Christian Porter (Pearce, Liberal Party, Attorney-General) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I move:

That this bill be now read a second time.

The Office of National Intelligence Bill 2018 brings into play one of the government's objectives in terms of national security, which can be stated fairly simply, and that is that we want to keep Australians safe, to maintain our way of life, our values and our freedoms.

It is important that all Australians can feel secure in their own country.

We also want Australia to be a prosperous nation with strong and resilient relationships.

Our intelligence and security agencies are a crucial part of government working to achieve these goals. That is because these agencies are not just keeping us safe. They ensure that the government knows what it needs to know to make informed and strategically sound decisions that balance the many overlapping equities of security, budget, civil liberties and our international relations, to name but a few.

While our intelligence and security agencies are performing strongly, their resources and capabilities are constantly challenged. As our Foreign policy white paper emphasised, and developments globally—including in our own region—confirm, we live in an increasingly complex, contested and competitive world.

We face imposing challenges, challenges which will only intensify over coming decades, whether from great power rivalries, global extremism and its local reach, or the threats and opportunities posed by accelerating technological change.

To meet these challenges, we need to take a holistic and systemic look at our intelligence and security communities. As the Prime Minister has emphasised many times, this government was never going to simply 'set and forget' our approach to security and intelligence.

On 7 November 2016, the Prime Minister announced an Independent Intelligence Review, to be conducted by Mr Michael L'Estrange, Mr Steve Merchant and their UK adviser Sir Iain Lobban.

On 18 July 2017, the government released the unclassified version of the review's report. The reviewers made 23 overarching recommendations relating to the Intelligence Community's structural, legislative and oversight architecture.

At the time we released the report, the Prime Minister announced that the government recognised the review's recommendations as a sound basis to reform Australia's intelligence arrangements, and at that time, and based on this government's clear-eyed assessment of the challenges ahead, the Prime Minister announced the most significant changes to Australia's intelligence and security landscape in more than 40 years. This included establishing an Office of National Intelligence (ONI), transforming the Australian Signals Directorate into a statutory authority within the Defence portfolio, and restructuring the nation's cybersecurity architecture and boosting its capabilities.

At the same time, the Prime Minister also announced the establishment of the Department of Home Affairs, along with a variety of measures to consolidate and strengthen the oversight of our intelligence and security agencies through the department and my office of the Attorney-General.

This approach, as Alan Dupont most elegantly put it, represented 'best practice risk management, which is to anticipate threats, structure for them and build resilience'.

The Prime Minister has also agreed to the review's recommendations that our six-agency Australian Intelligence Community [which was made up of the Australian Geospatial-Intelligence Organisation (AGO), the Australian Signals Directorate (ASD), the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO), the Australian Secret Intelligence Service (ASIS), the Defence Intelligence Organisation (DIO) and the Office of National Assessments (ONA)] formally be expanded to become the National Intelligence Community (the NIC). The NIC will now incorporate the Australian Criminal Intelligence Commission, and the intelligence functions of the Australian Federal Police, the Australian Transaction Reports and Analysis Centre, the Department of Home Affairs and the Department of Defence.

The NIC reflects the review's very important judgement, and the reality, that the lines between international, domestic and criminal security issues are becoming increasingly blurred.

As the review recommended, ONI will be headed by a secretary-level director-general who will be the Prime Minister's key adviser on matters relating to intelligence and the Intelligence Community.

ONI will lead the NIC with an 'enterprise management' approach, creating—as Mr L'Estrange described—a 'whole greater than the sum of its parts' which will leverage the strengths of each agency and enable government to consider the NIC's efforts in their entirety.

ONI's job will be to make our intelligence agencies more integrated, better coordinated, and more accountable to the government and, through it, to the Australian people.

These reforms continue Australia's well established tradition of periodically testing our intelligence and security architecture to make sure it is fit for purpose.

Indeed, it was through this very same process that the Office of National Assessments (ONA) originated.

Australia's first royal commission into its intelligence and security agencies was conducted by Justice Robert Hope between 1974 and 1977. Justice Hope went on to conduct a second royal commission in 1983-84 and it's fair to say that, through those two royal commissions, he played a seminal role in shaping our intelligence and security community.

One of his key recommendations in 1977 was that Australia establish an independent agency that stood apart from policy departments to provide the Prime Minister with intelligence assessments on political, strategic and economic issues.

Hope also intended that this agency would 'assume responsibilities for the leadership and coordination of the Australian intelligence community as a whole'.

ONA was established by the Office of National Assessments Act in 1977 and began its work in February 1978. As part of its establishment, ONA also assumed most of the foreign intelligence assessment functions of Defence's then Joint Intelligence Organisation (JIO).

In his second royal commission, Justice Hope recognised ONA had proven itself to be a 'valuable source of independent assessment for the government'.

However, while ONA produced quality assessments focused on Australia's key interests, it never filled the leadership and coordination role that Hope had envisioned it would.

Successive intelligence reviews recognised, and tried to correct, two important shortcomings in relation to the operation of the ONA.

First, the ONA never had the analytical resources it needed to cover its ever-broadening assessment remit; and, second, it never had the authority or resources, despite its legislated mandate, to coordinate Australia's intelligence community, set national intelligence requirements and evaluate agencies' efforts against them.

Justice Hope's second commission acknowledged ONA's need for more resources and stronger structures to carry out its coordination function, recommending that a National Intelligence Committee be set up to discuss intelligence priorities and requirements.

Philip Flood's 2004 intelligence review recommended ONA be doubled in size from 70 to 140 people and that its coordination and evaluation mandate be strengthened.

These recommendations have incrementally enhanced ONA's capabilities and taken it closer to where Hope had, from the very beginning, always envisaged it should be. But the enhancements in ONA's capabilities have not been enough to achieve Hope's full vision.

Given the rapidly evolving threat environment, incremental changes are no longer sufficient. With the findings of the Independent Intelligence Review confirming yet again the shortcomings in ONA's resourcing and remit, this government is determined that Hope's vision will finally be realised.

On 1 December 2017, the Prime Minister announced the appointment of Mr Nick Warner as the new Director-General of ONA and Director-General designate of ONI. Mr Warner took up his appointment on 18 December 2017.

Mr Warner is one of Australia's most experienced public servants, with a distinguished career that has spanned DFAT, Defence and intelligence agencies. He has served as the Director-General of ASIS and the Secretary of Defence. The government is very confident that he will ensure that Australia's intelligence agencies remain among the most capable, agile and effective in the world.

With this bill, we will establish the ONI.

While ONI is an idea born out of the Hope royal commissions, we have refined the Hope vision based on the models successfully adopted by our closest intelligence partners, the Five Eyes. They all have, or are all moving towards having, what Mr L'Estrange referred to as 'a stronger centre'.

We have borrowed from their examples, but this bill establishes a model particularly for the Australian context, consistent with our system of ministerial responsibility and the statutory independence of our intelligence agencies.

Specifically, the ONI Bill implements the recommendations of the 2017 review and builds on the foundations of the ONA Act by:

I want to emphasise that, while the Director-General of National Intelligence and ONI will have prominent roles in coordinating and guiding Australia's overall intelligence effort, including the shared development of capability, the ONI Bill makes it clear that DGNI and ONI will not be directing the operations of other agencies or controlling their budgets.

We are not creating an agency which will interfere with the good work of other intelligence agencies that is already underway. In fact, the bill specifies that ONI may not do this. This also reflects the necessity of clear accountability for each of the agencies.

Recognising that Australia's safety and security are bipartisan priorities, the ONI Bill states that DGNI must keep the Leader of the Opposition informed on significant intelligence matters.

The creation of ONI and the reshaping of our intelligence community into an enterprise mark a milestone in this government's work to keep Australia safe, secure and prosperous.

Our efforts to do so will continue with our comprehensive review of security legislation and our broadening of oversight mechanisms, ensuring consistency and strengthening the 'ecosystem of safeguards' that Justice Hope established.

This is a further demonstration that this government knows the best ways in which to balance the priority of the community and its safety with individual freedoms.

Part of achieving that balance is having the right kind of accountable leadership for our national intelligence community, and the establishment of the ONI will put that in place.

Debate adjourned.