‘Stretched’ ASIO struggles to advise our security partners

ASIO warns it’s falling short in intelligence collection and providing advice.

Former ASIO director-general Duncan Lewis warned the service didn’t have sufficient funding to fully meet its performance expectations. Picture: Kym Smith

ASIO has warned the Morrison government it is falling short in intelligence collection and providing advice to security partners on countering foreign spies and interference threats.

In the agency’s 2018-19 annual report, former ASIO director-general Duncan Lewis warned the service didn’t have sufficient funding to fully meet its performance expectations.

He said the nation’s elevated terrorist threat and “unprecedented” foreign interference and espionage had significantly increased ASIO’s workload, “which is stretching current resources”.

“With the terrorist threat showing no signs of significantly decreasing, ASIO has limited scope to redirect internal resources to address the increasing gap between demand for our counter-espionage and foreign interference advice, and our ability to furnish this assistance,” Mr Lewis said.

The report, tabled in parliament on Wednesday, said “high-tempo” counter-terrorism and counter-espionage operations had limited ASIO’s ability in 2018-19 “to meet the foreign intelligence collection requirements of Australia’s foreign intelligence agencies”.

It said the foreign intelligence operations mounted by the agency had yielded “valuable and unique intelligence”.

But the “partially achieved” performance target “acknowledges that we were unable to progress other collection operations requested by partners”.

It said ASIO was also under-achieving in its ability to provide advice to government and industry on tackling spying and foreign interference, saying its capacity to meet the expectations of partners “is being outstripped by demand”.

The report said new foreign interference and espionage laws introduced last year had caused some foreign intelligence services to reassess the risks of their clandestine operations in Australia.

However, it warned “most capable foreign intelligence services” would adapt their behaviour to circumvent the new legislation.

The report said Australians returning from overseas conflicts would also present a long-term threat to the nation’s security “as travellers to the Soviet-Afghan war did in decades past”.

In one case study, ASIO said it had identified an Australian government employee with a security clearance who had been in “ongoing contact with foreign intelligence services”. The government worker was employed in an area of interest to foreign spies and was subsequently stripped of their security clearance.

The report said Australia’s security environment was forecast to become more complex and more uncertain, fuelling demands for ASIO’s advice.

“ASIO will need to build new capability and capacity to meet current and future demand for our trusted advice and expertise,” it said.

ASIO’s sister agency, the Australian Signals Directorate, warned in its annual report tabled on Wednesday that “persistent cyber operations” posed significant threats to Australia’s national security and economic prosperity.

ASD said its cyber security functions “have never been more important”, with the targeting of organisations for intellectual property, personal data, government and defence information.