Tag Archive for: Australian Federal Police

The Pacific cocaine corridor: A Brazilian cartel’s pipeline to Australia

Australia faces an emerging national security threat from Brazilian transnational crime groups. Once a domestic concern, Brazilian organised crime has evolved into a powerful narco-insurgency with transnational reach, making Brazil the world’s second-largest player in the cocaine trade after Colombia.

While Brazilian organised crime previously posed little threat to Australia, this report, The Pacific cocaine corridor: A Brazilian cartel’s pipeline to Australia, examines how Brazil’s expanding role in global cocaine supply, rising criminal network sophistication, and growing demand in Australia’s lucrative cocaine market are increasing the presence of Brazilian organised crime on Australian shores.

The report highlights how Brazil’s Primeiro Comando da Capital (PCC) has become a major transnational criminal threat, exploiting weaknesses in political, legal, and economic systems. It explores Brazil’s geography and criminal networks with South American cocaine producers and examines the PCC’s global distribution networks, with a focus on how the Pacific is increasingly used to transport drugs destined for Australia. A recent case study demonstrates the prioritisation of the Australian market in these operations.

The report concludes with recommendations for strengthening police cooperation, enhancing financial surveillance, and proactively detecting and disrupting PCC activities. By addressing key enablers of the PCC’s resilience and closing gaps in international information exchange, a coordinated approach will not only mitigate the immediate threat but also bolster Australia’s long-term defences against transnational organised crime.

Towards a Commonwealth law enforcement innovation framework

Introduction

In March 2019, ASPI, with the sponsorship of Oracle, coordinated the ASPI–Oracle Innovation Framework Workshop.

The workshop brought together subject-matter experts from federal law enforcement agencies, academia and the private sector to explore the feasibility of a Commonwealth law enforcement innovation framework (CLEIF).

This followed a 2018 research project that explored the current state of innovation in law enforcement.1 That research was based on a case study of innovation in Australia’s federal anti-money-laundering (AML) provisions.

The research project was underpinned by three key questions:

  1. How can technology enhance the identification of money-laundering offences?
  2. How can law enforcement bring together technology and policy to ensure more agile AML decision-making?
  3. How can law enforcement agencies gain faster access to new AML technologies and capabilities?

The research resulted in the publication of a Special Report, titled ‘I can see clearly now!’, which provided specific analysis of the key factors that support and restrict technological innovation in federal law enforcement AML efforts.2

The report’s central argument was that the current ecosystem for technological innovation in AML needs to be enhanced to engage with the dual challenge of disruptive technology and the integration of pockets of AML excellence into a holistic whole-of-government program.

While the research was focused on technology and AML, it has broader application to law enforcement technological innovation.

The research found little evidence that the organisational frameworks for enterprise or portfolio technological innovation in federal law enforcement are fully developed.3

The March 2019 workshop explored innovation themes in government and the corporate sector that had relevance to law enforcement. The results provide further input to policymakers as they formulate future directions for the agencies and their capabilities.

Purpose

This report presents the key innovation themes that were discussed during the workshop before presenting a SWOT analysis for the implementation of a CLEIF.4 The aim is to promote further consideration of the concept of such a framework.

Methodology

The workshop was conducted on 12 March 2019 under the Chatham House Rule. The agenda was divided into five sessions:

  • The context
  • Innovation in law enforcement: a case study of the Fintel Alliance
  • Innovation in research: a case study of the Data to Decisions Cooperative Research Centre
  • Innovation in the private sector: a case study of Oracle
  • A SWOT analysis of the concept of a CLEIF.

The context

In this space, ‘innovation’ refers to industrialising the generation of new approaches. For many years, governments haven’t had a significant independent technological edge except in niche areas. Much of their advantage has been created by companies in sectors that are dependent on government spending—notably defence, with some contribution from in-house government R&D through entities such as Defence Science and Technology and its predecessor groups. This situation has shifted over time, and the dominant source of innovation is now commercial sectors that aren’t primarily driven by government investment and aren’t primarily in the defence sector. The result is that, in the face of rapid technological change, governments need to find new ways of accessing a technological edge. The very concepts of sovereignty and geographical jurisdictions are being challenged, given the globalised nature of some technologies, corporations and activities (finance being an obvious one of relevance to law enforcement).

At the turn of the millennium, cutting-edge computing capability was still being driven by governments, or at least by government demand. However, the speed at which technology has been developed and then deployed has since accelerated exponentially. In the process, the Australian Government’s technological advantages have eroded. There’s no binary answer to whether this is a positive or negative development; rather, it’s a truism of the contemporary environment that policymakers face, and not just in Australia.

More recently, technological developments, especially those that have been disruptive, have subsequently been driven predominantly by private corporations.5 Legislative responses to those changes, disruptive or otherwise, have lagged the changes.

In some cases, the corporations responsible for the changes draw their R&D budgets from revenues that exceed those of some governments. Complex ownership, financial and geographical arrangements make it difficult for governments to regulate these companies. The rising disruptive influence of small enterprises and start-ups has shown that at least some of this change isn’t just about available finance but about entrepreneurial approaches to technological innovation.

By the early 2000s, our day-to-day life was mostly viewed by policymakers through two conceptual lenses: real and virtual, with quite a clear separation between the two realms. Governments’ policy responses to technology, at least in Australia, treated technological challenges through similarly divided silos. In the meantime, events such as the launch of the iPhone in 2007 by Steve Jobs were altering the way that many of us interact with each other and the world. Today, many Australians are unlikely to see their life or social interactions as divided between the real and the virtual: it’s just their life.

Unsurprisingly, technological disruptions to the way our world operates are becoming more frequent and potent. For those in government, many of the underlying policy assumptions about crime and security are now also being affected. Acceleration in the development and use of technology has been matched by changes in the capability of those who would do us harm.6 ASIO Director-General Duncan Lewis has recently argued that ‘a person who would wish us ill is far more empowered as a result of the technology at their disposal than once upon a time.’7 State and non-state actors alike are leveraging technology to communicate, mount information operations and conduct cyberattacks; for instance, the Islamic State terror group uses Twitter and Twitter bots to organise and market its message broadly.

Australian law enforcement agencies face an increasing number of challenges from emergent technologies. For ease of consideration, it’s possible to categorise those challenges into four broad thematic groupings:

  • the implications of specific technological developments 
  • encryption
  • the continued globalisation of organised crime
  • the declining impact of traditional policing responses.

A key policy challenge that underpins the issues facing the government relates more to limitations on the capacity of law enforcement here and elsewhere to introduce innovative strategies in response to disruptive technology. Many parts of law enforcement are rapidly changing and becoming more global, but that doesn’t mean an end to investigations and response roles.

With the rising threat to domestic security from non-state actors, law enforcement agencies face a broad family of threats that are increasingly untouchable because they operate in ways that aren’t vulnerable to existing police capabilities and legislative powers.

The range of transnational untouchables—those that exploit the vulnerabilities of international legal regimes, safe havens and corruption—is increasing.

The ability of law enforcement to collect admissible evidence and prosecute emergent transnational non-state actors is limited by legal jurisdictions, differing rules across jurisdictions and the effectiveness of cross-border cooperation. While criminal organisations can cross borders in seconds electronically, the collection of evidence from individual foreign jurisdictions using mutual legal assistance treaty arrangements, where they exist, can take weeks or months. While a non-state actor can operate from anywhere at any time, our law enforcement agencies’ operational freedom of movement is limited by the geographical borders established in domestic and international law. This point is illustrated by the 2017 Sydney airline terrorist plot. In late July 2017, the Australian Federal Police (AFP), with intelligence from Israel, uncovered a suspected Islamic State plot to blow up an Etihad flight to Abu Dhabi. The terror group allegedly coordinated the operation in Syria and mailed a bomb kit from Turkey.8

The detection of transnational criminals is becoming increasingly difficult. In a physical sense, proactively identifying deviant financial transactions, people and cargo across borders is being made ever more difficult by the exponentially growing number of legitimate transactions. This is making investigations more complex and time consuming, due in part to the increased sophistication and technological capabilities of criminal conspiracies but also to the density of cross-border flows.

Global supply chains and complex business structures are also making evidence collection more difficult. While data analytic capabilities are increasing, law enforcement is faced with growing information flows that are difficult to store and analyse. This point isn’t lost on Australian law enforcement officials and policymakers, who know that at least part of the solution is broader adoption of new approaches such as data analytics. Clearly, this requires new skills in law enforcement entities as well as new concepts for applying these new analytic tools.

The impact of new and emerging information and communications technology (ICT) ensures that technological disruptions will increase rapidly—and the resulting need to adapt should be built into agency business models. The implications of the current trajectory of technological developments is that the life cycle of ICT investments will be drastically reduced, particularly when it comes to applications that run over the underlying ICT infrastructure of servers, networks and storage. So, while the AFP’s current case management system might be decades old, the next one won’t have the same usable life.

The news isn’t all bad: there are pockets of excellence and consistent efforts for innovation in Australian law enforcement. While most of the government’s law enforcement efforts are focused on arrests and seizures, a few extremely successful enforcement officers are focused on the disruption of threats—especially organised crime—using soft power, such as capacity development.

Law enforcement has traditionally employed a ‘grow your own’ approach to subject-matter expertise and capability development. 

In the current operating context, it will also need to engage more frequently to acquire capabilities and subject-matter expertise on an as-required, contracted basis, putting expertise into the investigations at hand when needed. R&D budgets for law enforcement, especially for the development and rapid fielding of technological capabilities, need to drastically increase. Martin Callinan makes this point in his 2019 ASPI Special Report, Defence and security R&D: a sovereign strategic advantage.9 While government is unlikely to be the predominant spender or regain its ‘technological edge’ as a quasi-monopoly customer, it can innovate and it can use its funding to drive private innovation that it can use. After all, law enforcement innovation is a broad term with organisational, cultural, financial and policy dimensions.

Key points

  1. Innovation is increasingly coming from commercial sectors that aren’t primarily driven by government.
  2. The Australian Government’s ability to be a dominant driver of technological innovation has ended.
  3. Opportunities to adopt commercial innovation are strong, and the government’s ability to seed innovation from R&D funding can push innovation into paths useful to law enforcement.
  4. Innovation isn’t just about available finance but about entrepreneurial approaches to technological innovation.
  5. Technological disruptions to the way our world operates are becoming more frequent and potent—and perhaps need to be thought of less as disruptions than as rapidly emerging opportunities to change the way agencies operate.
  6. A key policy challenge that underpins the issues facing the government relates more to the limited capacity of law enforcement, whether in Australia or in other countries, to introduce innovative strategies in response to disruptive technology.
  7. R&D budgets for law enforcement, especially for the development and rapid fielding of technological capabilities, need to drastically increase and be used to drive private innovation that law enforcement can use.

A law enforcement case study: the Fintel Alliance

Launched in 2017 by the Australian Transaction Reports and Analysis Centre (AUSTRAC), the Fintel Alliance is a private–public partnership established to combat money-laundering and terrorism financing. The alliance is between the federal government and the finance sector.

It’s structured with two hubs: an Innovation Hub and an Operations Hub. Individuals from various private-sector finance organisations are seconded into the Fintel Alliance, which allows for higher levels of collaboration.

The Innovation Hub activities are either ‘push projects’ (that is, looking at ways new technologies may be employed in an operational scenario) or generated by the Operations Hub identifying operational problems to be solved with technology. The Innovation Hub develops capability, through proof-of-concept with the Fintel Alliance members, which is then moved across to the Operations Hub.

Two recent examples are the Pseudocode and the Alerting Platform projects.

  • Pseudocode allows the Fintel Alliance to identify criminal networks using data drawn from all stakeholders, and to develop typologies in order to improve reporting of suspicious individuals and behaviour.
  • The Alerting Platform Project is a longer term one and is a form of confidential computing whereby users can use data without seeing information. This approach to anonymising data but still enabling it to be useful in data analysis is a promising design approach to address privacy concerns and legislative restraints on the use of personal information.

This division of innovation and implementation could be a useful adaptation for the CLEIF, as innovation could occur centrally in conjunction with various stakeholders and be operationalised in various operations hubs as needed by agencies.

Key points

  1. Innovation projects with multiple stakeholders that cross sectors are complex. Participation isn’t mandatory, and contributions can vary. An innovation framework needs to consider that an equal contribution from each stakeholder may be unlikely—and stakeholders must be comfortable with this as a design principle of the partnership.
  2. Centrally managed innovation frameworks need to proactively engage with those responsible for operationalising projects throughout the innovation process.

Innovation in research: the Data to Decisions Cooperative Research Centre

Cooperative research centres (CRCs) were pioneered by the Australian Government during the 1990s to support collaboration among government, industry and researchers and foster high-quality research and outcomes. Since then, the government has committed nearly $5 billion in grants to CRC projects.

The Data to Decisions (D2D) CRC is a collaboration between national security agencies, industry and researchers.10 The D2D CRC was established as a five-year project with the purpose of solving big data challenges facing the Australian national security community. It currently runs four R&D projects, which all focus on harnessing the power of big data to create predictive and analytical functions for national security and law enforcement agencies.

After five years, this particular CRC is nearing the end of its life cycle; however, it has spurred the creation of two new start-ups (Fivecast and NQRY) to continue the innovation generated in the research projects, showing the potential for work from CRCs to become self-sustaining and attract funding from other sources as well.

The D2D CRC provided several key insights on its innovation journey. The first is the need to remove the fear of failure (‘fail fast’ is an easy motto but a much harder thing to demonstrate in practice). During its first years of operation, D2D was frequently faced with decisions that involved significant implementation risks. There was a need to balance necessary risks in innovation against insulation from failure. In doing so, D2D made failure not a thing to be punished or frowned upon but an inflection point for learning.

The second key insight was the need for innovation champions who not only support but understand the innovation process.

The real benefit of a CRC is its ability to draw together a variety of stakeholders and bridge the public–private divide.

Workshop discussions following the presentation of the case study highlighted the inherent challenges of traditional law enforcement performance indicators for technology development. A key observation is that often law performance measures for enforcement technology projects are more centrally focused on time and budget delivery, which makes the application of more agile R&D approaches challenging.

The D2D CRC case study highlighted that there are often numerous opportunities for policymakers to propose changes to legislation and policy constraints that are currently unintentionally inhibiting innovation. Such changes require organisations to adopt a more entrepreneurial mindset that looks to digital transformation and innovation to keep pace with increasingly frequent technological disruption. While legislative change isn’t easy, it was recognised that many legislators are looking to boost industry and bridge the public–private divide.

Key points

  1. Fear of failure restricts innovation.
  2. Project failure is inevitable in innovation, and organisations need to be able to stop projects when it becomes obvious that success is unlikely.
  3. Innovation projects need strong champions.

Innovation in the private sector: a case study of Oracle

Oracle provides essential services and products for companies to pioneer innovations and drive new business models. For example, Oracle embeds machine learning into several management and security offerings to help monitor, troubleshoot and predict potential outages and security breaches. Its corporate focus is on integrating artificial intelligence into analytics to help discover hidden patterns and enable automated and personalised interactions across applications via digital assistants. Oracle helps customers develop road maps, migrate to the cloud and take advantage of emerging technologies from any point: new cloud deployments, on-premises environments, and hybrid implementations.

As a large multinational organisation working across industries in both the private and public sectors, Oracle provided the workshop with a series of insights into how to develop and promote an innovation culture.

Oracle’s innovation framework centralises ‘innovation management’ to be able to identify sources of innovation and then direct resources towards economically profitable innovation.11 It uses a five-step structured process, known as the Oracle Innovation Design Engine, that supports end-to-end innovation: frame, ideate, share, test and scale. This can also be conceptualised as building an ‘innovation pipeline’.12 Using this structured process, the best ideas can be chosen and finessed.

Discussions on profit suggested that the private sector’s profit motive could be replaced with a balanced return on investment consideration, in which a reasonable profit return sits alongside a longer term revenue flow.

Importantly, Oracle emphasises benefits from continual, at times incremental, innovation and moving away from the idea that adding or creating value can only come from radical change and innovation—an idea that should be emphasised in creating a CLEIF.

Additionally, Oracle seeks to inculcate and nurture a culture of innovation. Principally, the argument is that culture is the key catalyst for innovation. However, to be successfully developed the innovation must be championed at a high level within the organisation.

Oracle argues that organisations can’t adopt a business-as-usual approach to innovation, which is why leadership engagement is essential. To be successful in the private sector, innovation and the processes for managing it must be continuously adapting.

Key points

  1. Culture is a critical input to innovation.13
  2. An innovation framework should be viewed as a prioritisation tool that promotes the creation of an endless line of potential opportunities and possibilities; however, inevitably, most will never reach full implementation.
  3. The decision-making in a public-sector innovation framework would need to be driven by a balanced scorecard return-on-investment calculation that also considers the opportunity costs of not adopting specific innovations.
  4. Innovation needs to be viewed through two lenses: radical change and incremental change.

Constructing a law enforcement innovation framework

Each of the case study sessions resulted in substantial discussion among the participants. That conversation, while broad ranging, revealed that more can be done to enhance innovation in federal law enforcement. More specifically, the workshop’s first four sessions revealed that a CLEIF was likely to be needed and demanded.

The final session was used to undertake a SWOT analysis of such a framework.

Strengths

During the workshop, strengths were conceptualised as characteristics that could give a CLEIF an advantage over other approaches to innovation. The following specific strengths were identified during the workshop:

  • There are already good examples of collaboration underway, such as the Fintel Alliance and the D2D CRC. It’s easier to conceptualise and construct a framework when good examples are already thriving.
  • There’s also much goodwill, intent and interest in continuing these existing arrangements, which could lead to interest in establishing new ones.

Weaknesses

Weaknesses were conceptualised as characteristics of a CLEIF that may place it at a disadvantage compared to other systems. The following specific weaknesses were identified during the workshop:

  • One of the principal weaknesses is the public sector’s fear of failure and its risk-averse attitude. That attitude has a very legitimate basis: the misallocation of taxpayers’ funds is rightly a significant concern for all public-sector agencies and entities, and failure on innovation can often be characterised as waste. However, as much as possible, that attitude should be minimised, including by being able to derive benefits and lessons from ‘failed’ innovation. Organisations need to nurture innovation cultures and promote engagement with risk.
  • A CLEIF could place too much emphasis on creating new products constantly instead of reusing, recycling and adapting existing and appropriate technology. It would need to give some focus to regular stocktakes or near-real-time management of current technology and projects.
  • Centralised objectives and resourcing make it difficult to enunciate and change priorities and objectives as quickly as needed.

Agility and the ability to adapt quickly are necessary for innovation to thrive, so this will have to be addressed in any CLEIF model proposed.

There have been some concerns that not enough future policymakers from younger generations are involved in the innovation and project process, and that they should be better nurtured and given senior leadership support as they engage with risk.

Opportunities to be seized

The workshop identified the following opportunities:

  • New and innovative partnerships are starting in a whole range of areas. Consideration could be given to how those relationships could be further leveraged from a federal law enforcement community or whole-of-government perspective.
  • There are numerous opportunities to propose changes to legislation and policy constraints. Doing so in the context of innovation may perhaps be particularly attractive to legislators who are looking to boost industry and bridge the public–private divide.
  • There’s an opportunity to explore new and meaningful key performance indicators to give a more realistic assessment of how law enforcement technology is progressing.

Threats to be controlled

Several threats need to be considered while planning a CLEIF:

  • In technology, crime is outpacing law enforcement every day of the week, mainly because it’s opportunistically hitchhiking on wider commercial innovation and technology.
  • The pace of innovation in the broader community continues to increase. In response, law enforcement will have to constantly scan the horizon to anticipate changes, and it needs partners immersed in commercial innovation to add their own scanning capacity.
  • Organisational structures can be a threat to the implementation of innovative practices. For example, at the state and federal levels, law enforcement agencies have different, and sometimes competing, priorities. The jostling for resources and attention could be managed in an integrated system to ensure the most effective use of time and resources. Related to this will be how priorities are set so all stakeholders see that they’re getting the maximum value-add for their contribution.
  • During decision-making, there may be conflicting objectives between decision-making and what will address the issue. This will have to be mitigated by open analysis and frank conversations about issues and priorities.
  • Public engagement about the reasons for shifts in concepts of operation and technology and, where relevant, legislative change to enable those shifts will require well-designed public engagement and communication if community support is to be achieved.
  • As financing is a clearly identified issue, all key law enforcement agencies and departments need to find a dedicated budget line or other sources of funding for innovation, which might be best channelled through a centralised hub to achieve critical mass and efficiency. This should be an attractive prospect for central government agencies involved in financing as it will streamline the cost of innovation into a single location.

The framework

To be successful, an optimised CLEIF would:

  • integrate all levels of law enforcement and national security activities
  • have reliable and flexible funding
  • take into consideration the wide range of stakeholders and their needs
  • widen the sources of innovation and innovation scanning beyond law enforcement agencies to include capable commercial partners.

An entity structured similarly to the CRC model would offer flexibility and opportunity to create innovative solutions for law enforcement. However, while having a model that sits outside of government has advantages, there are legislative barriers that would need to be considered. For example, certain provisions of the Privacy Act 1988 (Cwlth) will make it extremely difficult to share the necessary information from law enforcement and national security agencies with a CRC, hindering its capacity to properly address problems and create solutions.

In all likelihood, a well-designed CLEIF will have to integrate a number of different approaches in order to ensure that the agencies involved continue to meet their legislative obligations.

Considering all of the issues discussed in this workshop, consideration could be given to the next steps:

  • the signing of a memorandum of understanding (MoU), initially by all relevant federal agencies, to inculcate a culture of innovation in this space
  • the creation of a law enforcement innovation hub in the Australian Criminal Intelligence Commission.

Memorandum of understanding

The MoU would articulate a principles-based commitment by federal law enforcement agencies to work together on innovation. However, this early federal focus should be a starting point only; the end goal would be the inclusion of state and territory agencies.

The MoU could be focused, at least initially, on four key priority areas:

  • developing and documenting the agencies’ innovation cultures
  • documenting and sharing innovation projects
  • working within legislative and regulatory requirements, a commitment from each agency to resource innovation projects
  • a commitment to burden share law enforcement community challenges.

Law enforcement innovation hub

At this initial stage, a collaboration research hub could provide a starting point for creating and developing new technologies for law enforcement. While some stakeholders may be tempted to adopt a CRC-type structure, a stronger starting point might involve building on initial interest in cooperative innovation among law enforcement stakeholders.

A committee supported by a modest secretariat in either the Australian Criminal Intelligence Commission or the Department of Home Affairs could be used to promote exchanges of knowledge on innovation. It could focus on sharing current and future innovation investments and challenges. The secretariat could be used to develop central innovation challenges and projects registers with the aim of identifying opportunities for burden sharing and collaboration.
 

Conclusion

Partnerships and co-creation are crucial to the future successes of Australia’s law enforcement agencies. The workshop, supported by ASPI’s earlier report, made a solid case for a cohesive and coherent CLEIF to encourage change in law enforcement’s innovation culture and behaviours. A focus should be on preventing innovation silos. While the workshop identified a need for change, and this report has provided some initial steps, further research and collaboration are needed before a definitive framework can be developed.

Before engaging in a program of change, it’s imperative to acknowledge that a great deal of innovation, both technology-based and not, already occurs within and across the various stakeholders who attended the workshop. That work has also had very real positive impacts on community safety. Similarly, the commitment of those from the public, private or not-for-profit sectors who attended the workshop, as well as those who participated in the preceding research projects, speaks volumes of their contribution to collaboration and innovation. The central thesis here isn’t a critique of what’s being done, but rather a strong argument for how to leverage current efforts to achieve even more.


Acknowledgement

This report finds its origins in conversations between ASPI and Oracle staff on law enforcement innovation. At the time, Oracle wanted to make a contribution to Australian public policy dialogue on technology innovation in law enforcement. From these conversations Oracle kindly provided ASPI corporate sponsorship for an innovation research project. ASPI would like to acknowledge Oracle’s support for this project, without which this report would not have been possible.

Important disclaimer

This publication is designed to provide accurate and authoritative information in relation to the subject matter covered. It is provided with the understanding that the publisher is not engaged in rendering any form of professional or other advice or services. No person should rely on the contents of this publication without first obtaining advice from a qualified professional.

© The Australian Strategic Policy Institute Limited 2019

This publication is subject to copyright. Except as permitted under the Copyright Act 1968, no part of it may in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, microcopying, photocopying, recording or otherwise) be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted without prior written permission. Enquiries should be addressed to the publishers.

Notwithstanding the above, educational institutions (including schools, independent colleges, universities and TAFEs) are granted permission to make copies of copyrighted works strictly for educational purposes without explicit permission from ASPI and free of charge.

  1. John Coyne, Amelia Meurant-Tompkinson, ‘I can see clearly now! Tech innovation in law enforcement’, The Strategist, 19 July 2018, online. ↩︎
  2. Coyne & Meurant-Tompkinson, ‘I can see clearly now!’. ↩︎
  3. Coyne & Meurant-Tompkinson, ‘I can see clearly now!’. ↩︎
  4. SWOT = strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats. ↩︎
  5. Coyne & Meurant-Tompkinson, ‘I can see clearly now!’. ↩︎
  6. Coyne & Meurant-Tompkinson, ‘I can see clearly now!’. ↩︎
  7. Colin Brinsden, ‘Australia faces daily threats: spy chief’, Canberra Times, 27 July 2019, online. ↩︎
  8. Jessica Kidd, ‘Intelligence on alleged meat grinder bomb plot came from Israel, Australia confirms’, ABC News, 22 February 2018, online. ↩︎
  9. Martin Callinan et al., Defence and security R&D: a sovereign strategic advantage, ASPI, Canberra, January 2019, online. ↩︎
  10. List of participants: Australian Federal Police, Attorney-General’s Department, Department of Defence, Government of South Australia, Office of National Intelligence, Department of Home Affairs, BAE Systems, Palantir, Basis Technology, Pivotal, AiGroup, Genix, Leidos, UNISYS, iapa, aiia, Teradata, Semantic Sciences, Carnegie Mellon University (Australia), Deakin University, eResearchSA, LaTrobe University, University of Adelaide, University of Technology Sydney, University of New South Wales, University of South Australia and Australian National University. ↩︎
  11. Oracle, What is innovation management?, no date, online. ↩︎
  12. Oracle, Build an innovation pipeline, no date, online. ↩︎
  13. Gary P Pisano, ‘The hard truth about innovative cultures’, Harvard Business Review, January–February 2019, online. ↩︎

Australia-China law enforcement cooperation

Australia and China have an extensive and growing economic relationship underpinned by diverse people-to-people connections. China is Australia’s largest two-way trading partner in goods and services (A$195 billion in 2017–18). Chinese investment into Australia’s real estate industry increased by 400% in the five years to 2015, to A$12 billion in 2014–15. Money flows from China into Australia almost doubled between 2011–12 and 2015–16, from A$42 billion to almost A$77 billion. China is Australia’s largest source of overseas students (over 157,000 studied in Australia in 2016) and second largest and highest spending inbound tourism market (with 1.2 million visits in 2016).

This economic relationship is mutually beneficial, but it also creates opportunities for criminals. The large volume of money, goods and people moving between the two countries makes it easier to conceal crimes, such as trafficked drugs or laundered money. Much activity also takes place online, making the cyber realm a major vector for cross-border criminal activity. It’s therefore important that the two governments work together to fight transnational crime where there are links between Australia and China, or where either’s citizens play key facilitator roles.

Tag Archive for: Australian Federal Police

Continuing detention orders are a constitutionally valid measure yet we are choosing not to use it in the case of the MCG bomb plotter

Reports that convicted terrorist Abdul Nacer Benbrika might soon be released from jail should be of concern to all Australians.

Alarmingly, the release may happen without the court system even being asked to consider a continuing detention order.

Just three years ago, the then-Home Affairs Minister asked the Victorian Supreme Court for a continuing detention order, a vital last-resort measure that enables the Commonwealth to ask a court to keep a convicted terrorist behind bars after they’ve finished their sentence, on the basis that they continue to pose “an unacceptable risk” of committing further terrorist crimes.

The court agreed, deciding Benbrika posed an unacceptable risk. So what has changed in three years?

Is it possible that Benbrika has reformed such that any risk he poses is now acceptable? That seems highly unlikely, but if a new assessment has found the risk has fallen, the government would at the very least need to explain that shift to ensure public confidence.

So what else has changed? First, the governance arrangements, with the decision to seek a CDO shifting from the Home Affairs portfolio to the Attorney-General.

Second, the strategic and security environment. A few years ago, we were at the height of the Islamic State threat and there was enormous awareness of the risks of terrorism. The terror threat level in Australia was high, with terrorists planning attacks in and against Australia.

By 2022, the terror threat level was reduced from probable to possible. IS was degraded with its control over land in Syria and Iraq removed and capabilities severely reduced. The risk since last year, however, has been an increasing perception that the terror threat was not just temporarily reduced but had faded completely — even though ASIO head Mike Burgess was at pains to say this was not the case.

And we have made this mistake before.

In January 2013 the then Government’s National Security Statement effectively said the era of terrorism was behind us. Yet within the year, IS had risen.

The terror threat level was raised and we reached the alarming realisation that the security law framework was not adequate for this new era.

The control order regime — allowing authorities to put special monitoring arrangements on people of concern — was updated multiple times and new laws were introduced, including the continuing detention regime.

Of course, CDOs are a measure of last resort. The basic principle of justice is that criminals who complete their sentences are released, having received their punishment and, hopefully, a chance at rehabilitation.

But the evidence shows that some offenders remain simply too much of an ongoing security threat. Benbrika was one of these.

He had a proven ability as a leader who could inspire others and coordinate a terrorism plot, including a plan to detonate a bomb at the MCG during the 2005 AFL Grand Final. His failure to reform in prison, and his ongoing proselytisation of violent jihadism, meant he continued to pose a danger.

In the last couple of years, we have moved into an era in which other threats have risen and surpassed terrorism. Foreign interference and espionage were declared in 2021 to be Australia’s top security threats.

But Burgess has always been clear this doesn’t mean terrorism has disappeared. Yet we are now at risk of repeating our mistakes. Because IS and al-Qaeda are no longer on the front pages, we are in danger of complacency about violent extremism.

We saw this play out in March 2023 when the then Independent National Security Legislation Monitor, Grant Donaldson, SC — arguably stepping beyond his remit — said that CDOs were not necessary to counter the threat of terrorism and recommended they be abolished.

In doing so, the watchdog was choosing a point in time and misunderstanding the nature of the terrorism threat, which ebbs and flows.

The government is yet to make any response to the INSLM’s recommendation.

In fact, in recent weeks the Parliament has introduced a new preventative detention regime based on the terror laws to deal with the fallout of the High Court ruling that meant more than 150 non-citizens were released from immigration detention, some despite having criminal convictions.

This shows the folly of the original recommendation and shows it is unlikely the government will abolish CDOs altogether — all the more reason why someone as serious as Benbrika should not be released without a court even being given a chance to consider continuing detention.

In another significant development, the Hamas-Israel war has inflamed hatreds for which a firebrand like Benbrika could prove a combustible new accelerant.

Overall, we are proving to be a resilient nation, to the credit of our multicultural society. But there are extremists looking to incite hatred and violence.

Remember, just three years ago, a court found Benbrika to pose an unacceptable risk to society.

And yet the Commonwealth is not even asking the court to hold him further. What risk is there in asking the court the question it affirmed in 2020?

Surely less than the risk of releasing Australia’s most notorious terrorist into the community.

CDOs are a constitutionally valid measure that we’ve just seen used as the model for the immigration detainees. And yet we are choosing not to use it now.

If we don’t use it for someone like Benbrika, when would we use it?


Image: Abdul Naser Benbrika planned to detonate a bomb at the MCG during the 2005 AFL Grand Final. Herald Sun 2023

Tag Archive for: Australian Federal Police

Australia’s north needs a reserve police force

Each of Australia’s border security domains presents unique threats and operating challenges. Whether searching for illicit drugs in Sydney’s mail centre, processing passenger arrivals at Melbourne’s international airport or inspecting shipping containers in Fremantle, the job is difficult. For the Australian Federal Police and the Australian Border Force, the law enforcement challenge in Australia’s north is all about the tyranny of distance.

Since 2016, the ABF, through its Maritime Border Command, has created a ‘ring of steel’ around Australia’s northern waters. Primarily focused on blocking people smugglers, the command’s officers, supported by military and civil maritime-surveillance capabilities, have made a substantial contribution to thwarting other maritime crimes like illegal, unregulated and unreported fishing. But they haven’t stopped all crime.

As Australia’s maritime domain awareness and response capabilities have improved, the onshore and nearshore eyes, ears and muscle in Australia’s north have been wasting away.

Over the past century, Australians living in the north have played critical civil defence roles through coastwatch programs (see here and here), community reporting networks and membership in Regional Force Surveillance Units.

In 1988, Headquarters Northern Command (HQ NORCOM) assumed responsibility for planning, practising and conducting surveillance, reconnaissance, protection and civil support operations from north of 19˚ south in Queensland and the Northern Territory, and the Kimberley and Pilbara districts of Western Australia. For more than two decades, NORCOM played a central role in coordinating support for whole-of-government efforts to prevent illegal activities relating to fisheries, immigration and customs. Today, it performs a much more administrative role.

Over the past decade, regional surveillance capabilities provided by the North-West Mobile Force, the 51st Battalion Far North Queensland Regiment and the Pilbara Regiment have degraded, which has been reflected in their much-reduced availability to support ABF operational activities.

Both the AFP and the ABF have modest offices in Cairns and Darwin. While their officers are highly trained, there aren’t many and yet they are responsible for some of the world’s largest law enforcement operating areas.

Northern Australia’s vastness creates three problems for ABF and AFP decision-makers. First, they need eyes and ears in communities spread across Western Australian, the Northern Territory and Queensland. These eyes and ears need to include citizens who are ready and willing to report unusual behaviour. And they need a mechanism for reporting their observations.

Second, both organisations need an enhanced capability in northern Australia to undertake covert surveillance of suspicious activity on and near the coast.

Finally, both the AFP and ABF need to be able to rapidly scale up the deployment of officers to respond to criminal activity in some of Australia’s most remote locations.

An obvious answer to these problems could be reinvesting in Regional Force Surveillance Units and their community reporting networks. However, the Department of Home Affairs, and more specifically the ABF, have already been heavily criticised for ‘militarising’ Australia’s borders over recent years. The prospect of having soldiers sworn in as special constables to perform community policing or law enforcement operations in Australia’s north is unlikely to draw much public support.

A far more attractive option is for the ABF and AFP to develop an auxiliary force or police reserve in Australia’s north.

Since 1992, the NT government has operated a police auxiliary scheme to fill communication and frontline support roles in its police force. While not without training, these auxiliary police perform roles that are unable to be undertaken by public servants but don’t require a fully qualified police officer. A Commonwealth scheme could build on these successes by expanding the scope of work of auxiliary police officers.

Such a capability could also draw inspiration from the Indigenous ranger programs funded by the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet.

The Indigenous ranger scheme was established in 2007 through the federal environment department’s Working on Country program. Today it supports Indigenous people in combining traditional knowledge with conservation training to protect and manage their land, sea and culture. In addition to its environmental, biosecurity and heritage benefits, the program has created more than 2,200 jobs.

A combined ABF and AFP part-time auxiliary force, composed of small detachments across Australia’s north, could be used to establish a civil reporting network. This network could then provide a mechanism for reporting suspicious behaviour to state and territory police forces as well as the ABF and AFP in Darwin.

Under certain conditions, and with appropriate training, the auxiliary force could also be tasked to undertake surveillance patrols or specific covert surveillance operations. With higher levels of training, auxiliary officers could directly support law enforcement operations, or perhaps even act as a rapid first-response capability. Just as importantly, such a program would generate a wide range of community advantages, including job opportunities in areas with high levels of unemployment.

Police auxiliary programs have been operating in Canada since 1960. These programs are used, with great success, to supplement police forces with additional staffing, especially in isolated communities in the Arctic Circle.

There is more at stake here than the establishment of a new capability. There’s a broader opportunity for Home Affairs to further define the north’s role in Australian security. Through better whole-of-government coordination, improvements can be made in basing, logistics, domain awareness, and command-and-control structures. There’s also an opportunity for Home Affairs and its portfolio agencies to generate social and economic benefits for communities right across the north of Australia.

Disrupting the ice flow: will Australia’s new strategy deliver?

Earlier this week, the minister for justice, Michael Keenan, formally released the Commonwealth Law Enforcement International Engagement Methamphetamine Disruption Strategy. The Australian Federal Police (AFP)–led strategy is meant to provide ‘the framework for the Australian Government’s international engagement to disrupt the supply of crystal methamphetamine (“ice”) and its precursors to Australia’. However, it’s short on new ideas and doesn’t provide enough resources for new law enforcement initiatives in the international operating environment.

The strategy identifies the international engagement that Australian government agencies will support to implement the National Ice Action Strategy. That approach involves leveraging ‘existing resources and programs’ through improved coordination rather than implementing any new or innovative initiatives.

Australia’s ice problem, although complex, can be summarised simply. A large proportion of Australians (by global standards) use ice—and they do so frequently. Despite law enforcement agencies’ record seizures, the price of ice for Australian users is statistically stable, and the drug’s availability is spreading from capital cities to bush towns. From street dealers to global organised crime syndicates, there are big profits to be made in Australia’s ice market. Australia’s families and communities are feeling the effects of the problem daily.

The new framework focuses Commonwealth law enforcement agencies’ international engagement on four pillars: understanding the international environment, enhancing law enforcement and border security cooperation, delivering targeted capacity-building and capability development, and maximising advocacy and political engagement.

For the most part, those focal areas are indeed best practice, and, not surprisingly, they’re already priorities for the agencies involved. Arguably, the strategy directs Commonwealth law enforcement agencies, like the AFP and the Australian Border Force (ABF), to do more of what they’re already doing, while their operating budgets shrink.

Although Australia’s law enforcement agencies, including the AFP and ABF, achieve outstanding operational results, they’re not reducing the availability of ice in our communities. In its latest illicit drug data report, the Australian Criminal Intelligence Commission (ACIC) found that, for the most part, the purity of illicit drugs is unchanged, drugs remain easy to obtain and, in some cases, the street price is dropping not increasing. Those findings can almost certainly be attributed to shortcomings in policy and strategy settings rather than in operational efforts. If our law enforcement agencies are to disrupt the supply of ice in Australia, they’ll need a solid strategy—one that’s focused on achieving clearly articulated, ambitious, yet achievable, goals.

There seems to be little doubt that an effective disruption strategy will require the government to further internationalise its law enforcement activities. International engagement, including cooperation and capacity development, has become a central pillar in AFP, ACIC and ABF strategies. To date, each agency has operated its own international network and engagement strategy. While those efforts have often been mutually supportive, it hasn’t always been clear how they combine to support the national interest. That point is supported by this latest strategy’s call for greater collaboration. I would argue that the time for domestic collaboration has passed, and perhaps a fully integrated international engagement strategy is needed.

Expanding our law enforcement partnerships with ASEAN member states and China will be the key to having a meaningful effect on the ice supply—and that has real resource implications. The new strategy needs to be resourced appropriately if it’s going to work. For several years, the AFP’s network of officers deployed overseas has been shrinking, in both staff numbers and budget. It’s true that over this period the AFP has established new taskforce arrangements with local authorities in China, Cambodia and Thailand. Nonetheless, those arrangements often involve reallocating existing resources away from other operational activities, and occur against a backdrop of staff drawdowns.

To have a lasting impact on the availability of ice, Australia needs to address the diversion of drugs and precursors in the Chinese chemical and pharmaceutical industries. The strategy’s fourth pillar—‘maximise advocacy and political engagement’—offers the promise of increased access to more diverse diplomatic policy levers that could be synchronised with law enforcement action. The Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT) will need to be an integral partner for that to be fully effective.

The strategy’s implementation will be overseen and monitored by an interagency working group. However, developing the international law enforcement engagement measures that Australia needs will probably require greater cooperation and coordination than that offered by a working group convened quarterly. The government should consider setting up a small team in the soon-to-be-established Home Affairs portfolio to work with the ACIC, AFP, DFAT, AUSTRAC and ABF on developing innovative new strategies for regional offshore disruptions.

But let’s be frank: even with new ideas and additional resources, it’s going to take time and a lot of effort to reduce the supply of ice to Australia. In the interim, disruptions of international ice ventures should be viewed as tactical police successes rather than evidence of the effectiveness of our strategies and policies. There’s a world of difference between seizing large quantities of drugs and shutting down global illicit drug supply chains.

Optimising Australia’s counterterrorism financing system

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Detecting, disrupting and denying terrorist financing is vital to degrading terrorist organisations. Counter terrorism financing (CTF) measures can reduce terrorists’ access to funds, restricting their ability to finance their operations. And tracking the movement of funds can provide important intelligence on the groups and their connections.

Terrorist organisations take advantage of opportunities created by technology, poor governance and weaknesses or changes in the financial system to circumvent CTF measures. As the terrorism financing environment is constantly evolving, CTF arrangements must be continually reviewed and refined. They’re only as strong as their weakest link.

ASPI has just released our Special Report, Detect, disrupt, deny: optimising Australia’s counterterrorism financing system, which explores the strengths and weaknesses of Australia’s CTF system.

The report looks at the ways that terrorist organisations raise, move and use funds and examines the key CTF systems and actors. The conclusion is that Australia’s overall system is robust but could be enhanced and strengthened—and will need to evolve. The Australian government’s 2016 review (PDF) of the Anti-Money Laundering and Counter-Terrorism Financing Act (AML/CTF Act) is a good start to improving the CTF system, but it doesn’t go far enough.

To start, Australia needs to ensure that the legislative regime meets the global standards set by the international Financial Action Task Force (FATF). The FATF’s 2015 mutual evaluation (PDF) of Australia’s AML/CTF regime found that to not currently be the case.

The weaknesses in Australia’s current system include minimal or non-existent regulation of ‘gatekeeper professions’ (lawyers, conveyancers, accountants, high-value goods dealers, real estate agents, and trust and company service providers) under the AML/CTF Act, which gives terrorist financiers exploitable opportunities.

Charities and non-profit organisations (NPO) are other avenues for terrorist financing.  With some NPOs more vulnerable to terrorism financing than others, Australia needs to undertake a comprehensive risk assessment of NPOs to inform oversight of the sector.  The Australian Charities and Not-for-Profits Commission (ACNC) can play an important role, as can information sharing between the ACNC, intelligence and law enforcement agencies.

But Australia should go beyond simply meeting global standards. It should also respond to other systemic weaknesses. Specifically, we’re is too slow in responding to emerging terrorism financing methods, especially the raising and moving of funds using new technologies like social media and virtual currencies. The government needs to develop mechanisms to better identify and understand innovations in products and services, with a focus on terrorism-financing risks, and put in place timely measures to mitigate those risks.

Cross-border movements are a particular problem. While Australia requires the cross-border movement of cash totalling $10,000 or more to be reported, it needs to expand the regime to cover other forms of value, such as stored-value cards and bullion, and to increase the penalty for failing to report cross-border cash movements.

The timely, free flow of information about terrorism-financing risks, methodologies and vulnerabilities among key stakeholders—government agencies, the private sector and international partners—is crucial in the fight against terrorism financing. But there are currently many barriers to sharing information.

The AML/CTF Review recognised that the Act’s secrecy and access provisions ‘are overly complex and impede information-sharing’, and recommended the development of a simplified model for sharing information. That’s a positive development.

One of the secrecy and access provisions needing change is the tipping-off provision, which prevents a regulated company tipping-off a suspect customer that they’ve been reported to authorities. This prohibition should remain but be relaxed in certain areas. In particular, the provision shouldn’t prevent regulated companies from sharing information about terrorism financing with other companies in their sector where there’s a suspected terrorism financing risk.

The Privacy Act also needs amendment to allow personal information to be shared where national security, terrorism and terrorism financing is at stake.

Changes to laws that unnecessarily restrict information sharing are important. However, many barriers to information sharing are cultural, not legal, as ASPI’s David Connery noted (PDF). So government should work with the private sector to explore different options for developing a trusted environment for sharing terrorism-financing information and for building a greater understanding of emerging threats.

The transnational nature of terrorism financing demands that other countries also need to take steps to improve their systems. Australia can play a role by building on its existing good work in the Asia-Pacific region to provide capacity building and technical assistance to our neighbours. We’re also well placed to become a leader in CTF education. Where countries are not taking sufficient CTF action due to political reasons or inertia, Australia should also place political pressure on recalcitrant countries to change.

Arresting developments: law enforcement in the Budget

The 2016 Federal Budget did two important things to promote law enforcement in Australia, but it hasn’t arrested the long-term decline in the resources applied by the Commonwealth to countering organised crime.

The additional protection for both Australian Federal Police and Australian Crime Commission employees—worth $153.6 million over the next four years—is vital and timely. Our law enforcement agencies need this support—terrorists, both real and prospective, are actively targeting them. The Turnbull government should be congratulated for improving protective security for our officers.

Solid moves have also been made in the Budget to target wrongdoing at the ‘top end of town’, including an additional $15 million over three years to increase the number of foreign bribery investigators within the AFP. Additionally, recently announced investigative enhancements for the Australian Securities and Investment Commission (and now with the associated levy factored in) will boost their analytical, investigative and prosecutorial capacity and capability against corporate crime.

Initiatives to create a national database for domestic violence orders and extra money to counter violent extremism have also been funded in the Budget. The Government also made earlier financial commitments to Crimestoppers and the ‘dob in an ice dealer’ programs. All are clear priorities and could use the extra resources to help the Government’s broader initiatives to counter domestic violence and reduce the impact of ice.

The Budget contains some funding to specifically counter organised crime, but more should be devoted to this task.

That’s because counter organised crime is clear and pressing threat, and a significant drag our economy.  Indeed, the Australian Crime Commission now estimates the cost of organised crime to Australia to be $36 billion each year: that’s over double their previous estimate.

There’s extra money in this Budget to expand the National Anti-Gangs Squad to South Australia, and continued funding for the ‘Trident’ task force in Victoria. Both are good moves. An additional $20.4 million over four years for the AFP to counter cybercrime is also welcome.

Despite those measures, funding for the Commonwealth’s law enforcement agencies is set to fall over the next four years. The decline isn’t as steep as projected in last year’s budget, but by 2020 we can still expect our law enforcement agencies (except AUSTRAC) to receive less in revenue from government than they did in 2014–15. AFP will be hardest hit, with a loss of revenue from government of around 9% by 2019–20.

Those cuts will be reflected in overall staffing levels for the Commonwealth’s law enforcement effort.

Some small agencies will grow over the next year. The Australian Crime Commission will gain 29 staff (5%), but nearly half of them will be transferred from the now-disestablished Australian Institute of Criminology. AUSTRAC will grow by 21 staff (7.4%), which will help Australia’s efforts to counter money laundering and terrorist financing. The CRIMTRAC Agency, recently merged into the ACC, will remain at the same staffing level.

It’s good that Australia is set to have more criminal and financial intelligence officers. That’s important. But will we have the investigative capacity to use their analysis and bring criminals to justice? The answer to that will depend on how the AFP apportions their effort.

This Budget won’t give the Commissioner much flexibility. AFP numbers are set to fall by another 200 people, about 3%, of the AFP’s 6,275 strong staff—about 7% below its staffing level of 2010–11. Further cuts are expected if the forward estimates are realised.

Why has this low been reached after the national terrorist alert level was raised and after the costs of organised crime have been re-assessed upwards?

The cuts and planned cuts don’t make sense, and highlight two important concerns about law enforcement funding in Australia.

First, it doesn’t make sense to view our law enforcement agencies like ‘any other’ department and subject them to an efficiency dividend of 2.5% p.a. until 2019–20 (when it decreases to 1% p.a.). As the costs of organised crime grow and the harms caused to society change and expand, law enforcement’s job is becoming larger and more complex. Law enforcement need more resources, not less.

The second is that we need, more than ever, a broad and comprehensive review of the Commonwealth’s law enforcement system. The review should examine the interdependencies within the system, its links with states and territories, international partnerships and capacity building, and government-business-public relationships.

The review should lead to a statement by Cabinet of the desired policy, organisational, legislative and operational landscape for law enforcement out to 2025–30. Such a statement should leverage and institutionalise relationships between all agencies with a stake in making Australia a just and secure society.

The statement should explain how the government will fund our Commonwealth law enforcement agencies, so the current decline can be arrested. Using such a statement to repair the law enforcement budget would be a worthy aspiration for the next federal budget.

Thailand and the inefficient efficiency dividend

Erawan Shrine

Last Monday’s bombing at the Erawan Shrine in Bangkok killed 22 people and injured more than 100.

As first responders struggled to treat casualties and secure the site in the heart of the city’s tourism district, local police were already trying to piece together what had occurred.

Shortly after the bombing, Australian Federal Police (AFP) and Australian diplomats were working with the Thai government to identify potential Australian victims and offering their support for the impending investigation.

Through years of cooperation and capacity development, the AFP has built a relationship of trust with the Royal Thai Police (RTP). Last week this investment matured when the RTP provided the AFP with almost real time access to information about the incident—well before any of Thailand’s other international partners.

AFP officers from the Australian Embassy, as well as from the Bangkok Counter Terrorism Regional Cooperation Team and the Australian-supported Transnational Crime Coordination Centre, are likely to be still indirectly supporting the RTP investigation.

The Bangkok bombing serves to remind us that Thailand is an important law enforcement and national security partner for Australia. The Thai capital is the Southeast Asian base for organised crime groups from Australia and across the region to control the regional drug trade. The country’s proximity to the Golden Triangle results in greater availability of cheap heroin. Its industrial growth ensures access to Chinese chemical and pharmaceutical products which cements its role as a source country for methamphetamine and its precursors.

Australian criminals also commit a range of serious and organised crimes in Thailand that often have a nexus with criminal offences at home. In January 2013, two Australian expatriates with links to Australian outlaw motorcycle gangs were involved in the shooting of two German tourists in Patong, Thailand. The Germans were shot accidentally when the two Australians were attempting to shoot a Danish member of a local organised crime group.

Terrorism is a national security threat that looms large in Thailand. Monday’s attack is far from unprecedented: this year has seen multiple bombings from Southern Thailand, to the Island of Koh Samui, to Bangkok. In Southern Thailand, the Patani Separatist group has been fighting a guerrilla war with Thai authorities since 2001, deploying a range of terrorist techniques in their separatist campaign.

So with recent history showing the importance of Thailand to Australian policing and border security, why is the AFP’s international network subject to government efficiency dividends? This year’s Commonwealth Counter-Terrorism Machinery Review found that our security agencies have identified risks to national security outcomes if their base funding continues to be eroded.

Since 1987, the efficiency dividend has been a central principle in successive Australian budgets. The efficiency dividend initially resulted in reductions to inefficient expenditure in non-operational areas within national security agencies, which was long overdue. As the number of non-operational efficiencies available to decision-makers decreased, cuts to operational expenditure became inevitable and, finally, commonplace.

To address the effects of reductions in expenditure, national security agencies developed new policy initiatives to obtain sufficient funding to offset risks to national security. For 10 or so years, a delicate equilibrium of cuts and ‘just in time’ policy initiatives was maintained. The budget of the last two years has seen a drastic reduction in the availability of new funding—which is resulting in incremental reductions in Australia’s national security capability. In this case the AFP’s international presence in Thailand.

Further complicating and undermining the funding arrangements of organisations such as the AFP is the new policy initiative offset methodology adopted by successive federal governments since 2008. In this approach, departments that submit new policy proposals to government must offset the expenditure from within their existing budget. The end result is a continuous erosion of funding for existing programs of work, such as the highly regarded AFP international network.

Australia’s capacity to respond to incidents such as the recent Bangkok bombings is slowly being eroded. With a decreased AFP presence in Thailand due to funding cuts there is a real risk that our important relationships with organisations such as the RTP will be severed. Rebuilding severed international police-to-police relationships won’t be easy. The efficiency dividend on operational expenditure for the AFP should be lifted. Careful consideration must also be given to the removal of the efficiency dividend from all national security agencies.

The Beat

The Senate passed amendments to the 2002 Proceeds of Crime Act to create the 2014 Unexplained Wealth and Other Measures Bill on 9 February 2015

This week on The Beat, we discuss the implications of Abbott’s national security address, the Australian Crime Commission’s appearance at the House Standing Committee on Communications, unexplained wealth and metadata laws, the Australian Cyber Security Conference, HSBC leaks concerning Australia and our four-legged friends’ contributions to law enforcement.

National security address

On Monday Prime Minister Abbott made a National Security Address signalling a range of new security measures to counter the threat of violent extremism. New measures include the creation of a National Counter-terrorism Coordinator, and the possibility of revoking Australian citizenships of dual Australian citizens charged with terrorism offences. The issue of revoking citizenships for convicted terrorists is fraught with difficulties, as Andrew Zammit and I have discussed recently.

Essential to the introduction of those new powers will be having the oversight necessary to maintain the integrity of our intelligence and law-enforcement agencies. One of the biggest threats to national security would be a loss of confidence in our security agencies, as David Connery and I explain on The Drum. Read more

A white paper on the Commonwealth’s law enforcement policy is needed

It's timeIn a town that’s already cluttered with reviews and white papers, do we really need another one?

My answer, which I argue in a new paper released today (available here), is an unequivocal yes.

As far as I can see, the Commonwealth’s role in law enforcement is only going to become deeper and, indeed, broader over time. That’s already seen in the way 70% of our primary organised crime targets live overseas. But the speed, depth and reach of change is being driven by the internet in particular, and the way criminals now use it. Read more

Building the national criminal intelligence system

Road to success?In its report from earlier this year, the National Commission of Audit recommended that the CrimTrac Agency, which collects data about crime, be merged with the nation’s leading criminal intelligence agency, the Australian Crime Commission. It’s a proposal that’s drawn considerable interest, so I’ve written a special report (released today) to examine the options.

There are two distinct—but not irreconcilable—views about the proposal. For one, there’s a desire to better use criminal information across all jurisdictions. That view sees an opportunity to use CrimTrac’s data more effectively and for more purposes by linking it with the national criminal intelligence agency.

On the other hand, there’s an equally strong desire to maintain CrimTrac’s functionality and to focus its investment fund on the needs of all police stakeholders, and not just those engaged in countering serious and organised crime. Reconciling those views will require detailed research about how a merged organisation would benefit all stakeholders—especially the frontline police and criminal intelligence operators in all the jurisdictions. Read more

The International Deployment Group and Australian counterinsurgency capacity

Australian Defence Force Investigative Service Sergeant Ben Gilbey (left) and Australian Federal Police Sergeant Nathan Thompson watch as Afghan National Police and Criminal Investigation Division members work a crime scene during Evidence Based Police Operations training held at Multi National Base - Tarin Kot, Afghanistan.Despite our engagements in Iraq and Afghanistan being all but over, the recent announcement by the Islamic State (formerly known as ISIS or ISIL of Iraq) of the formation of a new caliphate across parts of northern Iraq and Syria coupled with the arrival of US forces to protect Americans and the US Embassy in Baghdad have once again served as a potent reminder of the necessity to retain a counterinsurgency (COIN) capability. The threats to our security stemming from insurgency and intra-state conflict regionally necessitate this, while our alliance commitments mean we can never fully write off the possibility of having to assist in another international conflict such as the one potentially brewing in Iraq. The Australian government should therefore learn the lessons from the past decade, not only for its defence forces, but also for the police.

In debates on Iraq and Afghanistan, the police have emerged as an important link in COIN. Through multiple police deployments, the Australian government has been able to develop a distinct COIN capability in the Australian Federal Police’s International Deployment Group (IDG). Established in 2004, the IDG deploys domestically and internationally to contribute to stability and security operations. Most recently the IDG served in Afghanistan, where they trained members of the Afghanistan National Police in Oruzgun province in basic policing techniques, gender issues, human rights and the rule of law. Read more

The AFP’s budget: pain delayed

Members of the AFP's International Deployment Group (IDG) conducted security and policing activities inside the Urban Operations Training Facility (UOTF) inside Shoal Water Bay Training Area on Exercise Talisman Saber 2009.

Last Tuesday’s Commonwealth budget saw a small increase in funding to the Australian Federal Police for next year. But the planned cuts to AFP in the years beyond are large—the Commonwealth contribution to their budget in four years’ time will likely be about 16% smaller than it is now.

That comes at a time when the demand for police services is increasing, and major changes loom on the law enforcement landscape.

A few major activities will end soon. These include drawdowns in overseas missions, an end to Operation Sovereign Borders, and a halt to the planned increase in AFP’s uniformed strength.

So while the raw numbers look bad, the cut mightn’t be so large in reality: forward estimates are only estimates, after all. Still, we can expect the combined pressure of wage increases and efficiency dividends to put pressure on AFP staffing levels, although it’s too soon to tell what the impact on operations might be. Read more