Dangerous lack of intelligence

Illustration: Eric Lobbecke

When Duncan Lewis, now director-general of ASIO, was a young, new soldier in 1972, he was spat on in Canberra’s Garema Place by a protester who didn’t like Australian government policy at that time.

He surely could not have expected that more than 45 years later a retired and, on one side of politics, revered, former prime minister would metaphorically repeat the gesture, fundamentally one of contempt and disrespect.

But that is just what Paul Keating did when he declared that our intelligence agencies were run by “nutters” who had “gone berko” over China, “lost their strategic bearings” and were running Australian foreign policy.

These insulting, profoundly irres­ponsible, almost deranged comments from Keating deserve further interrogation.

But first it’s important to acknowledge that perhaps the most significant comments on China from a Labor politician this week were not Keating’s but those of legal affairs spokesman Mark Dreyfus.

He confirmed that Labor would maintain the ban on Huawei and other Chinese companies from participating in Australia’s 5G network. Dreyfus said: “Labor has no intention of revisiting the 5G decision.”

That is an important commitment by Labor, and demonstrates again the superiority of the strategic judgment of Labor politicians who have to grapple with the real demands of office, as opposed to former politicians who grapple ever more intensely with their own legends.

Keating’s astonishing comments on our intelligence and security agency heads have not got the scrutiny they deserve, partly because the Morrison government is so fast asleep on these issues and has no functioning defence or foreign minister.

Who, exactly, are the “nutters” Keating was talking about?

Perhaps he meant Nick Warner, head of the Office of National Intelligence. A legendary figure, he was appointed to run the Australian Secret Intelligence Service by Kevin Rudd. He was a successful high commissioner in Papua New Guinea and saved lives and regional stability when he led the dangerous stabilisation mission in Solomon Islands. But I understand his knowledge of French clocks is paltry.

Or Keating might have been referring to David Irvine, the chairman of the Foreign Investment Review Board. He was appointed by Rudd to run ASIO and then by John Howard to run ASIS. Like Warner, he had been a good high commissioner in Port Moresby and had done multiple tours in Jakarta — he wrote a book about Indonesian wayang theatre. He was a very effective ambassador in Beijing. I first met him in Beijing in 1985, when he was already deputy ambassador. The ambassador at the time was ill for a lengthy period and Irvine stepped into the role brilliantly. He was known as a good-humoured workhorse who never lost his cool.

Like most of the “nutters” Keating was apparently referring to, Irvine never took the Paris option and knows Asia infinitely better than Keating does. Almost all the alleged nutters had senior appointments from Labor prime ministers. Lewis, for example, was appointed head of the Defence Department under Labor.

Or perhaps Keating meant Mike Burgess of the Australian Signals Directorate. Burgess had been Telstra’s chief information security officer. He could probably earn a lot more in private enterprise than working for the government.

Like the other “nutters” who’ve gone “berko” and apparently hijacked Australian foreign policy, he seems to have a devotion to national service.

Keating’s frankly grotesque attack on our agencies and their integrity rightly led the news for a day but was not subject to the scrutiny and evaluation it should have got. Commentators were loath to criticise the Labor legend, especially on the ABC. It was all regarded as a bit of fun. Imagine the reaction if Howard described a class of public servants, prevented by statute from defending themselves, as nutters who’d gone berko. Those figures on the social democratic Left who claim they are all about respect need to practise respect as well as demanding respect.

The Morrison government made nothing of this issue and its failure was a failure in principle and a dismal failure politically. Contrast the fate of former Labor leader Mark Latham. Latham’s popularity began to slide when the public began to doubt his national security reliability. An opening was spotted by Alexander Downer, a foreign minister of immense policy authority and reliable political skills, who worked assiduously on the electorate’s doubts about Latham.

In contrast, Morrison chose the almost criminally silent Marise Payne as foreign minister so there would be no issues and no trouble in the portfolio. He thereby sacrificed a critical structural advantage for the Coalition. The most sensitive of all our agencies, ASIS, reports to Payne. So where was she when it was attacked by Keating, making Labor wear some of the political and moral responsibility for this? As usual, she was in hiding. Morrison should have moved heaven and earth to keep Julie Bishop.

Keating’s remarks are important in several other ways. It was not so long ago Australian society and politics were bitterly polarised over the role and integrity of our national security and intelligence agencies. For many decades now these agencies and their political masters on both sides have striven to make sure they are scrupulously nonpartisan. They give the best advice they can and governments take the decisions.

It is extraordinarily dangerous to politicise these institutions or to allege they are politicised. Further, one debilitating sickness in our culture is the way a sizeable chunk of people live in a dark digital fantasy of sprawling conspiracies. Keating’s foolish and irresponsible comments will reinforce every conspiracy fantasy of both the Left and the Right regarding the intelligence agencies.

Then there is the broader question of Keating’s judgment. Keating, who was certainly in foreign policy a successful and energetic prime minister, holds himself out today as a great strategic seer, a wise man of the ages. In fact, although he has been greatly flattered in the past 20 years by the Chinese, his knowledge of much of Asia is narrow and limited, certainly much less than the people he dismisses as nutters.

You can spend a lot of time in Asia and not learn much if you stick always to the same group of people. If you mix only in trade circles you think everything is exclusively about trade. If Keating spent a week with the national security establishments of Delhi, Tokyo, Seoul, Singapore, Manila and many other regional capitals he would hear many of the same assessments of Beijing’s behaviour, and many of the same concerns, as you hear in Canberra. All these nations and others too have had their times in the metaphorical doghouse in their relations with Beijing.

Beijing would love nothing more than for Australians to conclude it is not Beijing’s intellectual property theft, cyber intrusions, political interference, occupation and militarisation of the South China Sea, etc, that has led to difficulties in the Beijing-Canberra relationship, but rather some eccentric misjudgment by the nutters who run our intelligence and security agencies. That a Labor legend abets them in this enterprise is a disgrace and a tragedy.