What really gets my goat, however, is that despite its ballooning headcount, ASIO seems unable to provide security assessments of asylum seekers in anything approximating a timely manner.

While it is unclear how long Jayasaker Jayrathana, a Sri Lankan Tamil refugee who died in an apparent suicide at Villawood last night had been waiting for ASIO to cast its runes and read its top-secret tea leaves, it is known that average security clearance times continue to rise to 66 days as of early 2011.

We, obviously, don’t know the personal history of this man. And the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Elam had a rich history of war crimes and terrorism behind them. However, a key word here is “had”. They no longer exist. Virtually all of their senior leadership is, apparently, dead. Nor have they been involved in terrorist attacks in Australia or elsewhere in the developed world (though they have apparently raised funds through various criminal and very unsavoury means).

Given all that, it is rather hard to imagine how this individual posed such a risk to the Australian community that he couldn’t be let out – at least temporarily – while the investigation continued.

But perhaps I’m being too harsh on ASIO. It may well be that the government is demanding a certainty about the past life of asylum seekers that no intelligence agency could realistically provide. Intelligence agencies don’t do certainties, and expecting it from them is a recipe for endless delay at the very least.

If this were any other government agency, they would be dragged through the coals of parliamentary committees where the nexus between a massively expanded budget, awful service delivery times, and the effects of government policy on those two matters could be properly scrutinized. But because the government agency of interest is ASIO, the major parties Will Not Discuss These Very Serious Matters.

It’s an outrage.

Apparently, ASIO’s role in economic espionage and counter-espionage is to be stretched so broadly that the catch-all of “national security” can no longer always be applied:

The just-passed Intelligence Services Legislation Amendment Bill 2011 features a number of clauses, but the change of most interest is the change to Section 27(b) of the ASIO Act, which you can read the current text of here. The bill’s explanatory memorandum puts the change as follows:

Section 27B provides the circumstances in which the Attorney-General may issue an authorisation for foreign intelligence collection. Currently, paragraph 27B(b) provides that the Attorney-General must be satisfied, on the basis of advice received from the relevant Minister, that the collection of foreign intelligence relating to that matter is important in relation to the defence of the Commonwealth or to the conduct of the Commonwealth’s international affairs.

This item will amend this condition so that the authorising Minister may authorise the collection of foreign intelligence if satisfied, on the basis of advice received from the Defence Minister or the Foreign Affairs Minister, that the collection of foreign intelligence relating to that matter is in the interests of Australia’s national security, Australia’s foreign relations or Australia’s national economic well-being. The new conditions recognise the broader nature of the contemporary threat environment.

One possibility is this section is to deal with China’s rather blatant, often relatively unsophisticated, but still effective attempts at economic espionage. One can only presume that Australian businesses are being similarly targeted. Monitoring and discouraging such activities does seem reasonable for ASIO to be involved with, on the face of it.

But, then again, wouldn’t monitoring and curtailment of economic espionage by a foreign power – or even groups or individual one might reasonably suspect to be operating with the connivance of a foreign power – fall within the remit of “national security”? Heck, Wikipedia quotes any number of prominent people (mostly Americans, admittedly) whose definitions explicitly include economic factors.

But for some reason it’s not enough, and we’re left with a definition giving the Minister incredibly broad powers to authorize spying if they think it advances Australia’s economic interests – or even plausibly claim that it might do so. And both major parties think that’s just fine.

It’s not like ASIO has a shortage of things to do. For instance, it might consider pulling its finger out and processing the backlog of hundreds of asylum seekers stuck in limbo while ASIO figures out whether they’re terrorists or not.

Well, here’s an idea. Let’s take these poor sods – who’ve been sitting in Gitmo for seven years for no good reason – as a simple matter of humanity. To keep the nervous Nellies amongst the Tories happy, let’s use some of the 1500 ASIO agents Australia now employs – to be 1800 by next year, triple what it was back in 1996 – to keep an eye on them in the unlikely event one of them does pose a threat. Perhaps they could could spare some of the agents who clearly don’t have enough to do, given their interest in chatting to people holding up banners outside coal-fired power stations (as discussed by Senator Scott Ludlam in Senate Estimates recently)?

Defence heads have ordered an investigation into claims departmental officials conducted covert inquiries into their minister Joel Fitzgibbon. The unnamed officials investigated the defence minister’s association with a Chinese-born Sydney businesswoman and whether it constituted a security risk. Defence force head Angus Houston and departmental secretary Nick Warner have ordered the inquiry, AAP has been told…

Former senior defence official Alan Behm said it was not standard procedure for a department to investigate its minister. Any such inquiry would have to be authorised through the prime minister’s office and be conducted through proper channels, he said. “Whenever you have a situation where a department appears to act unilaterally … investigating the affairs of its minister, then there is a total breakdown in trust.”

Whether we think it civilized behaviour or not, foreign intelligence agencies will attempt to gain access to stuff our government tries to keep secret; we return the favour. And it’s pretty standard operating procedure for intelligence agencies to attempt to gain information by using people with family ties to the country concerned. And, by definition, the Defence Minister is going to know all sorts of secret stuff other governments want to know. Given all of that, on the face of it it’s not unreasonable to look into whether a Defence Minister’s close friend is, wittingly or unwittingly, being used by a foreign government to obtain some of that information.

But – as well as the point that under the circumstances the PM’s office should surely have been informed, shouldn’t this have been a job primarily for ASIO and, perhaps, ASIS?

UPDATE: According to departmental secretary Nick Warner, neither he nor Angus Houston had any knowledge of the allegations. He has ordered an investigation into the alleged investigation. Oh, to be a fly on the wall at the Defence Department…

As the article reports, Animal Liberation were breaking the law to conduct “open rescues”:

Despite the doubts, Andrew remained active enough to be part of a midnight raid on a battery hen farm at Wallan in June. The raid, or “open rescue” as the animal activists call it, saved 14 hens from a cruel death in excrement pits – which have no food or water – beneath their cages.

Andrew played an important role. He dived into the excrement pit and saved several hens, including one given the name Martha, who weighed only 400 grams instead of a healthy 1.8 kilograms.

Yes, they were breaking and entering. But, if this was the worst that Animal Liberation was getting up to, at the very least this is a huge waste of police resources.

If activist groups show signs of planning serious crimes, that is of course an appropriate target for police investigation. Whichever government organization was responsible for getting an undercover officer in with Benbrika’s hotheads was clearly doing the right thing by doing so. But despite the claims by the Victoria Police that the bad old days are over, these examples smell a little like the police playing at being spies on largely harmless groups for no particularly good reason. And, to give Red Ted Baillieu credit, he’s actually demonstrated some small-l liberal credentials by at least asking what safeguards are in place to prevent inappropriate surveillance.

So, own up, LP readers. Which one of you is the undercover cop?

Out of the trial, there are a number of issues raised, including the extraordinarily harsh conditions the then-accused were kept in, and Robert McLelland not keeping his mouth shut while the jury was still deliberating on one of the cases.

But equally important to consider is what the defendants were actually convicted on. As their solicitor, Rob Stary, put it:

We’ve invested enormous powers to the policing agencies and the intelligence community, there’s no review of this process, got to remember that these men were convicted not of committing, or not planning to commit a specific terrorist act, but talking generally in jihadist ideological terms.

That “talking generally in jihadist ideological terms” involved discussing how murdering random Australians was just peachy. That said, however repugnant it might be, the defence appears to be right in that Benbrika and his followers had no specific plan to perform a terrorist attack on any particular target. But the law doesn’t require that. Anti-terrorism Bill Number 2, 2005, rushed through just before the arrest of the men in 2005, broadened the definition of a “terrorist organization” significantly, to include the general advocacy of terrorist acts, without there needing to be such a specific plan.

While the 2005 legislative amendments were undoubtedly necessary to convict the men based on their actions to that date, it’s important to take a step back. Was it really necessary to protect the community from terrorist attack? In this case, you’d have to wonder. The very need to change the law to broaden the scope of “terrorist organization” beyond those actually planning a specific attack makes clear that they hadn’t begun to plan such an attack; if indeed they ever really would have (or could have).

The group was under constant surveillance by police. Their phones were tapped, their homes were bugged, and one of their confidantes was actually an under cover police officer (or possibly an ASIO employee). They weren’t going to fart, let alone plan an actual terrorist attack, without the entire Australian law enforcement community knowing about it. If they had started to plan a specific attack, Rob Stary argues that they could have then been arrested, charged, and tried then, and it’s hard to find fault with his logic on his point. More generally, it’s hard to think of any situation where such legislation would be necessary to prevent a terrorist attack. If it comes to the attention of police or ASIO that a group has some rather nasty general intentions, but haven’t turned those into contrete plans, all that’s required is to keep an eye on such people until they move from talking to acting. That’s obviously going to tie up substantial police resources. But haven’t we spent an enormous amount of money providing such substantial police resources?

I suppose there is always a risk that such a group might give police the slip; furthermore, the law as it stands might be a useful tool in convincing somebody to be an informant. But none of those seem to apply in this case.

So we’re no closer to an answer. Why was this legislation passed in such an unseemly rush back in 2005? And, more pertinently, is it actually necessary to “protect the community” now?

UPDATE: Tim Dunlop on the Attorney-General’s big mouth.