Despite the warnings of Australia’s most senior national security professionals, Peter Dutton and Mike Pezzullo convinced Turnbull to act in error.
The decision by Prime Minister Anthony Albanese to transfer responsibility for Australia’s domestic intelligence agency ASIO from the Department of Homes Affairs to the Attorney-General’s Department, announced on Sunday, may not be something that gets political commentators excited. Yet it was an important recalibration of our security architecture that will be greatly welcomed by national security professionals.
That remained the position for the next 70 years. Ironically, the only time an attempt was made to remove ASIO from the responsibility of the attorney-general was by Harry Whitlam’s son, in November 1975. But a lot was going on just then, and the plan lapsed with the end of the Whitlam government. When Malcolm Turnbull overthrew Abbott in 2015, Pezzullo saw his chance to relitigate the issue, enlisting his new minister Peter Dutton as his ally. The next two years saw, behind the scenes, a ruthless power struggle in which good public policy was thwarted by empire-building and megalomania. Public service codes of conduct were violated, judgment was sacrificed to ambition, and the warnings of Australia’s most senior national security professionals were wilfully disregarded.
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