected on this anecdote, refuting ‘suggestions that convictions are the only weapon in our collective arsenal or the only measure of our success’. In doing so he captured the fundamental strategic dynamic at play in the 21st Century intelligence contest.

But it’s not just Australians with privileged access who are the targets of foreign intelligence services. The inter-agency Counter Foreign Interference Taskforce is also required to thwart efforts from foreign governments to surveil and interfere with diaspora communities in Australia, including through violence, blackmail and coercion.

International events, such as Xi Jinping’s authoritarian moves and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, have caused division in diaspora communities, divisions which can be exploited by foreign intelligence services. It has already happened overseas amongst the Uighur community in Sweden and the Cuban community in the US, to take just two examples.

Australia has not been immune. As Burgess revealed, in 2023 ASIO identified and disrupted a foreign government trying to harm an Australia-based critic of its regime. That government had gone so far as to surveil the target’s home in anticipation of such action. Another foreign government tried to find an Australian willing to ‘disappear’ a separate dissident.

‘Foreign interference’ brings to mind vintage Cold War imagery and, if put on the spot, most people would rattle off the names of the same two or three culprits. But not always. As Burgess observed, threats can come from unhelpful friends as well as Australia’s adversaries. This observation has been borne out in past Australian experiences.

In this regard there was a clear message from Burgess: there is room for open communications and debate with friends, neighbours and even adversaries. However, the looming and growing threat of foreign interference calls for these conversations to be brought out of the shadows, and into the light.

We would also note that Australia must ensure that diaspora communities are protected, and additional support is given to Australians with ethnic, family or business ties to these countries.

Wednesday night’s assessment was overwhelming, especially given Burgess’s identification of sabotage (an original ASIO preoccupation) as re-emergent threat, downstream from both terrorism and espionage & interference via the cyber vector.

However, Burgess was also clear that the last thing Australians should do is throw our hands up. What’s more, as much as ASIO and its partners across government and internationally, can act to identify and disrupt threats (as in the case of the ‘A-team’), the key to national security is the nation itself—through security awareness and actions by individuals, companies and institutions. That means building effective security cultures and practices throughout and across organisations and beyond a single point in time. ASIO, building on its existing protective security advice,  will later this year publish a framework ‘to help organisations build and maintain a robust security culture’.

It should also mean Australians, particularly those in business, government, research or otherwise with a security clearance, being wary of sudden interest from supposed ‘headhunters’ bearing gifts.

What we can’t do is do nothing. This was Burgess’s mantra for the night: for the sake of Australia’s future security, ‘BAU*  just won’t do’.

*BAU (business as usual).

The role of intelligence in Australian statecraft

As Melissa Conley-Tyler and Benjamin Day have noted, ‘statecraft’ is increasingly the term of art when it comes to Australian policymaking—and, as Will Leben has observed, a welcome one.

The increasing focus on statecraft in an Australian context has prompted ASPI to establish a program to ensure intelligence’s role within it is better understood.

In 2020 then prime minister Scott Morrison boldly declared that Australia would use ‘all elements of statecraft to shape the world we want to see’.

As shadow minister, Penny Wong suggested Morrison’s government ‘neglected some of the drivers of statecraft, some of the capability that’s required to navigate what is a much more challenging and risky world’. By contrast Labor would ‘bring all the aspects of our statecraft together to protect and advance our interests’. As Minister for Foreign Affairs she has described—in a speech in which she used ‘statecraft’ seven times—how Australia’s strategic circumstances require ‘unprecedented coordination and ambition in our statecraft’ and that this statecraft is composed of: ‘Our economic security, our domestic resilience as a multicultural democracy and our international engagement’.

Last year defence minister Richard Marles cited statecraft thrice in one speech, concluding that ‘statecraft is only viable if it is underpinned by the ability to project force and power: to deter military threats, and defend Australia’s national interests within our immediate region.’ At this year’s Avalon air show he told an industry dinner ‘it has never been more important for Australia to employ sober, responsible and clear-eyed statecraft’.

While ‘statecraft’ might be back in the political lexicon, analysis of its use in Australia reveals its various meanings. Although sometimes describing specific policy actions (as in coercive economic statecraft), two uses are more common. First, innate judgments and actions by governments or individuals, ‘sound statecraft’ for example. Second, the integration of powers and capabilities into a single, coherent, conscious and integrated approach to Australia in the world. This second usage is most relevant, with certain components of (Australian) national power readily identified. As the MP for Wills, Peter Khalil, succinctly described them: ‘the three Ds of statecraft—nuanced diplomacy; development assistance; and defence’.

It’s here that we need to talk about spies, more precisely about the role of intelligence in Australian statecraft, why it’s relatively unheralded, and why it’s worth examination and discussion.

The government and its agencies have explicitly linked the concept of statecraft and the work of intelligence.

At its 75th anniversary last year the Australian Signals Directorate (ASD) was described by the then government as ‘one of the most important arms of Australian statecraft’, with then assistant minister Andrew Hastie adding that ‘secrets of Australian statecraft … have been shielded from public view, as ASD operated in the shadows alongside cousins like ASIO (Australian Security Intelligence Organisation) and ASIS (Australian Secret Intelligence Service)’.

The other agency with a significant birthday in 2022 was indeed ASIS whose then Director-General, Paul Symon, was plain about its role and associated challenges:

‘While [human intelligence work] remains a core component of statecraft, it must adapt to meet the extraordinary challenges arising from the interaction of a complex strategic environment, intensified counter-intelligence efforts, and emergent and emerging technologies.’

This significance of intelligence to Australian statecraft shouldn’t be surprising. As Danielle Cave writes: ‘For as long as—and perhaps even longer than—there have been states, there have been spies’. The principal institutions of Australian intelligence date to WWII’s aftermath, or to the first Hope Royal Commission almost 50 years ago, as well as an important pre-history. But the intelligence community’s contribution remains under-examined, and lately National Intelligence Community (NIC) leaders have been increasingly open about the need to be—albeit prudently—more open.

This reflects practical pressures on the NIC, especially the need to grow and transform, a challenge shared with Defence and acknowledged by Prime Minister Anthony Albanese at the National Press Club. To appreciate the scale of that task, consider that ASD’s Project REDSPICE is a $9.9 billion initiative over 10 years, involving more than 1900 new personnel. For any organisation this would be daunting—for agencies with very particular security and skills needs it’s truly extraordinary. And that’s just one agency in a community of 10!

It’s not just this imperative that makes a more informed discourse on Australian intelligence valuable to government, agencies and public alike. Initiatives like REDSPICE are building off historically significant growth in NIC resources and responsibilities, tracing back to the turn of the century. From what was a curiosity (and an endangered one at that) in the post-Cold War 1990s, for over two decades Australian intelligence has been on a constant cycle of high tempo operations.

For example, as the then Government noted in 2018, ‘successive governments have asked ASIS to do more in response to national security priorities and unfolding events, and to do so in new places and new circumstances unforeseen in 2001 or in 2004’. ASIO and the AFP, with the rest of the NIC, have assiduously pursued the counter-terrorism mission and disrupted numerous threats.

There’s much to be gained from reflection on those past experiences, and the organisational and methodological lessons for now emergent and emerging national security challenges, especially how collaboration across historical silos—technical and human, foreign and domestic—has served outcomes while preserving first principles enshrined since the 1970s.

There’s also acknowledgement that a more robust social licence for Australian intelligence, by way of a better-informed public, is a force multiplier and hedge against future vulnerabilities.

ASIO director-general Mike Burgess has summed this up as the ‘triple T’s of Threat, Trust and Team’. Burgess said he wanted to ‘improve awareness of threats, enhance trust through transparency and build our team by recruiting the best and brightest.’ ASD director-general Rachel Noble has noted that to  protect knowledge of operational methods and capabilities: ‘The how must necessarily be kept a secret’.

ASPI’s Statecraft and Intelligence Program aims to improve public knowledge of, and discourse on, intelligence matters (including through demystification and myth-busting); improve outcomes for the NIC and by extension Australian interests, and in turn ask more of the NIC itself, while equipping informed policymakers to collaborate with intelligence counterparts more effectively.

The program’s linkage of intelligence with statecraft is deliberate. It situates intelligence within a purposeful policy context and helps move past espionage as entertainment or cliche. Furthermore, this approach expands the notion of intelligence beyond readier assumptions of counterterrorism and conduct of defence to the full range of Australia’s levers and activities in the world. That’s critical given the wrenching changes taking place in our strategic environment.

This isn’t wholly new territory for ASPI. In addition to ongoing and invaluable contributions made in analysing cyberespionage, information operations and disinformation, law enforcement and counterterrorism, to mention just a few, ASPI has contributed to past intelligence reviews and identified important lessons from international experience. Of note was 2021’s Collaborative and Agile report on intelligence community collaboration insights from the UK and US.

Using unclassified resources (and leveraging historical case-studies and international comparisons), the ASPI program will canvass the challenges facing Australian intelligence—cultural, organisational, technological and strategic—as well as intelligence’s place within liberal democracy, and the integration of intelligence capabilities into national strategy and effects.

Importantly the program will also examine the finite limits of intelligence and its utility to statecraft. For, as Symon told ASPI in 2020: ‘We’re not the silver bullet, and we don’t pretend to be the silver bullet.’

Lowering of Australia’s terrorism threat level a success, but it shouldn’t cause complacency

 

At 12.30 this afternoon, the head of the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation, Mike Burgess, lowered Australia’s terror threat level from ‘probable’ to ‘possible’. In doing so, he acknowledged that the terrorism threat in Australia is both enduring and evolving. This is a significant moment for Australia’s security as we have been living and working under the ‘probable’ threat level for more than eight years.

Despite the best efforts of our intelligence and law enforcement agencies, Australia has experienced 11 terrorist attacks on home soil. Lives have been lost and the lives of survivors have been irrevocably damaged. Over the past eight years, our intelligence and law enforcement agencies have achieved great counterterrorism successes: 21 significant plots were detected and disrupted. All the while, Australians did their bit by providing information when they could and getting on with living and working.

Since the government raised the threat level in 2014, I have argued that lowering it again would be no easy task. If you increase the threat level and nothing happens, you may not be damned; but if you drop the alert level and an attack occurs soon after, there will be no saving you. Australians and Australian governments have zero tolerance for law enforcement and intelligence agencies that fail to disrupt terrorist attacks. Today, Burgess demonstrated the kind of informed courage we should expect from our intelligence and law enforcement community.

Burgess isn’t saying that terrorism at home or abroad is unlikely. He’s saying that the work of his and other agencies has mitigated the capabilities of those that would do us harm. The conditions have changed; right now, those engaged with extremist ideologies are less intent on harming us. However, we should also be clear-eyed that a threat level of ‘possible’ still means there is a 50–50 chance an attack could occur. In many parts of our life, a 50–50 chance of safety is far from appealing.

While the national terrorism threat level has been lowered, it’s clear that extremism is alive and well in Australia. ASIO and organisations like the Australian Federal Police remain focused on terrorism and terrorism plots.

No specific laws prevent someone from having views that appear extreme to others. However, frustrated extremists do have the potential to move quickly to violence. Over the past two years, Covid-19 has fomented a range of extremists driven by conspiracy theories, anti-authority ideologies and right-wing extremism. There has also been a broad uptick in nationalist and racist extremism. Interestingly, while the number of reports on right-wing extremism provided to the AFP has increased dramatically, the majority of cases investigated or disrupted remain inspired by Islamic extremism.

It’s important to note that while it’s been eight years since a threat change occurred, ASIO has regularly reviewed and reassessed the threat level during that time and it will continue to do so. We as a nation should be happy with this change, but we must be mindful that it will continue to be regularly reviewed and may well change again. Indeed, Burgess said that he can ‘almost guarantee it will need to go up again at some point in the future’.

Some will say that as Australia faces a range of other, more pressing security threats, there is room to reallocate spending from counterterrorism to other priorities. Such an approach would be a mistake that could have tragic ramifications. Australia’s counterterrorism frameworks, laws and resourcing have been critical to the government’s ability to get to where we are today. These arrangements and investments will be vital in mitigating and disrupting emerging challenges. Lone actors, online radicalisation, post-prison-sentence management, returning foreign fighters and their dependants, and radicalised minors are at the top of this list.

What’s clear from today’s announcement is that we haven’t won the war against terrorism at home or abroad. We have had some great successes at home that are worthy of at least some celebration. Now is a time when the nature of our response will need to adapt. While our intelligence and law enforcement agencies continue to search for and disrupt terror plots, more will need to be done to address extremism and radicalisation more broadly. A focus on social cohesion and resilience will be critical.

Australia and Australians have shown remarkable strength over the past two decades, especially since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic. These efforts and the successes they have brought are the antithesis of the extremist ideologies that seek to divide Australia.

ASIO powers to question children: a difficult balancing act

Australia’s parliament is considering a bill that will, among other things, lower the age at which a minor can be questioned by the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation during a terrorism investigation from 16 to 14.

It’s always difficult to balance enhancing the powers of national security agencies with maintaining democratic rights and freedoms. Lowering the age threshold makes us question why such powers are necessary, and many find it difficult to imagine teenagers engaging in violent terrorist actions.

Sadly, the number of teenagers involved in terrorism is significant in Australia and internationally. In 2015, 15-year-old Farhad Jabar shot and killed NSW Police employee Curtis Cheng. Overseas, children have been forced into terrorist groups and given weapons training or been used as suicide bombers. Often, children recruited into militia and terrorist forces were radicalised online. Others were groomed by a trusted adult.

Australia has introduced 18 tranches of new security legislation since the national threat level was raised to ‘probable’ in September 2014. Over the same period, the nation experienced seven terrorist incidents that resulted in people being killed or severely injured. Another 16 planned attacks were disrupted. In our changing security landscape, this latest bill has been considered necessary to secure Australia’s future.

In his 2018 report on the prosecution and sentencing of children for terrorism, Australia’s Independent National Security Legislation Monitor, James Renwick, noted the heightened risk of minors committing terrorism offences, citing the marked increase in investigations, charges and convictions involving young people. Approximately 10% of people convicted of terrorism offences between 2014 and 2018 were under 18 when they offended, and a further 25% were aged 18 to 25. Renwick also noted that, while the overall numbers were small, the threat was real.

Some children convicted of plotting terrorist acts in Australia have received long sentences—including a 13-year term for a person who was 14 at the time of the offence.

In its 2018 review of ASIO’s questioning and detention powers, the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security noted that reducing the questioning age to 14 was extraordinary, but supported it in principle. The committee said use of the new powers must be based on clear evidence, should be limited to those being investigated and must contain safeguards for minors.

The PJCIS is reviewing the proposed new legislation, and safeguards and oversight will clearly be a strong focus.

While it’s vital for ASIO to have appropriate questioning powers, checks and balances are equally crucial to protect society’s freedoms. They also protect ASIO officers by ensuring their behaviour accords with the nature of our society and is subject to oversight and regulation. Key safeguards include a requirement for ASIO to obtain a warrant from the attorney-general before compulsorily questioning a child.

The attorney-general must be satisfied that there’s a credible threat and that the child has ‘likely engaged in or is likely to engage in politically motivated violence’. The attorney-general must also consider the best interests of the young person, taking into account matters such as age, maturity, background (including lifestyle, culture and traditions), and physical and mental health.

The PJCIS must consider in its review whether it’s appropriate for such a warrant to be granted by the Commonwealth’s first law officer, a political figure, rather than by an independent judicial authority such as a judge or a magistrate.

It’s a long-held tenet of our judicial system that such decisions must be based on the facts of an individual case removed from political interference. Authorisation by the attorney-general fails to provide such assurance and could lead affected communities to challenge the motives behind investigations and the questioning of alleged offenders.

The bill also requires that a minor be questioned before a ‘prescribed authority’ appointed by the attorney-general. That person must have served as a judge of a superior court, been an Administrative Appeals Tribunal president or deputy president, or worked as a lawyer in a federal court or a state or territory supreme court for at least 10 years. There’s a risk, albeit minimal, that the attorney-general could appoint a prescribed authority who is lenient towards ASIO or who has worked for ASIO.

The bill provides for a minor’s representative to be present during questioning. This can be a parent, guardian or other person who can represent the child’s interests, or a lawyer appointed by the prescribed authority. This raises concerns about the representative’s independence and ability to represent the minor’s best interests, although these risks are largely mitigated by lawyers’ professional obligations.

The bill allows for periods of continuous questioning of up to two hours, punctuated by breaks, over a total of eight hours. It’s not clear, though, how long the breaks must be. Specific guidance is required to avoid confusion and allegations of unfair treatment.

This safeguard is modelled on the requirements of the Crimes Act, although those provisions limit questioning time for minors and other vulnerable individuals to a maximum of two hours. A magistrate can allow longer sessions in limited circumstances.

Robust oversight mechanisms include the right of the Inspector-General of Intelligence and Security to be present during questioning; an obligation on the prescribed authority to explain that the minor may seek a remedy from the federal court in relation to their treatment during the execution of the questioning warrant; and scrutiny by the PJCIS, the Independent National Security Monitor and the parliament.

It’s highly likely that these questioning powers will be used sparingly, given that only a handful of minors in Australia have been found to have committed a terrorism offence. While the powers may not prevent further attacks, they provide an important additional tool for ASIO’s counterterrorism effort.

So, while there’s a reasonable case for the new powers and for the safeguards for minors, the PJCIS’s consideration of the bill needs to be informed by public views and external analysis. Expanding state power is never trivial, and when that expansion applies to minors, proposals need careful testing and scrutiny against society’s values and standards.

In addition to the parliamentary process, the government must explain the need for this law clearly to the public and describe how it struck the balance between security and freedom. Introducing the bill is the start, not the end, of that process of public communication and debate.