The Saturday Paper has obtained details of a private address former attorney-general George Brandis gave to ASIO on February 7. Brandis acknowledged, and effectively endorsed, fears already in the agency that changes to Australia’s security structures, in particular the new Home Affairs Department, could place operations at risk of political interference, writes Karen Middleton.
Brandis is reported to have quoted from a speech given by Home Affairs Department Secretary Michael Pezzullo which he stated: “How we do things today is not going to be … how we will need to do things tomorrow. The state has to embed itself invisibly into global networks and supply chains, and the virtual realm, in a seamless and largely invisible fashion, intervening on the basis of intelligence and risk settings, increasingly at super scale and at very high volumes.”
Plus: Paul Bongiorno on Barnaby Joyce’s siege, and Maxine Beneba Clarke on Black History Month.
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The Saturday Paper
