Nothing sinister in this good-news development

IT is good news that Japan is building a foreign intelligence service and that the previous Labor government offered Australia’s assistance in training its personnel.

Almost every considerable nation has a foreign intelligence service, and there is no reason why Japan should not be like other nations.

Of course, the foreign intelligence services are the most discreet of all agencies, dealing as they do in human intelligence provided by foreign agents motivated by money or ideological concern at their government’s actions.

Japan is located in northeast Asia, in one of the most strategically challenging regions in the world, always half under threat from North Korea and increasingly jostled by an ever more ­assertive China.

It is natural Japan would look to Australia for expertise in how to establish such an organisation and how to train its operatives.

That this training was approved by the previous Labor government indicates it cannot possibly be construed as some kind of pro-Japan ideological excess of the Abbott government.

This is similar to the spying by the Australian Signals Directorate on the former Indonesian president and his wife, which also took place under the former Labor government.

In truth, Japan has been an intelligence partner of Australia for some time. The heart of Western intelligence is the so-called five eyes arrangements, which involve the US, Canada, Britain, Australia and New Zealand.

These arrangements govern signals intelligence. Each one of the partners gathers signals intelligence on a specific part of the world, and on specific intelligence targets, and fully shares the intelligence with the others, although NZ was partly excluded after it left the Anzus Treaty in 1986.

As the US expanded its global military alliance system after World War II, some military allies beyond the five eyes countries joined the arrangement to a greater or lesser degree. This included allies such as Germany and Japan.

Although Japan does not have an external intelligence agency as such, it does engage in a great deal of signals intelligence. In intimate co-operation with the US, it keeps a great deal of maritime traffic in the Pacific under observation.

It engages in electronic listening in on China, just as China engages in electronic listening on it.

There is nothing sinister about this. Japan, sensitive to the history of its World War II aggressions, is extremely discreet about it all, but no one in the intelligence business will be greatly surprised Canberra is willing to provide intelligence training to Tokyo.