- The Strategist - https://www.aspistrategist.org.au -
ASPI’s decades: Guarding the guardians
Posted By Graeme Dobell on August 16, 2021 @ 06:00
Executive and ministerial resistance has often been cloaked in rhetoric about defending traditional ministerial prerogatives and the values of the Westminster system, but when change has occurred its impact on those prerogatives and values has been limited and it hasn’t significantly degraded Executive authority. But reform has changed the institutional culture of the parliament. It has legitimised parliament’s role as an increasingly important partner of the Executive in the conduct of Australia’s national security policy. There’s undoubtedly room for further expansion of this role.
It is a matter of certainty that terrorism will continue to be the key challenge to national and international security. It is extremely difficult to know when and where the next attack will occur. Each of us—no matter how distant, or how powerful, or how seemingly peaceful—can be a potential target.
CT practitioners will advise their governments to change laws, take additional security measures, and conduct operations to make the environment harder for terrorists, and also ensure that terrorists are held to account. The net result of these additional measures can, however, be restrictions on the very liberty that the terrorists are aiming to undermine.
Speeding up the current system of access for police around the country is sensible. But what’s also needed is real-time access to information from law-enforcement agencies and the intelligence community across the nation. Currently, law enforcement and intelligence agencies use separate systems to identify threats to the community.
Unsurprisingly, most intelligence professionals don’t want access to more data, but access to more of the right data at the right time. With an increasing number of analysts collating data, the task of joining the dots between disparate data points is ever more difficult. Unsurprisingly, increasing the number of data collators may not result in any tangible improvement in output or outcome.
I am not lamenting the simple life of days gone by, nor seeking to create fear. I am reflecting on the way the consequences of cyber-attacks, terrorism and foreign influence in our day-to-day life have increased in severity and regularity. It's hard to argue that non-state actors including terrorists, hackers and organised crime figures haven’t increased their capacity to negatively impact upon our day-to-day life. The evidence, including the normalisation of security measures, is everywhere.
The new Home Affairs portfolio will be similar to the Home Office of the United Kingdom: a central department providing strategic planning, coordination and other support to a ‘federation’ of independent security and law enforcement agencies including the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation, the Australian Federal Police, the Australian Border Force and the Australian Criminal Intelligence Commission. These arrangements will preserve the operational focus and strengths of frontline agencies engaged in the fight against terrorism, organised crime and other domestic threats.
The difficulty will be developing the structure and governance arrangements for the Home Affairs portfolio: in particular, improving the response to terrorism that Prime Minister Turnbull thinks isn’t adequately provided by current ‘ad hoc and incremental adjustments’ to our national security arrangements.
The most important point to make about the government’s proposed Home Affairs portfolio is that these new arrangements can be made to work. They will not harm our counterterrorism performance and could improve Australia’s underwhelming efforts to protect against foreign interference and strengthen the security of critical infrastructure. But … it’s surprising that so little groundwork had been done to justify the need for change or to say how it was going to be done.
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URL to article: https://www.aspistrategist.org.au/aspis-decades-guarding-the-guardians/
[1] ‘creative tension’: https://s3-ap-southeast-2.amazonaws.com/ad-aspi/import/SI94_Parliament_national_security.pdf?TC0bqxfiXE1jHL_gUUBDgG6bHyZMwln7
[2] Counterterrorism yearbook: https://s3-ap-southeast-2.amazonaws.com/ad-aspi/import/ASPI-Counterterrorism-YB2017.pdf?fEqgIINWOoXdFfmP0XXGwNdTrZscctzu
[3] information-sharing system: https://www.policyforum.net/getting-intelligence-big-picture/
[4] potential downsides: https://www.policyforum.net/intelligence-devil-detail/
[5] value of intelligence: https://www.aspi.org.au/opinion/intelligence-no-dark-art
[6] ‘increasingly diversified and complex’: https://www.aspi.org.au/opinion/im-glad-our-security-agencies-are-stretched
[7] most significant reform: https://pmtranscripts.pmc.gov.au/release/transcript-41066
[8] memoir: https://www.hardiegrant.com/au/publishing/bookfinder/author/Malcolm-Turnbull?gclid=EAIaIQobChMI-ZTw4cSs8gIVhKuWCh0tmgQUEAAYASAAEgKVX_D_BwE
[9] politics and personalities: https://www.aspistrategist.org.au/the-making-of-the-australian-intelligence-community/
[10] department of homeland security: https://www.aspistrategist.org.au/blank-canvas-creating-home-affairs-portfolio/
[11] long advocated: http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/journals/ALRCRefJl/2003/5.html
[12] faint praise: https://www.aspistrategist.org.au/good-not-good-policymaking/
[13] difficult-to-fix: https://www.aspistrategist.org.au/home-affairs-painting-cracks/
[14] intelligence community: https://www.aspistrategist.org.au/oz-intelligence-review-justice-hope-legacy/
[15] fundamental changes: https://www.aspistrategist.org.au/oz-intelligence-review-challenges-threats/
[16] new czar: https://www.aspistrategist.org.au/oz-intelligence-review-new-czar/
[17] expansion: https://www.aspistrategist.org.au/oz-intelligence-review-the-new-community/
[18] followed the review’s logic: https://www.aspistrategist.org.au/oz-intelligence-review-home-affairs/