ASIO

This Master's dissertation explores the context in which the Royal Commission on Intelligence and Security, 1974-1977 came to be. The Whitlam government wanted to reform the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO) so as to depoliticise it and make it more effective in combating genuine threats to the state, including global terrorism. In early 1973 the Government's reform was stalled as a result of the Attorney-General's raid on ASIO offices. The Prime Minister announced in late 1973 that an inquiry into ASIO would arise at some point. The Australian Labor Party took the idea of a judicial inquiry into Australia's intelligence and security apparatus to the 1974 election. Within weeks of returning to office the Whitlam government decided to launch the Royal Commission. The Royal Commission's terms of reference ensured that an intelligence apparatus would continue to be available to the Commonwealth. Labor had decided to keep ASIO prior to the 1972 election. This was despite it experiencing two decades of ASIO's ideological partisanship, which had consequences for Labor. Such a decision was not inconsistent with its history, having been an anti-communist party from the 1920s and responsible for ASIO's creation in 1949. The decision to erect the Royal Commission was also widely supported by major Australian newspapers. When the Royal Commission finished in 1977 a lasting bipartisan consensus on ASIO was emerging.

This thesis is a case study of the Australian anti Communist W. C. Wentworth. His wide range of associations and interests makes Wentworth an ideal subject. It will examine his anti-Communism and the various ways it manifested itself in his thoughts, policies and actions over his long political career. This study of Wentworth also sheds light on the broader spectrum of anti-Communist politics in the Cold War period in Australia.

Introduction – W. C Wentworth: Australian Anti-Communist

Chapter I – Defence, Survival and the Arsenals of the Free World

Chapter II – Nuclear Nation: Atomic power and weapons in Australian defence

Chapter III – Evatt, Émigrés and External Enemies:
Wentworth and Foreign Affairs

Chapter IV – Ensuring Loyalty and Security: McCarthyism, Legislation and ASIO

Chapter V – Reds Amongst Blacks: Wentworth and Aboriginal Affairs

Conclusion – Australian Cold Warrior

Whilst the links between Communists and Aboriginal activism have often been alluded to, there has been no attempt to analyse systematically the impact of anti-Communism on Aboriginal activism.  This article seeks to explore this influence by placing Aboriginal affairs in a Cold War context, concentrating on the 1960s and early 1970s.  It will examine the policies and actions of key individuals and organisations including Charles Perkins; the Office of Aboriginal Affairs and its Director, Barrie Dexter; the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation; and, particularly, the prominent Australian Cold Warrior, W. C. Wentworth.  This examination will reveal that anti-Communism had a significant impact on Aboriginal affairs, which manifested itself in a variety of ways.

Lachlan Clohesy, 'Fighting the Enemy Within: Anti-Communism and Aboriginal Affairs', History Australia, vol. 8, no. 2, August 2011, pp. 128-52.

Review of the documentary 'I, Spry: The Rise and Fall of a Master Spy' by Peter Butt.

The documentary concerns the early years of the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation, focusing on its Director-General, Charles Spry.

Lachlan Clohesy, 'I, Spry: The Rise and Fall of a Master Spy', Labour History, no. 101, November 2011, pp. 254-5.

This paper examines the relationship between the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO) and the former Liberal member for Mackellar, W. C. Wentworth. It will show how, for over more than twenty years, a Liberal member of Government was able to request and receive security information; arrange interviews between private citizens and ASIO officers; and request and receive personal briefings for himself on political enemies. This paper will also argue that Wentworth was able to wield ASIO as a weapon in his fight against Communism.

Lachlan Clohesy, 'Cold War Collusion: ASIO and W. C. Wentworth' in Oliver, Bobbie (ed.), Labour History in the New Century, Black Swan Press, Perth, 2009, pp. 121-31.

In 1982 the Church of Scientology lost an important legal case in the High Court of Australia (Church of Scientology v Woodward) in which they sought to take legal recourse against the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (A.S.I.O.), Australia’s domestic national security service, for its alleged campaign against them.  This case, which became an important test case in the history of Australian legal debate regarding the accountability of intelligence agencies, was the culmination of nearly thirty years of interactions between Scientology and A.S.I.O as well as other international security and intelligence organizations.  One year later, however, the Archives Act 1983 was passed, which facilitated the declassification of Cabinet and intelligence files following a thirty-year period.  While A.S.I.O. was initially reluctant to release any files, beginning in early 2000s the National Archives of Australia began releasing the A.S.I.O files relating to Scientology dating back to the mid-1950s.  This paper will seek to given an overview of the content and historical context of these files, situating the surveillance of Scientology within A.S.I.O.’s wider ambit of combatting subversion and perceived threats to the Australian state over the Cold War period.  It will also examine what, if any, role A.S.I.O. played in the legislative restrictions on Scientology in Victoria (1965), South Australia (1968) and Western Australia (1968), all of which have since been overturned.

Review of a combative study of the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO). This book argues that ASIO has, since its formation in 1949, acted as a partisan political 'police' force, ridden roughshod over civil liberties, engaged in illegal activities, all with the aim of creating and managing a compliant, docile citizenry.

In 1970 the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO) identified the ideas of Antonio Gramsci as one of the root causes of dissent, opposition and cultural ferment. This document is an example of ASIO’s concern about Marxist intellectuals and their Gramscian links.

After the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, it was inevitable that governments across the world would re-examine their security laws and the powers of their law enforcement and intelligence organisations. In the United States, the Bush Administration pushed through Congress the United States Patriot Act, which empowered the government to detain an ‘enemy combatant’ (either an alien or an American citizen) indefinitely, without having to lay charges, hold a committal hearing or provide access to legal counsel. The FBI was thereby authorised to undertake covert investigations without having to furnish reasonable evidence of planned or actual illegality, regaining powers that were taken from it by Congress thirty years ago.
In the wake of the BaIi bombing on 12 October 2002, which caused the greatest loss of Australian life in a single event since the Second World War, it was easy to forget that the Howard Government began striving to endow the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO) with similar powers to that conferred on the FBI almost immediately following the events of September 11. It formulated legislation that would enable ASIO, for the first time in its history, to arrest citizens and hold them, incommunicado and deprived of legal assistance for forty-eight hours, without charge for up to seven days and deprived of the right to silence during interrogation.
This article explores historical precedents for expanding the powers of ASIO and its predecessors, the Counter-Espionage Bureau and the Commonwealth Investigation Branch, and warns of the kinds of untoward consequences of this expansion that can be expected in contemporary times.

This brief paper considers the political and social implications of the manner in which Australia has prosecuted the so-called 'war on terror'. It does this by investigating relevant aspects of Australia's antiterrorism legislation and the performance of Australian security and law enforcement agencies, namely, the Australian Security and Intelligence Organisation (ASIO) and the Australian Federal Police (AFP). Focusing on the Haneef and Ul-Haque cases, the paper will consider how the political climate created by the former Federal Government's legislative approach to the war on terror has influenced the performance of these organisations. By focusing on these two cases, the paper will demonstrate how racial, ethnic and religious stereotyping have informed and shaped Australia's conduct of the war on terror. It will investigate the real potential for social division, and heightened national insecurity, that flows from the use and propagation of these stereotypes. The paper will also highlight the unfairness and prejudice that are inherent to racial and religious stereotyping. Finally, the paper will consider whether the Rudd Labor Government's approach thus far to the war on terror differs in any significant measure from that of its predecessor and evaluate the prospects for real, progressive change.