Malcolm Turnbull has signalled his intention to overhaul Australia’s national security architecture ahead of the creation of a new super portfolio, or central coordinating role for counter-terrorism, for the leading government conservative, Peter Dutton.
The prime minister told reporters in Sydney on Monday the government was always open to improving the currently “outstanding” national security and counter-terrorism apparatus – and there was “no place for set and forget”.
The creation of a new homeland security style department with Dutton at the helm has been the subject of rolling, semi-public, contention between senior government ministers for months.
The mooted restructure – either a new department, or a transfer of oversight responsibility – would hand Dutton a portfolio that would add the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation and the Australian federal police to his current portfolio responsibilities for immigration and border protection.
The attorney general, George Brandis, has been strongly opposed to losing portfolio responsibility for counter-terrorism and the mooted super department has also been resisted internally by the foreign affairs minister, Julie Bishop, the justice minister, Michael Keenan, and by some senior bureaucrats.
The prime minister has the power to determine unilaterally the scope of ministerial and agency responsibilities, and the creation of a national security super department has not yet been the subject of broad cabinet discussion.
Sky News reported on Monday the reworking of the existing national security architecture will be discussed by cabinet on Tuesday, before a formal announcement this week.
Dutton – who has championed the change with the support of his bureaucrats in immigration and border protection – is the Turnbull government’s most powerful conservative figure and the overhaul would enhance his internal status further.
The government is also this week expected to release the findings of an independent review of the Australian intelligence community undertaken by Michael L’Estrange and Stephen Merchant at Turnbull’s behest.
It has been widely reported that the L’Estrange review does not recommend the creation of a super agency, which remains a controversial concept for many defence and national security analysts, and long serving Canberra mandarins working in intelligence and security.
The outgoing head of the defence department, Dennis Richardson, earlier this year raised technical and transitional problems associated with putting intelligence agencies in a single portfolio – including who would be responsible for signing Asio warrants.
Richardson also signalled the Australian community might be less comfortable having a home affairs minister signing off on the warrants than an attorney general, who also has responsibility for preserving civil liberties.
The head of the Australian National University’s Defence and Strategic Studies Centre, John Blaxland, said on Monday he had not seen any compelling arguments supporting the change.
“The system’s actually been working pretty darn well so far,” Blaxland said. “Is this really going to make it better? And linked to that is my concern that you’re putting a lot of power in the hands of one minister and one secretary. That is a scary amount of power.”
He said governments had important national security responsibilities but they also had responsibilities to ensure there were robust checks and balances in place to prevent over reach by powerful agencies.
“We do not have the American system of government which divides the power between the executive, the legislative and the judiciary,” he said. “In our system, the executive and the legislative power is much more concentrated.
“And here we have an arm of the executive that’s looking to concentrate power and resources ... I haven’t seen a compelling argument in favour of it yet”.
