ASIO: Licensed to trill

Fans of the spy genre may have registered the recent horrid revelations of an Australian (or anti-Australian, I suppose) spy ring running riot in our fair cities.

In his annual threat assessment, ASIO head Mike Burgess seeks to make our flesh creep by describing "The A-Team" … "The team is aggressive and experienced; its tradecraft is good – but not good enough. ASIO and our partners have been able to map out its activities and identify its members."

Last year’s spies were known as "the Hive" and the year before that was "the Nest". ASIO’s $514 million budget obviously includes several hotshot brand executives.

Notably, last year the baddies had a partial win: “… the A-team successfully cultivated and recruited a former Australian politician. This politician sold out their country, party and former colleagues to advance the interests of the foreign regime”. 

As usual, we’ll have to take Mike’s word as to the depravity of this despicable traitor. Their name is, I fear, something that I could be arrested for trying to find out.

There’s no suggestion that Burgess’s claims are going to be tested in a court. ASIO has only ever brought down one malefactor through judicial proceedings – Sunny Duong, a Melbourne tombstone maker who was attempting to undermine all that is good and true in our society by donating $37,000 to the Royal Melbourne Hospital.

This was ruled to be an illegitimate attempt to influence a politician (Liberal Mike Tudge) and Duong got a two-and-a-bit-year (12 months after parole) sentence for it. Cheap at the price, really.

To be fair, the Australian Federal Police did get another case into the courts recently, and if it wasn’t for that spoilsport of a judge finding that that the AFP had actively radicalised a 13-year-old autistic boy in order to gain evidence to prosecute him there might have been a further run on the board for our intrepid security services.

As for the rest, ASIO prefers to stay out of the courts, relying instead on moral suasion, just quietly letting the A-Team or the Hive or the Nest know that we’re on to them (“my officer revealed himself and declared, “We know who you are. We know what you are doing. Stop it or there will be further consequences”) resulting, apparently, in their retreating foiled, baffled, and twirling their mustachios (it may help to imagine those lines in the voice of Sean Connery).

It’s always a fine balance between ASIO seeking more funding by scaring us with stories of all the bad actors out there and ASIO doing the same by reassuring us that they can stop nearly all of them. The agency does have the advantage, however, that whatever the actual figure of spies, terrorists, or suspicious tombstones hitting the media, it can claim without contradiction (and without evidence) that it would all have been much worse ($1 billion worse! $2 billion!) without ASIO’s skilled supervision.

In this case, though, it’s not easy to see why the politician concerned shouldn’t answer for their crimes, except that if the matter ever did reach court the defence might bring up points such as these:

• An Australian politician knew something important? Are you kidding me? How many inquiries have we had that concluded that ministers, even, didn’t read the briefing papers they signed, didn’t understand the significance of the advice they were given, and didn’t remember the most upper-case, underlined and italicised conclusions a week later? Your average backbencher, meanwhile, has never been briefed on anything more telling than changes in bus routes.

• Is it really credible that a foreign government could benefit from listening to an Australian politician bending their ear on such topics as “the factional dynamics of his party, analysis of a recent election and the names of up-and-comers” rather than waiting for them to spill exactly the same terminally inaccurate scuttlebutt on public television?

More seriously, any ASIO head that really attempted to make Australian politicians suffer from accepting deniable kickbacks such as conference fees, consultancies and study tours would meet a united front across all parties demanding a closer examination of what exactly we were getting for our annual $500 million.

It’s important to be precise on these matters, because we have to distinguish between what we do, which is to come down heavily on academics, politicians and reporters who are passing on information (however seemingly innocent) that the government doesn’t want released, and what the Chinese do, which is come down heavily on academics, politicians and reporters who are passing on information (however seemingly innocent) that the government doesn’t want released.

We must retain the moral high ground.

Denis Moriarty is group managing director of OurCommunity.com.au, a social enterprise that helps Australia's 600,000 not-for-profits.