Morrison government toughens foreign investment scrutiny to protect ‘national security’

Michelle Grattan, University of Canberra

The Morrison government will significantly strengthen its scrutiny of foreign investment to protect sensitive national security technology and information and further ring fence the nation’s critical infrastructure.

It will insert a new “national security test” on bids, in a sweeping overhaul of the foreign investment regime.

The action follows mounting public concern about Chinese investment, although the government – already under harsh criticism from China – will seek to play down suggestions it relates to any one country, and point out it has been a long time in the pipeline.

Planned new legislation will also strengthen compliance provisions to ensure foreign investors follow conditions attached to approvals.

During the pandemic, all foreign investment bids are being scrutinised to ensure unfair advantage is not taken of distressed companies.

But in normal circumstances those under certain thresholds escape examination by the Foreign Investment Review Board (FIRB), the body that makes recommendations to the treasurer.

While all bids from foreign governments are screened, most private investments under $275 million – or $1.2 billion if the country has a free trade agreement with Australia, as China and a number of other major trading partners do – are not scrutinised.

The government is concerned investments in some very sensitive sectors are escaping screening even when there are national security concerns. Of particular worry is the vulnerability of small and medium sized companies that have specialised expertise, but fall below the threshold in value.

Under the new test, foreign investors will have to notify FIRB if they propose to start or acquire an interest – generally 10% or a position of control – in a “sensitive national security business”.

This will mean all foreign investments in sensitive national security businesses will be examined.

Businesses which raise sensitive national security concerns are those involved in critical infrastructure, including telecommunications, energy, ports and water, as well as those which service defence and national security organisations.

The national security test will also involve new powers.

The treasurer will be able to “call in” an investment before, during or after an acquisition for review if it raises risks which were not picked up earlier.

The treasurer will also have a new “last resort” power enabling them to apply or vary conditions or order disposal of an investment where national security concerns emerge after approval. This last resort power would not be retrospective – it would only apply to future approvals under the revised regime.

The government will release draft legislation next month for consultations. It wants it passed this year, to apply from January 1 next year.

It is estimated the new security arrangements will affect only a very small proportion of total foreign investment.

The tougher compliance measures follow complaints that some foreign investors ignore the conditions that are attached to approved bids. Recently fingers were pointed at Alinta for not implementing conditions about information storage. The company was told to comply.

Increasingly, conditions have been applied to allow bids to pass. In 2018-19, 4149 applications were approved with conditions attached. This was 47.6% of total approvals. By value, more than 80% of investment was approved subject to conditions.

The government says the monitoring and enforcement powers of Treasury and the Australian Taxation Office need expansion because of the extensive use of conditions and “emerging risks caused by global developments and rapid advances in technology”.

It notes that apart from residential property investments, the treasurer’s enforcement powers are limited to taking civil action or seeking a criminal prosecution. This inhibits the government’s ability to respond proportionately, for example to a minor breach.

Under the changes, the government will have a wider range of tools for enforcement, including access to premises to collect information and powers to give directions to investors in order to prevent or address suspected breaches.

While most of the announced changes are about toughening the scrutiny regime, the government will at the same time streamline the approval process for investments that do not raise national interest concerns.

Aware of the need to attract passive investment as part of the post COVID recovery, it will narrow the definition of a foreign government investor to exclude certain passive investments in funds where the investors have no influence over the investment or operational decisions of the entity.,

The government is committing $54 million over four years to step up compliance and monitoring capability. Funding will go to Treasury, the ATO and “relevant agencies such as the Department of Home Affairs”.

Treasurer Josh Frydenberg said the changes were the most significant made to the foreign investment regime since it was introduced in 1975.

“The reforms will ensure that our foreign investment regime is able to respond to emerging risks and global developments,” he said.

“Through the introduction of a new national security test, stronger enforcement powers and enhanced compliance obligations, we will ensure that Australia can continue to benefit from foreign investment while safeguarding our national interest.”

The reforms were developed with the support of FIRB whose chairman David Irvine has a national security background, including as head of ASIO.

Irvine said the package “appropriately addresses increasing risks to the national interest whilst ensuring Australia remains welcoming and open to foreign investment”.

Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of Canberra

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Australia isn’t taking the national security threat from far-right extremism seriously enough

The Christchurch attack is a clear signal we need to change our approach to both hateful extremism and toxic political discourse in Australia.
David Alexander/AAP

Greg Barton, Deakin University

This is part of a new series looking at the national security challenges facing Australia, how our leaders are responding to them through legislation and how these measures are impacting society. Read the rest of the series here.

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Until the terror attack in Christchurch in March, the threat of far-right terrorism in Australia was one we knew was coming, but believed was well over the horizon.

The sordid story of the Christchurch attacker – “ordinary Australian” turned hateful bigot turned mass-murdering terrorist – contains some uncomfortable truths for our country, not least of which is the fact that the threat of far-right extremism has arrived in the here and now.

Just as troubling, yet even more challenging because it is so insidious, are the clear links between the Christchurch shooter’s motivations and our mainstream political discourse. Facing up to this threat requires us changing our approach both to hateful extremism and toxic political discourse.

Police and counter-terrorism officials have long been warning us of the rising threat of far-right violent extremism. Over the past decade, this has emerged as the number one terrorist threat in America and a persistent and growing threat in Europe.

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Read more:
Christchurch attacks are a stark warning of toxic political environment that allows hate to flourish

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It’s tempting to say that had more resources been committed to tracking and monitoring far-right groups and individuals in Australia, the Christchurch terrorist perhaps could have been stopped.

But even in hindsight, things are not so clear. The Christchurch gunman was a lone actor with no previous history of significant violence, although his involvement in hateful extremism was well-known to family and friends.

This is the particular threat that keeps counter-terrorism experts awake at night, when so-called “cleanskins” (people with ostensibly spotless records) turn into lone-actor terrorists.

We are flying blind on far-right extremism

One clear lesson from Christchurch is that we need to pay more attention to hate speech and hate crimes.

It is true that “shit-posting” is a common occurrence on social media, and among all those people spouting off, it is extremely difficult to see who might become a violent extremist.

But clearly, we don’t understand the world of far-right extremism nearly as well as we should. We need a better way of monitoring and tracking far-right forums, social networks and the links between far-right individuals through their histories of travel and extremist communications.

We also have no centralised, national database of hate incidents. Hate crimes remain under-reported, poorly documented and de-prioritised to low levels of state policing.

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Read more:
Right-wing extremism has a long history in Australia

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The result is that we are flying blind. We don’t get to see the patterns between far-right groups and internet “shit-posters” because we are not collecting the data.

If we made it a priority at the state and federal level to document hate incidents, whether crimes or not, we would at least have a sense of when and where the problem is growing and who is most significantly involved.

This wouldn’t eliminate the threat of far-right extremism, but it might help stop the next massacre and it would certainly contribute to making Australian society more healthy, welcoming and just.

Anti-immigrant protesters at a Reclaim Australia rally in Sydney in 2015.
David Moir/AAP

A disproportionate focus on Islamist terror threats

The September 11 attacks in America, and subsequent attacks by al-Qaeda in Bali, Madrid, London and elsewhere, triggered an enormous investment in counter-terrorism efforts in Australia.

This had barely begun to abate when the formation of the Islamic State (IS) caliphate in mid-2014 alerted us to the high rates of terror recruitment in Australia and prompted the raising of the national terrorism alert to the penultimate level in September 2014.

An intercepted phone call then triggered Australia’s largest-ever counter-terrorism operation. Shortly afterward, the Islamic State issued a call for random lone-actor attacks around the world and, within days, an 18-year-old launched a knife attack against two police officers in Melbourne.

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Read more:
Australia has enacted 82 anti-terror laws since 2001. But tough laws alone can’t eliminate terrorism

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These circumstances have led to 82 counter-terrorism laws being enacted in Australia since 2001, and 16 counter-terrorism operations since 2014, almost all of which have been responding to the threat posed by violent Islamist groups like al-Qaeda and IS.

This perception of the increased threat posed by these groups has resulted in a disproportionate investment in counter-terrorism compared with the response to the much greater threat posed by domestic violence.

At the same time, however, very little has been invested in preventative counter-terrorism measures, including countering far-right extremism.

A national discourse bound up in fear

We pride ourselves on being the world’s most successful multicultural society, yet we consistently turn a deaf ear to those who come up against hatred.

Just last month, for example, a new national survey found that 82% of Asian Australians, 81% of Australians of Middle Eastern background and 71% of Indigenous Australians had experienced some form of discrimination.

One reason why we are not yet ready to face up to this problem is that our national political discourse has for decades become bound up with the politics of fear, “othering”, and scapegoating minority communities.

When we demonise “illegal arrivals” and give license to the toxic rhetoric that we are being “swamped by Asians”, as Pauline Hanson put it in the late 1990s, or more recently “flooded by Muslims”, then we are buying into the core element of the narrative of terrorists like the Christchurch gunman.

In his manifesto, the gunman referenced the far-right extremist trope of “the great replacement” –
the fear that white Christian society is being overrun by brown-skinned, non-Christian people who are changing its culture and society irrevocably.

He picked up this idea from parts of Europe where there is strong antagonism to migrants and Muslims. But he referenced it directly from the writings of the Norwegian far-right terrorist who shot dead 69 people and blew up another eight in July 2011.

This same argument featured in the manifesto of the El Paso gunman who murdered 22 people at a Walmart store in Texas last month. In it, he praised the Christchurch shooter and warned of a “Hispanic invasion” of Texas.

These alt-right terrorists are driven in part by a fantasy of going from “zero to hero” in the alt-right internet world and becoming renowned as “warrior defenders”.

White nationalist manifestos are a recurring feature of far-right extremist attacks, like the one in El Paso this year.
Larry W. Smith/EPA

Prioritising far-right extremism

Prior to Christchurch, kicking the can down the road and prioritising other threats to our national security seemed an understandable, if not ideal response.

We now need to face the reality that of 50 terrorism-related deaths in the US last year, almost all involved far-right extremism. (Only one was linked to jihadi terrorism.) This is a pattern that’s been established for decades now. In fact, nearly three-quarters of all terrorist deaths in the US over the past decade have been linked to far-right extremism.

And while there is reason to hope the problem will never become quite so serious in Australia (despite the fact an Australian far-right extremist has murdered 51 people in another country), we need to do what we can now to counter the rise of hate speech and hate crimes – not later.

There are no quick fixes or guaranteed solutions, but these steps will make society better in ways that go far beyond the immediate threat of another terrorist attack.

Greg Barton, Chair in Global Islamic Politics, Alfred Deakin Institute for Citizenship and Globalisation, Deakin University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Preventing foreign fighters from returning home could be dangerous to national security

Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton is pushing to have new security laws passed by parliament as quickly as possible.
Dean Lewins/AAP

Greg Barton, Deakin University

A key element in the success of countering terrorism in Australia has been a series of new and amended pieces of legislation – at least 75 – developed to respond to an evolving threat.

This includes legislation produced in October 2014 (Section 119.2 and 119.3 of the Criminal Code) that declared areas of Iraq and Syria, including the city of Raqqa, the de facto capital of the so-called Islamic State (IS) caliphate, illegal for Australian citizens to enter. Anyone who has lived in this territory and seeks to return to Australia will have to prove they were not assisting IS or face prosecution and a possible punishment of up to 25 years in prison.

Innovative pieces of legislation like the proposed Temporary Exclusion Orders (TEO) bill introduced by Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton are difficult to argue with. Existing national security laws already place Australia in a much stronger position than any other Western nation when it comes to managing the prosecution and detention of returning IS fighters.

Nevertheless, there is a limit to what legislation itself can do. Moreover, for every possible advantage, there are also possible disadvantages that need to be weighed up.

There is not a whole lot more the new TEO bill can be reasonably expected to achieve. And as the weight of legislation increases, there are reasonable questions to be asked about checks and balances and proportionate implementation.

In other words, the devil is very much in the detail.

Questions that need answering

Three questions need to be asked:

• First, what is the actual need for this bill? And what is the likelihood the proposed legislation can meet this need?

• Second, what are the potential downsides that might come with enacting this legislation?

• Third, in the light of the first two questions, what then should be done?

There is no question, that with at least 80 individuals who have fought with IS now in a position to possibly return, any legislative tool that can help manage this risk is worth considering.

Specifically, there is clearly a benefit to being able to delay somebody’s return by at least two years, and through a process of extensions perhaps many more years. There is also an advantage, when they do return, of being able to legally impose conditions on who they meet with and where they go.

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Read more:
There’s no clear need for Peter Dutton’s new bill excluding citizens from Australia

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The government has pointed out that around 40 Australians have already returned from Syria and Iraq under suspicion of being involved with terrorist groups. To have been able to delay and then manage the return of these 40 fighters clearly would have been very useful.

But what has not been explained by the government is that these 40 individuals came back to Australia more than six years ago, and only a couple have so far been successfully prosecuted.

If the need was so urgent, why wasn’t a temporary exclusion order introduced in late 2014 when we first began to process a raft of counter-terrorism bills and amendments? Or in 2015 when the UK introduced similar legislation?

First line of defence

There is, in fact, no immediate crisis, and undue haste in passing further security legislation should be avoided because it is very dangerous to national security.

If TEOs are applied excessively, and without sufficient discrimination, a number of risks arise. Individuals currently detained in overcrowded detention centres in Syria or Iraq might be released if their repatriation to Australia is delayed by years.

Or, they could be broken out of detention by IS insurgents, who remain deadly and numerous. This happened on dozens of occasions when IS needed to replenish its ranks.

Allowing our citizens to be somebody else’s problem, out of sight and out of mind, does not actually make the security risk to Australians go away. Leaving them offshore leaves open the very real possibility that they will eventually slip away into the terrorist underground or rejoin the IS insurgency.

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Read more:
How Indonesia is dealing with the new threat posed by returning Islamic State fighters

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Should they do so, they immediately become a risk through their ability to influence others online and via social media.

It is likely that TEOs will be also applied to women and children we really should be repatriating. This would pass the buck to others to look after and secure these women and children, such as the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), who are already overstretched and unable to deal with the burden of indefinitely detaining those who have fled the decaying IS caliphate.

There is also a real risk this legislation, much like other bills that allow Dutton to strip somebody of their citizenship on the grounds they potentially have access to alternative citizenship, could undermine confidence and trust within key communities in Australia.

As then-Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull said after the murder of Sydney police accountant Curtis Cheng by a 15-year-old recruited by IS supporters in 2015, our first line of defence in fighting groups like Islamic State is the Muslim community.

Intelligence is key to countering terrorism and working with communities and families to encourage people to speak up when they see something of concern. To the extent that trust and confidence are eroded, national security will be directly diminished.

Amendments that could help

So what should be done?

Speaking last week at his farewell dinner, outgoing Labor Senator Doug Cameron spelled out the larger issues that need to be addressed.

Our existing oversight is inferior and, in my view, almost non-existent. This is unacceptable and we should ensure our inferior parliamentary oversight of security agencies is changed and oversight is enhanced.

Cameron is not the only one to express concerns. This bill was first introduced into the 45th Parliament. The Liberal-dominated Parliamentary Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security (PJCIS) produced an extensive review and a detailed report on the bill.

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Read more:
Why is it so difficult to prosecute returning fighters?

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Labor Senator Kristina Keneally, a member of the PJCIS, has since complained that the government had

rejected four of the PJCIS recommendations in whole, rejected six in part and ignored one.

This, despite the fact that these recommendations came as a result of the considered reasoning of senior figures from both the Liberals and Labor.

One of the key amendments recommenced by the PJCIS is that the minister of home affairs should only be empowered to order a temporary exclusion order if he or she

reasonably suspects the person is, or has been, involved in terrorism-related activities outside Australia

And that a TEO should only be made

if it would substantially assist in preventing the provision of support for, or the facilitation of, a terrorist act.

The principle of being able to impose TEOs certainly bears consideration. While this is no “silver bullet”, there is a case for passing the bill after including the amendments thoughtfully proposed by the PJCIS.

Without a better system of oversight, we risk undermining community trust and confidence by setting in place policy that leads to dire consequences and diminishes our national security.

Now is not the time to make haste at the expense of national security, as well as the very values that define us as Australians.

Greg Barton, Chair in Global Islamic Politics, Alfred Deakin Institute for Citizenship and Globalisation, Deakin University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

National security is too important to be abandoned to the politics of fear

Scott Morrison’s claim that Operation Sovereign Borders is the country’s great national security achievement overlooks all that has been achieved in a complex area.
AAP/Lukas Coch

Greg Barton, Deakin University

This is part of a major series called Advancing Australia, in which leading academics examine the key issues facing Australia in the lead-up to the 2019 federal election and beyond. Read the other pieces in the series here.

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No-one wants to feel insecure. The foundational element of the social contract between people and government is security. National security, then, must reasonably be one of the central concerns of both government and opposition.

Scott Morrison understood this well when he used an address to the National Press Club in February 2019 to launch his government’s program on national security.

This comes at a time when national security has been defined all too narrowly in Australian political discourse. The prime minister’s linking of multiple domains of security alongside concerns about violent extremism and terrorism should be welcomed. This moves national security beyond the current narrow focus of government to a more holistic framing, in line with global practice and as used by leading institutions such as the ANU’s National Security College.

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Read more:
Morrison wants Muslim leaders to do more to prevent terrorism, but what more can they do?

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It’s an important refocusing. And it’s timely when women are dying every week in domestic violence attacks, and cybercrime and cyber espionage loom as increasing threats to nation, society and business. It is not only reasonable but necessary to weigh up spending on countering terrorism and violent extremism alongside other pressing matters of national security.

But, after a promising start, the prime minister’s vision statement quickly deteriorated into point scoring designed to wedge the opposition on medical evacuations from Manus Island and Nauru.

Morrison’s bold assertion that Operation Sovereign Borders represents Australia’s greatest national security achievement overlooks all that’s been achieved in responding to the insidious and resilient threat of terrorism.
It also offers no accounting of the real price of the indefinite detention of asylum seekers arriving by boat.

In a summer of unprecedented heat, bushfires in rainforests in Tasmania and catastrophic floods in Queensland, the PM’s vision statement talked only of “natural disasters”. He avoided all reference to climate change until pressed by a final questioner.

Even then, this unprecedented threat to national security was treated dismissively, with glib lines about “smashing goals” and meeting the Paris targets “in a canter”.

Moving national security beyond the cynicism of everyday politics

Morrison’s address served as a reminder of why Australians are so sceptical of politicians talking about national security. Little wonder, then, that the important work of counter-terrorism and countering violent extremism is saddled with so much baggage. A lack of trust, and a sense of being scapegoated on the part of migrant and Muslim communities in particular, threatens to unravel the good work done by community groups and police alike.

But it is not simply the politics of fear that drives scepticism about responses to terrorism. The reality of more than 17 years of the misnamed “global war on terror” provides good grounds for being critical about how resources are used and threats are framed.

In an important report last November, the Watson Institute at Brown University calculated that the financial cost to the US federal government alone of the so-called war on terror exceeded US$5.9 trillion.

Far worse, it estimated that around half-a-million lives had been lost in Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan and Pakistan as a direct result of the fight against al-Qaeda and Islamic State. Half of them were civilians. And the conflict had driven at least 21 million people from their homes. But to what end?

Another report last November by the Centre for Strategic and International Studies at Georgetown University found that, despite the tremendous price paid in dollars and lives, there were almost three times as many Salafi jihadi terrorists in 2018 as there were at the time of the September 11 attacks in 2001. The number of Salafi jihadi terror groups around the world had almost doubled.

Studies such as this make it clear that victory in the “war on terror” is no more likely than it is in “the war on drugs”.

A large element in all of this is the reality, now almost universally acknowledged, that the coalition invasion of Iraq in 2003 was a colossal mistake. Engagement in Iraq came at the cost of military operations in Afghanistan. The latter mission was altogether more rational in the wake of the September 11 attacks, especially in combination with nation-building efforts.

Despite investments equivalent to the post-second world war Marshall Plan in Europe, continuous operations in Afghanistan since 2001 have failed to achieve what the Marshall Plan was able to do. Incredibly, in Afghanistan, there has been no strategic plan guiding this longest of all modern wars.

Despite being the longest modern war, there has never been a strategic plan guiding operations in Afghanistan.
AAP/EPA/Hedayatullah Amid

This is why many would insist that talk of terrorism and counter-terrorism at home and military engagement abroad is a mistake and a waste of resources: that it all contributes little to national security. The truth is much more complex. Certainly, one lesson of the past two decades is that military engagement should only be used sparingly and to a clear political end.

Expecting a decisive victory in Afghanistan is unrealistic. But withdrawing international forces now would render hopes of achieving a lasting peace through negotiation with the Taliban lost in capitulation to powerful militias by removing checks and balances.

And although many mistakes have also been made in counter-terrorism closer to home, it would be wrong to deny that much has been achieved.

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Read more:
How Indonesia’s counter-terrorism force has become a model for the region

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Today, lone-actor attacks are a pressing concern because terrorists have been stopped from carrying out more ambitious plans. Al-Qaeda was never able to repeat the large-scale attacks of 2001 in New York and Washington, 2004 in Madrid and 2005 in London. The return of larger attacks in 2015 and 2016 came only because of the strength of IS in Syria and Iraq.

Acknowledging counter-terrorism successes

Police and government agencies today face a workload that is an order of magnitude larger than it was before the rise of IS. But through effective intelligence work they have managed to contain the threat of large-scale terror attacks outside of conflict zones.

In Australia, the efforts of many to counter violent extremism are seldom recognised or properly understood. But the level of security that has been achieved in the face of the resilient threat of terrorism is a substantial achievement.

Much good has come out of all these efforts, not least the cooperation of the Australian Federal Police with counterparts around the world, particularly Indonesia in the wake of the Bali bombings of October 2002.

Similarly, Australian government-backed initiatives in working with civil society groups to counter violent extremism have achieved a great deal in terms of responding to threats and building understanding across communities.

The conflation of national security with strong borders, and a fetish with arrivals by sea, leads to disproportionate and wasteful spending. It plays into the demonising of those fleeing persecution and seeking asylum.

The simplistic, dehumanising focus on “keeping bad people out” not only justifies cruelty, but contributes to unhealthy lack of transparency in the work of agencies and contractors.

Everyone deserves to live in a society as secure as can reasonably be achieved. National security is too important to be used as a mere political instrument. The cynical politics of fear threatens both to undo the good work being done by so many for so long and to turn Australian society against itself.

Greg Barton, Chair in Global Islamic Politics, Alfred Deakin Institute for Citizenship and Globalisation; Co-Director, Australian Intervention Support Hub, Deakin University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Explainer: how the Australian intelligence community works

Malcolm Turnbull has put Peter Dutton at the head of the Home Affairs super portfolio.
AAP/Glenn Hunt

John Blaxland, Australian National University

This article is the first in a five-part series exploring Australian national security in the digital age.

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National security, intelligence and espionage have been in the headlines due to events abroad and significant developments at home. News of diplomatic expulsions, cyber-attacks, leaked documents about sweeping new surveillance powers and the creation of a new Home Affairs Department make it hard to follow.

What’s more, everyone has heard of the CIA, for instance, but Australia’s own national security organisations are comparatively unknown. So how is intelligence gathered? What are Australia’s peak national security bodies and how do they interact?

Australia’s national security architecture consists of a number of federal government departments and agencies, with links to state government counterparts. These include the state police forces and counter-terrorism authorities. Those arrangements are in transition, the full details of which are still to unfold.

The major players

The peak national security body in the Commonwealth is the National Security Committee of Cabinet (NSC). It includes the ministers of the principal departments concerned with national security, including the Departments of Defence, Home Affairs, Foreign Affairs and Trade, the Attorney-General, Prime Minister and Cabinet, and Treasury.

Several of the ministers on the NSC oversee a range of national security bodies. These have emerged as a result of trial and error, royal commissions and various reforms over several decades.

For starters, the defence portfolio includes a range of military intelligence units. There are hundreds of uniformed intelligence practitioners across the nation in the navy, air force and army, as well as in the Headquarters Joint Operations Command in Canberra. It also includes three of the nation’s principal intelligence agencies (with a mix of civilian and military intelligence practitioners):

• the Defence Intelligence Organisation (DIO), defence’s principal intelligence assessment agency

• the Australian Geospatial Intelligence Organisation (AGO), responsible for satellite and aerial imagery intelligence, maps, nautical charts and related geo-spatial products

• the Australian Signals Directorate (ASD), responsible for the collection and processing of signals intelligence (essentially, eavesdropping on radio and electronic transmissions).

ASD’s motto, “to reveal their secrets and protect our own”, captures the essence of its functions, which have been the subject of recent controversy after leaked documents proposed giving the ASD domestic surveillance powers.

The antecedents of these defence agencies date back to the intelligence organisations established, alongside their American and British counterparts, during the second world war. The ties to that era have endured in the so-called “Five Eyes” intelligence arrangement.

Initially focused on signals intelligence (the principal remit of ASD), Five Eyes is a trusted network between the US, Britain, Australia and the two other predominantly English-speaking allies from that era, Canada and New Zealand.

The title was a derivative of the stamp used to restrict the dissemination of sensitive intelligence to a particular classification: “SECRET – AUS/CAN/NZ/UK/US EYES ONLY” – hence Five Eyes.

Nowadays, the network extends beyond signals intelligence and defence circles to include a broader range of departments, including the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT).

DFAT is Australia’s principal agency tasked with “promoting and protecting our interests internationally and contributing to global stability and economic growth”. As part of that role, it is responsible for diplomatic reporting. Much of the information Australia gathers from counterpart governments abroad is collected openly, but discreetly, by Australia’s diplomats.

In addition, the Australian Secret Intelligence Service (ASIS) is in the foreign minister’s portfolio. Established in 1952 and tasked with the collection overseas of secret intelligence, the ASIS mission is listed as being “to protect and promote Australia’s vital interests through the provision of unique foreign intelligence services as directed by the Australian Government”. This is otherwise known as human intelligence collection or, in traditional terms, foreign espionage.

Countering foreign espionage (particularly from Soviet, later Russian and other countries operating in Australia) is the remit of the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO). Established in 1949, ASIO has been part of the attorney-general’s portfolio until now.

Today, ASIO’s purpose is described as being to “counter terrorism and the promotion of communal violence”, “counter serious threats to Australia’s border integrity”, “provide protective security advice to government and business” and “counter espionage, foreign interference and malicious insiders”.

The Office of National Assessments (ONA) is Australia’s peak intelligence assessment agency. It was established in 1977, after the Royal Commission on Intelligence and Security commissioned by then Prime Minister Gough Whitlam and chaired by Justice Robert Marsden Hope.

ONA was established to help coordinate priorities across related intelligence agencies. Today, it is charged with assessing and analysing international political, strategic and economic developments for the prime minister and senior ministers. ONA draws on the intelligence collected by the other intelligence agencies, as well as unclassified, or “open source”, intelligence and material provided by international partners.

The agencies mentioned so far – ONA, ASIO, ASIS, AGO, ASD and DIO – form what has come to be known as the Australian Intelligence Community (AIC). The AIC emerged from the reforms initiated by Justice Hope in the 1970s and 1980s, notably following the 1977 commission and the 1985 Royal Commission on Australia’s Security and Intelligence Agencies. The combined effect of these commissions was that ONA was tasked with coordinating intelligence priorities along with the other agencies.

The tangled web of the Australian Intelligence Community.
Office of National Assessments

A greater level of scrutiny

Another mechanism that emerged during this period was the office of the Inspector General of Intelligence and Security (IGIS), currently held by former Federal Court judge Margaret Stone. Established in 1987 with the enduring power of a royal commissioner, the IGIS has extraordinary powers to inspect and review the operations of AIC agencies.

The Parliamentary Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security (PJCIS) exists to provide a level of parliamentary oversight, complementing the work of the IGIS. It conducts inquiries into matters referred by the Senate, the House of Representatives or a minister of the Commonwealth government.

The Intelligence Services Act 2001 saw legislation more closely account for the functions that AIC members were expected to perform and the Inspector General monitors. In addition, an Independent National Security Legislation Monitor (INSLM) was established.

The 2017 Independent Intelligence Review was the third such review since 2001. As part of the review, ONA is to become the Office of National Intelligence (ONI), exercising oversight of the expanded National Intelligence Community (NIC). This covers the initial six AIC members and four additional ones described below.

In addition, ASD is being established as a statutory body (still under the defence minister, but administered separately from the rest of the Defence Department) alongside other principal agencies ASIO and ASIS.

An expanded community with ambiguous oversight

The ONI is now tasked with overseeing implementation of recommendations arising from the 2017 review. This includes managing the four-body expansion to the ten-agency NIC.

These four bodies have played an increasingly prominent national security role since 2001. They are:

• the Australian Federal Police (AFP), with a remit for criminal intelligence and counter-terrorism

• the Australian Transaction Reports and Analysis Centre (AUSTRAC), Australia’s specialist financial intelligence unit

• the Australian Criminal Intelligence Commission (ACIC), responsible for “investigative, research and information delivery services work with law enforcement partners”.

• the Australian Border Force (ABF), described as Australia’s customs service and an “operationally independent” agency in the Home Affairs portfolio.

These agencies work in conjunction with other AIC agencies as well as state police and security counterparts.

The 2017 independent review was announced at the same time the new Home Affairs Department was made public. These four bodies are among the agencies transitioning to the Home Affairs portfolio. This has complicated arrangements for implementing the review recommendations and left considerable ambiguity concerning overlap of changed arrangements.

The INSLM certainly has a significant task as well and the PJCIS will be growing in staff to meet the expanded set of responsibilities outlined by the 2017 review as our intelligence community grows from six to ten agencies.

Implementing the 2017 review recommendations alone presents a significant challenge. The creation of Home Affairs on top of this adds to the complexity at a time of growing security challenges.

John Blaxland, Professor, Strategic and Defence Studies Centre, Australian National University

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

CHINA: LEGAL WHEELS TURN SLOWLY FOR UYGHUR CHRISTIAN

Detained since January, Alimjan Yimit awaits new court date.

DUBLIN, November 11 (Compass Direct News) – Chinese officials have yet to declare a new court date for Alimjan Yimit, a Christian house church leader and ethnic Uyghur in China’s northwest province of Xinjiang detained since his arrest on Jan. 12.

Alimjan’s name appears as Alimujiang Yimiti in Chinese documents.

State prosecutors in mid-October returned Alimjan’s case to a Xinjiang court for consideration, China Aid Association (CAA) reported. Court officials have refused to release details of the case to the public, but sources told Compass that further legal action is expected imminently.

Charges against Alimjan include “inciting secessionist sentiment to split the country” and “collecting and selling intelligence for overseas organizations,” CAA reported in June. Officials have threatened to hand down a sentence ranging from as much as six years in prison to execution.

Once a Muslim, Alimjan converted to Christianity more than 10 years ago and became active in the growing Uyghur church. Friends said they believe his faith is the real reason for his arrest.

His wife Gulnur has consistently proclaimed his innocence, pointing out that as an agricultural worker he had no access to information affecting national security and therefore could not be guilty of leaking such information.

Alimjan’s hair, dark when police arrested him on Jan. 12, is now graying as a result of harsh conditions in detention, sources said.

During Alimjan’s employment with two foreign-owned companies, officials from the State Security Bureau (SSB) regularly called him in for interrogation, forbidding him to discuss the questioning with anyone.

In September 2007, they closed the business Alimjan worked for and accused him of using it as a cover for “preaching Christianity among people of Uyghur ethnicity.”

Lawyers had hoped for an early acquittal for Alimjan based on evidence of unfair treatment due to his Christian beliefs. A lengthy bureaucratic process, however, has dimmed these hopes.

A trial was initially scheduled for April but postponed while court documents – including interrogation records from the Xinjiang SSB – were translated from Uyghur into Chinese.

When the case was heard on May 27, court officials allowed Alimjan’s two lawyers to be present but banned his wife from entering the courtroom due to the “sensitivity” of the case. After deliberations the court returned the case to state prosecutors citing insufficient evidence. (See Compass Direct News, “Court Cites ‘Insufficient Evidence’ in Christian’s Trial,” May 30.)

In September, Public Security Bureau officers in Xinjiang returned the case to state prosecutors, who again presented it to the court for consideration in October.

 

Another Uyghur Christian’s Appeal Denied

A second Uyghur Christian, Osman Imin, has aged dramatically and his health has deteriorated due to conditions in a labor camp where he is forced to work 12 to 15 hours per day.

In Chinese documents, Osman’s name appears as Wusiman Yaming.

The State Security Bureau in Hetian City, Xinjiang in September 2007 sentenced Osman to two years of re-education through labor for “revealing state secrets” and “illegal proselytizing.” Associates, however, said his arrest had nothing to do with disclosure of state secrets but with the fact that he was an outspoken Christian and a leader in the Uyghur church.

Authorities first arrested Osman in October 2004, holding him in a detention center in Hotan, southern Xinjiang, for an unspecified “violation of law,” according to CAA.

During his initial detention, Osman was chained to a metal bed and beaten repeatedly during interrogations, a source that spoke on condition of anonymity told Compass. (See Compass Direct News, “Uyghur Christians Arrested, Jailed in Xinjiang,” February 11.)

Osman was released on bail on Nov. 18, 2004 and bail was canceled in October 2006. On July 26, 2007, however, he was again placed under supervised house arrest and finally detained by police on Nov. 19 for allegedly leaking state secrets.

Officials had called for a 10- to 15-year criminal sentence, but after international media attention they reduced the term to two years in labor camp.

When Osman’s lawyer Liang Xiaojun appealed his sentence in June, court authorities insisted on a closed hearing on grounds that the case involved confidential information, CAA reported. They turned down the appeal, refusing to explain why and denying Osman proper access to his lawyer, which violated normal court procedure.

Compass previously reported that officials had arrested and detained a third Uyghur believer, a woman from southern Xinjiang. Further investigation revealed that both she and her husband were arrested on charges of theft.

Report from Compass Direct News

CHINA: RELIGIOUS FREEDOMS THREATENED AS OLYMPICS DRAW TO CLOSE

House churches asked not to meet during Games; new crackdown planned for October.

DUBLIN, August 20 (Compass Direct News) – As the Olympics draw to a close, new evidence of religious freedom abuses offers a stark contrast to China’s efforts to provide religious services for athletes and visitors during the Games.

China hired religious clerics to provide these services and published a special bilingual edition of the Bible for distribution to athletes and official churches during the event. Simultaneously, officials asked house church leaders in Beijing to sign documents agreeing not to hold services during the Games, the China Aid Association (CAA) reported on August 13.

More ominously, China has planned a new crackdown on four “troublesome elements,” including house church leaders, for October, when most Olympic athletes, tourists and journalists will have left the country, CAA reported on Monday (August 18).

 

Positive Steps

A British-based Christian charity, the Bible Society, provided funding for a special bilingual Olympic edition of 30,000 full Bibles and 10,000 New Testaments for distribution in the Olympic Village and to registered churches in the Olympic cities, the Catholic News Agency reported in June. The Amity Printing Press, China’s only government-approved Bible publisher, printed the books in a new multimillion dollar facility that opened in Nanjing in May.

The Chinese government claims that Amity produces more than enough Bibles to meet the needs of the Chinese church, a claim many religious freedom organizations dispute. Amity also prints Bibles for export internationally.

A report circulating before the Games declared that China had banned Bibles from the Olympic Village, but this report proved false.

Officials also hired religious clerics from the five government-approved faiths to provide services for athletes and tourists during the Games. The five groups are Buddhists, Taoists, Muslims, Protestants and Catholics; each one answers to a specific religious institution appointed to oversee their activities.

 

Restrictions in Place

In the lead-up to the Games, officials asked a number of house church pastors to sign a document agreeing to forego any activities at “Christian gathering sites” or meeting points while the Games took place, according to CAA.

Under this agreement, house churches were banned from gathering from July 15 to October 15, a total of 17 weeks. Those who broke the agreement would face “disciplinary action.”

The agreement asked that house churches “refrain from organizing and joining illegal gatherings and refrain from receiving donations, sermons and preaching from overseas religious organizations and groups that have a purpose.”

The Union of Catholic Asian News confirmed in a report on August 7 that officials had forbidden bishops and priests in unregistered Catholic churches to administer sacraments or do pastoral work during the Games.

Officials placed several underground bishops under house arrest and forbade them to contact their priests, the report added.

In Wuqiu village of Jinxian county, Hebei, police erected a small “house” in front of the cathedral presided over by underground Bishop Julius Jia Zhiguo in order to provide a facility for 24-hour monitoring of the bishop.

Additionally, Bishop Joseph Wei Jingyi of Qiqihar in northeast China received phone calls from government officials asking if he planned to hold any religious gatherings during the Olympics. Wei said he would stay at home and pray for the success of the Games.

Prior to the Games, police banned several Christians from meeting with visiting U.S. government officials and asked others to leave Beijing for the duration of the event.

Police in July repeatedly asked house church pastor Zhang Mingxuan and his wife Xie Fenlang to leave Beijing. When they refused, police on July 18 entered a guesthouse where they were staying and drove them to Yanjiao in neighboring Hebei province.

When Zhang granted an interview to BBC journalist John Simpson, police detained Zhang and Xie before the interview could take place. (See Compass Direct News, “Chinese House Church Pastor Detained,” August 7.)

On August 10, police seized house church pastor and activist Hua Huiqi when he attempted to participate in a service at the government-approved Juanjie Protestant church in Beijing, where U.S. President George Bush was scheduled to appear.

Hua, still in hiding, wrote a letter to Bush later that day, pleading for prayer for his personal safety and for freedom of belief for all Chinese people. (See Compass Direct News, “Chinese Christians Plead for Relief as Olympics Continue,” August 13.)

 

October Crackdown

More prayer may be requested in coming months. China’s Communist Party (CPC) will launch a nationwide crackdown on four “unstable social elements” in October, CAA reported on Monday (August 18).

These elements were listed as illegal Christian house church leaders, petitioners, human rights defenders and political dissidents.

Outlined in a secret government directive passed to CAA, the crackdown is designed to coincide with a new campaign for “20 more years of political and social stability” in China.

In a speech on June 16, Zhou Yongkang, head of the Political and Legal Committee of the Central Committee of the CPC, called for “extraordinary measures” to be taken against these elements in order to protect the CPC’s continuous rule and reform programs.

The Beijing Municipal State Security Bureau has also begun a new citizen informant initiative, requiring ordinary citizens to report individuals and organizations posing a threat to national security, including those who “engage in activities that endanger state security by utilizing religions,” according to CAA.

Report from Compass Direct News

CHINA: CHRISTIANS PLEAD FOR RELIEF AS OLYMPICS CONTINUE

Hua Huiqi writes to President Bush; seminary staff to face trial after Games

DUBLIN, August 13 (Compass Direct News) – Christian activist and house church pastor Hua Huiqi wrote an open letter to U.S. President George Bush on Sunday (August 10), asking for prayer for his personal safety and for freedom of belief for all Chinese people.

Earlier that day, plainclothes policemen detained Hua to prevent him participating in a service at the government-approved Kuanjie Protestant church in Beijing, where Bush was scheduled to attend.

Hua slipped away from police officers when they fell asleep; at press time he was still in hiding.

Several other Christians also remain in detention or under house arrest as the Games continue this week.

In Hua’s letter, published by the China Aid Association (CAA), he thanked Bush for his “concern for the Chinese house churches” and expressed disappointment at not being able to attend the Sunday service. He also described his detention, saying that seven or eight policemen had kicked and punched him before seizing him and his brother, Hua Huilin.

“At the place where they detained us, they conducted an interrogation,” Hua wrote. “They threatened me: ‘We simply won’t allow you to go to Kuanjie Church today. If you say you will go there again, we will break your legs.’”

Hua managed to escape but was fearful of the consequences. “Now I’m wandering outside and dare not go back home,” he wrote. “I am writing this letter to implore you to pray for my personal safety and for the freedom of belief of us Chinese people.”

 

‘Dangerous Religious Element’

Also in Beijing, Christian bookstore owner Shi Weihan remains in custody at the Beijing Municipal Detention Center.

Police initially arrested Shi on November 28, 2007, charging him with “illegal business practices” after he allegedly published Christian literature without authorization for distribution to house churches; but court officials ordered his release on January 4, citing insufficient evidence. Police, who have labeled Shi a “dangerous religious element,” arrested him again on March 19.

Prison authorities have prevented family members from visiting Shi or bringing food and clothing to the detention center. Shi’s lawyer, permitted to visit just once in recent weeks, confirmed that Shi’s health was deteriorating and he was in need of urgent medical attention, according to CAA.

USA Today reported on Monday (August 11) that Shi’s wife, Zhang Jing, said, “It is good that the president can worship here, but it’s not likely that we will have more freedom or be able to register our churches.”

Authorities forced Shi’s Antioch Eternal Life Church to close in June.

“Several house churches have been closed before the Olympics,” Zhang added. “The police say we are threatening national security and demand that my husband give up his faith.”

In the same report, Dennis Wilder, U. S. National Security Council’s director for Asian Affairs, said after a meeting between Bush and President Hu Jintao on Sunday (August 10) that, “Hu seemed to indicate that the door is opening on religious freedom in China and that in the future there will be more room for religious believers.”

 

Seminary Staff Detained

Elsewhere, in Shandong province, two staff members from a house church seminary in Weifang city await trial for running an “illegal business operation” after they attempted to purchase Bibles from Amity Press, China’s official Bible printing facility.

Police briefly detained teacher Jin Xiuxiang on May 20, before asking her to return home. On May 29, police and officials from the State Administration of Religious Affairs raided the seminary, arresting Jin and another teacher, Zhang Yage, along with Principal Lu Zhaojun, for “running a school without a license.” They also seized seminary property, including Bibles and other Christian literature, a minivan and a bank card, according to CAA.

All three were released on May 28, after CAA reported the raid. When Lu and Jin returned to the police station on June 2 to inquire about confiscated goods, however, officials detained them again and sentenced them to one month of criminal detention for carrying out an “illegal business operation.” The goods were not returned.

Authorities then released Lu and Jin on bail on July 12, informing them that they would face trial after the Games. Compass sources yesterday confirmed that Lu and Jin are under close surveillance.

House church pastor Zhang Mingxuan and his wife Xie Fenglan, detained last week after they agreed to an interview with a BBC journalist, are still in police custody, according to Compass sources.

Police had repeatedly asked Zhang and Xie to leave Beijing for the duration of the Games and eventually expelled them from their apartment. Finally, on July 18 police forcibly took them from a guesthouse in Beijing and drove them to Yanjiao in neighboring Hebei province. The couple then moved to a more remote town to await the completion of the Games, CAA reported.

Report from Compass Direct News