Anthony Byrne (Holt, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

On behalf of the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security, I present the committee's report entitled Review of administration and expenditure: No. 10—Australian intelligence agencies.

In accordance with standing order 39(f) the report was made a parliamentary paper.

The Parliamentary Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security's oversight of the Australian intelligence community, the AIC, is a key element of our national security architecture. I am therefore pleased to present this review, which covers the 2010-11 financial year. The review examined a wide range of aspects of the administration and expenditure of the six intelligence and security agencies, including the financial statements for each agency, their human resource management, training, recruitment and accommodation. In addition, the review looked at issues of interoperability between members of the Australian intelligence community. Submissions were sought from each of the six intelligence and security agencies, from the Australian National Audit Office, or ANAO, and from the Inspector-General of Intelligence and Security, IGIS.

The submissions from ANAO and the six intelligence agencies were all classified confidential, restricted or secret and were therefore not made available to the public. As has been its practice for previous reviews, ASIO provided the committee with both a classified and an unclassified submission. The unclassified version was made available on the committee's website. Each of the defence intelligence agencies provided the committee with a classified submission. Each agency marked each paragraph with its relevant national security classification. This has enabled the committee for its 2010-11 review to directly refer in this report to unclassified information provided in the defence agencies' submissions.

In relation to the organisation of agency structures, the Director-General of ASIO, Mr David Irvine, told the committee about ASIO's internal reform program. He stated that the point of the reform program was:

… not simply to meet the demand for efficiency dividends and so on; it is to address what I think is a key responsibility of anyone in a position of leadership within the intelligence community today, and that is to make sure that the intelligence community is prepared for tomorrow.

One agency introduced a new and expanded organisational structure to ensure appropriate focus and risk management across all aspects of that agency's expansion in operational activities. Another agency combined two areas of its responsibilities into one so as to better focus on challenges in the current geopolitical environment.

Out of the six agencies, four reported having to accommodate legislative changes in 2010-11. In general, all agencies again stated their commitment to ensuring that their staff are informed of legislative requirements as they relate to agency functions and operations, and that where applicable they received targeted training to ensure understanding and compliance. Apart from ASIO, those agencies experiencing growth in their workforce characterised it as marginal and some agencies actually decreased their full-time equivalent staffing levels.

Now I come to my favourite subject: the efficiency dividend. The Director-General of ASIO told the committee that, in relation to the Taylor review target for staff, which was established post-September 11 to get ASIO to its full operational capability to meet current and future threats, he did not:

… believe we can reach the target without further funding. That four per cent efficiency dividend is gone forever from our budget. I do not believe we can reach that target until we get access to new funding, which may be a year or so or longer depending on the economy down the track.

Additionally, ONA stated:

The impact of efficiency dividends on small agencies can be disproportionate. ONA has been able to meet the increased annual efficiency dividend.

However, the additional 2.5% one-off efficiency dividend will put much greater strain on ONA's capacity to do its job, eroding gains that flowed to ONA from the Flood Report.

The Director-General of ONA, Mr Allan Gyngell, also told the committee that the 'new efficiency dividend will certainly impede our ability to provide the coverage which we have provided in the past'.

My time is running short, but, as I have said here in the past that I would come before this parliament and talk to it and inform it if the efficiency dividend and its continued implementation affected operability of the intelligence agencies, I believe that this report establishes that that is now happening—and that is completely unacceptable.

The agencies are tasked to protect our national security and I, frankly, find it astonishing that these agencies would have been effectively sequestered from funding to perform their tasks. I think it is disgraceful and it should be addressed. I thank the secretariat staff, Jerome Browne, Robert Little, formerly Dr Cathryn Oliff and Lauren McDougall. I commend the report to the House.

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