Robert Ray (Victoria, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

This is the first annual review produced by this committee of all six agencies. Mr Acting Deputy President, you would recall that legislation about a year ago transferred responsibility for all agencies to the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security. I think it was quite right for this committee on this occasion to concentrate its efforts on recruiting and training. We are looking at a very large expansion of resources in intelligence and security agencies. We are seeing a very rapid recruiting effort being put in. At any time it is not easy to train an intelligence officer. It is quite a specialised task and it has not been easy to expand that task to meet the increasing demand, but the agencies, it appears to me, are handling the task quite well. Some of these agencies would normally have one course a year and now they are having at least two courses a year to meet the modern-day requirements.

One thing that we note in this report is still an ongoing concern is the difficulty in terms of language skills. It is never an easy area. Australia, in learning second and third languages is a very lazy country. But it is not out of a lack of diligence; it is out of a lack of relevance. It is very easy when you are in Europe to go and learn four or five relevant languages, because you can see the immediate benefit. I always remember many years ago running into a Dutch porter in a French hotel. I asked him why he was there, and he said that he could speak Italian, French, Dutch and German and he had gone to work in a French hotel to learn English because one day he wanted to be a hotel manager. I thought, ‘What a difference.’

In Australia traditionally we have learnt French, German, Latin and a few other things. Students do not find it relevant. When you ask them to learn Asian languages, which ones should they learn—Bahasa, Mandarin, Cantonese, Japanese? There is a big expansion in all those areas, but we are not natural second and third language speakers. We have enormous capacity within the country through migrants, but other than that we just do not have it, and this very much inhibits the work of intelligence agencies. This is what they are trying to rectify.

This particular report makes three recommendations. The first one goes to the budget of the Defence intelligence agencies, and there are three agencies: the Defence Intelligence Organisation, Defence Signals Directorate and DIGO—which has to do with satellite imaging. Those are the three agencies that are run out of Defence. Most people would know that Defence has a global budget; it is up to Defence how much it allocates in any particular year to any one of these agencies. But because of the global budget, it is very hard for our committee to be able to make an assessment as to how much is being devoted and how well it is being spent.

The first recommendation is that there be separate financial statements for each of the three agencies. There will be resistance to this. No agency likes increased scrutiny; none volunteers. Years ago, DSD did not want to come under the ambit of this committee. DSD are quite comfortable under the ambit of this committee now; they have got used to it. I did point out to them at the time that coming under the ambit of the committee meant that they spread responsibility when they made mistakes. They at least saw the sense in that. We would like, and we are going to suggest, models for them to bring down financial statements that make their activity all the more understandable.

The second recommendation is an area that has caused grief over many years, and that is the speed of security clearances. There are always backlogs; it is really only the extent to which they exist. Quite clearly, if you are expanding across all these agencies—ASIO being the biggest expansion—you need to have a good security clearance process in place. At times I have worried about the fact that there are different security clearances according to the organisation. It would be quite possible to pass in one and fail in another, and there has been very little mobility of clearances between one agency and another. That can be looked at. One thing I can assure this chamber of is that these agencies are taking that backlog seriously and are dealing with it quite adequately at the moment.

The third area that we have at least flagged is that maybe, at some stage, we will need a general training course for intelligence officers—a bit like ADFA, if you like—and then they will go into individual services from there. That is something that I hope the government will at least take on board.

The events in the United Kingdom in the last week continue to remind us of the challenges that we face. Things have changed in the last three or four years—not necessarily since 11 September, but even later. There was a strong tendency against home-grown terrorists taking action in their own country. It was a very strong cultural imperative that basically was an inhibitor for many years, and it was noted by a whole variety of writers and analysts. That no longer exists.

Part of the threat now comes from within countries, from second and third generation people who have turned to extremism and to terrorism. That is a lot more difficult to combat than infiltrators from outside. We have to try to go to the root causes of that. That is why I am so vehemently opposed to racial profiling—because of the effect that it has on those communities. I do not want to use that as an excuse for them. The reason why this extremism is emerging is far more than racial profiling, but we should not add to it. That is why I was so critical of a cricket commentator last week, because it just added to that. You had an absolute role model—a very strict Muslim—who was effectively ridiculed. That is why it was upsetting.

I do not say that that is the sole reason. We have to go to the fact that this extremism is being promoted by some fanatics in our society. One of the crucial aspects of combating this is good intelligence. What that will mean is more and more stringent legislation into the future. It is unavoidable. The task of this parliament, if it is to concur with that, is to make sure that maximum scrutiny applies. It has to make sure that when civil liberties are inhibited they are protected. They can be inhibited but they should be protected.

No agency particularly likes scrutiny, but it is an absolute fact that it is necessary. For every increased power we give the Federal Police, the state police and intelligence agencies, we must make sure that there is adequate supervision and that there is some transparency through a parliamentary process. Those agencies are secret by their very nature; therefore, the process cannot be as open as many of the other processes that we endorse in this chamber. But we must insist on them. I heard what Senator Ferguson talked about today, about the cooperation of the agencies, and I endorse what he said. We have had excellent cooperation from the agencies and full transparency when required. We have also had a touch of sensitivity from them, and we as politicians—you know how robust we are—find that a bit hard to understand. Nevertheless, it exists.

The next annual review will, no doubt, not concentrate on recruitment and training; it will concentrate on other aspects of security and intelligence matters in Australia. The committee has had a knock-on effect. Moving all these agencies to within this particular committee’s purview has meant that far less time has been spent on the other agencies at the estimates committee process. There will always be some questions, because some groups in this chamber are not part of the joint intelligence and security committee scrutiny, and we always have to leave it open for them to pursue issues. But it does mean that generally this committee can examine these matters.

I think it has been of some advantage to have this committee staffed mostly by senators and members whose careers are behind them rather than in front of them—although I do note that Senator Nash has now come on the committee, and I am sure that is not the case with her—and I do not mean to bag anyone by saying that. It means that you can be a little more courageous and a little more vigorous. After all, what can they do to Senator Ferguson and me?