Peter Dutton talks up 'homeland security' agency, including Asio and federal police
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Version 0 of 1. The immigration minister, Peter Dutton, has talked up the prospect of a mega homeland security department, backing the rationale that it could “break down silos” in intelligence-sharing. Dutton made the comments about the mooted department – which could put him in charge of the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation and Australian federal police – on Sydney’s 2GB radio on Thursday. Fairfax Media first reported the proposal was under consideration on Tuesday. It is opposed by attorney general, George Brandis, but Malcolm Turnbull has so far refused to weigh in to speculation the government could create a mega-department by stripping the two agencies from the attorney general’s portfolio. Dutton noted that the United Kingdom had the Home Office, and the United States had the Department of Homeland Security. He said the US had set up its department after the September 11 terrorist attacks “because the intelligence agencies there were essentially operating in silos”. “From my perspective – we work well with the agencies, we want to make sure there are no silos, we want to make sure we are sharing all the intelligence and information. “Because it’s part of the reason we can thwart these terrorist threats before they’re realised,” Dutton said. He said in cases where a person’s immigration or security status was under investigation, “you necessarily want to get access to all of the information, whatever the government department holds on that person”. “We just live in a very different age ... who can really predict what will happen over the next 10, 15 or 20 years in terms of security threats.” Dutton said that Australia must “continue world’s best practice” in intelligence-sharing with a “modern system”. Asked about the proposed super department on Tuesday, Turnbull said he would not comment on “speculation about administrative arrangements”. On Thursday Dutton noted that a homeland security department had been considered in Australia “over a long period of time” by different governments. He said he was “not aware” of the process of deciding whether to create the department, and said it was “an issue for others”. Sky News has reported that both Asio and the AFP oppose the proposed department of homeland security. Security and foreign affairs experts have lined up against the idea or questioned the need for it, including former head of the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, Peter Varghese, the executive director of the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, Peter Jennings, and Ric Smith, a former defence department head and senior diplomat who led a review of domestic security in 2008. In that review, Smith concluded the restructure could “disrupt unduly the successful and effective work of the agencies concerned and create significant new costs”. Far from breaking down silos, he concluded large organisations “tend to be inward-looking, siloed and slow to adapt, and thus ill-suited to the dynamic security environment”. When Labor floated the idea in 2008, Turnbull dismissed the idea as “one gigantic super-bureaucracy”. “It would have meant reinventing well-established patterns of cooperation and coordination between our key security agencies and confusing and complicating the existing practice of reporting lines within and between those agencies,” he told parliament. Guardian Australia understands Brandis opposes the idea because there is good cooperation and exchange of information between Asio, the AFP and state police services, which have joint taskforces in major cities. |