Gary

I think your Labor leanings are making you overly sympathetic to Fitzgibbon, the local boy from Cessnock.

Defence may continually make the wrong choices in acquisitions but having a second-rate Minister makes things worse.

It is quite a stretch to use the word "competent" when applied to Fitzgibbon. He does not have the necessary knowledge or experience to understand the foreiign policy and technological nuances of his vast portfolio. Fitzgibbon has demonstrated poor leadership and management skills by continually alienating himself from his subordinates in Defence. They simply don't think he's up to it and they are right.

Hiding his Chinese paid trips simply reinforces that he shows poor judgement and poor ethics.

The reasons Fitzgibbon scored this Cabinet post are not related to merit.

Pete

Well said, Pete. Rudd has clearly shown his disregard for the defence of Australia by not sacking the Minister.

I look forward to the day when the military have to hold a fete to raise funds for their next toy and Education receives an adequate budget allocation.
For too long the outrageous waste of public money purchasing out of date and dud equipment has been allowed to continue unchecked.
Their time is up.

A refreshingly succinct, pertinent and balanced piece by Gary Brown. Outstanding.

Funny that someone else can claim to know "national security interest" while apparently boasting of descent from an English monarch.

Brown is correct in calling Turnbull and his craven lackies on this: the very security interest of this country is deeply compromised when such a vast and powerful organization has no accountability or control from the more diverse body politic. Corruption unspoken is corruption unchallenged - a sure victory for criminals.

Lose on this and you lose the region and the country, for a long time.

I would agree with plantagenet that Fitzgibbon's record so far is not one of stellar competence.

I am not in favour of anyone having their life poked into, however, as minister of defense with access to the highest level of security, I would have thought to completely escape scrutiny would be naive. (especially after the Blunt and Philby affairs in the UK)

As the quoted spying into his laptop etc now appears to have been a fabrication by the media, I don't see any evidence of untoward action by the department.

Fitzgibbon knowly lying about his "gifts" displays a level of dishonesty that put Einfelt behind bars for 2 years. However, as a labor MP this appears to be par for the course.

We can console ourselves that it was at least not the paedophilia or outright corruption of NSW labor.

Excellent Gary, your article really goes to the crux of the debate into the deeply disturbing actions by the Department of Defence.

One has to ask why was such an investigation instigated by DOD, who authorised it and did DSD breach their own mandated limit to foreign signal interception? If ASIO does not perceive Ms Liu as a risk why should DOD?

If indeed Mr Fitzgibbon has a case to answer to there is already a very definitive process in place to advise the Prime Minister.

In any case, a review will determine whether DSD had anything to do with the hacking into Mr Fitzgibbon's IT systems.

The preposterous suggestion by the opposition for a democratically elected MP to resign in the face of lack of support from his department is overwhelmingly potent in it's failure to address the core issues. Are we now to be governed by bureacrats in absentia (separate from Parliament). Political gamesmanship at the expense of principle may ulimately work against Turnbull to his regret.

The actions by DOD against Mr Fitzgibbon's attempts to seek reform of a highly dysfunctional department is at the heart of this issue.

A side issue but relevant - if even a government Minister is subject to this kind of scrutiny and undermining campaign, imagine the plight of a lowly potential whistleblower. This is why the findings of the recent Inquiry into Whistleblowing was disappointing in it's recommendation that whistleblowers first course of action is to approach senior management within the offending department in the first instance. This fails to address the risks to one's career with such a move if the intention is to whitewash and demonise the reporter rather than the perpetrators. An independent agency is desperately required to handle reports from whistleblowers. This government looked promising with it's claim to seek greater transparecny within government but I fear it will be more of the same.

Perhaps the Fitzgibbon experience will bring home the very real need to rethink the protection of whistleblowers.

Gary,
Your first sentence is very disturbing:
"The suggestion that the Defence Department's Defence Signals Directorate (DSD) has "spied" on the Minister for Defence, Joel Fitzgibbon, is deeply disturbing."

It disturbs me that you would be disturbed by a 'suggestion'.
A suggestion can be repudiated and therefore can be explained away.
Suggestions cause congestion and that means it is hard to swallow in digesting your meaning.

"In our system of government ministers must resign if they lose the confidence of the House of Representatives. Departments are responsible to ministers, not vice versa, and ministers are responsible to the House."

Hear Hear! I have no particular love for Fitzgibbon (and he'll have to take his lumps for not declaring his free plane tickets), but isn't it funny that this sort of leak happened when a Department opposed what a Minister was doing.

Turnbull's implication that Ministers must resign because they lose the confidence of their Department goes utterly against the concept of the civil control of the armed forces. He should be ashamed for suggesting it. He could easily attack Fitzgibbon politically *without* attacking the entire basis of Parliamentary democracy.

Hi Pelican

You asked

"did DSD breach their own mandated limit to foreign signal interception?"

Basically your question is based on an incorrect assumption.

Contrary to popular belief DSD is not limited in that way. Under Subsection 8(1) of the Intelligence Services Act 2001:

"The responsible Minister in relation to ...DSD, must issue a written direction under this subsection to the head of [DSD]. The direction must: (a) require the agency to obtain an authorisation under section 9 from the Minister before: ...undertaking an activity, ... for the specific purpose,...of producing intelligence on an Australian person" see http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/legis/cth/consol_act/isa2001216/s8.html

So DSD can spy on specific Australian citizens if Fitzgibbon so directs it.

But Fitzgibbon would not direct DSD to spy on himself or any other [Labor] politicians as placing Governing politicians within the Law would shatter the very porcelain of the Westminster System. Isn't that the point?

"If ASIO does not perceive Ms Liu as a risk why should DOD?"

ASIO is a central analytical agency (amongst other things) but it is not the only analytical agency. ONA, AGs, DFAT, PM&C the AFP and to some degree DSD do analysis as well. Hence in 2007 Haneef's imprisonment largely rested on the AFP's (and probably PM&C's) analysis that Haneef was a threat to national security. Note that ASIO had a differing view - that he wasn't a threat - but ASIO's view appears to have been disregarded as inconvenient.

But it can go the reverse way ASIO can jump to conclusions (say way back in the early 1980s - Combe-Ivanov Affair).

Basically most politicians seek the advice they want to hear from whichever intelligence or policy agency best backs up their presumptions.

Peter Coates
http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=8065

It seems tp me that it should be possible for concerns about the activities of Fitzgibbon to be investigated but that process needs some control around it. Perhaps it's something that should be authorised by the Govenor General if a security agency is able to convince the GG that sufficient cause for that exists. Whilst the GG appointments are often political the GG's themselves often seem to have risen beyond the circumstances of their appointment.

I don't think the fact the trips to China occured while Fitzgibbon was in opposition remove the issue as a concern. The fact that he had not declared gifts of that magnitude potentially compromised him as he was still subject to the political fallout of having that omission exposed.

R0bert

I hope Joel Fitzgibbon intends to repudiate the missile 'defence' system promoted by the Bush regime and the fighter aircraft that were apparently obsolete before we were to take delivery.
Perhaps the scrapping of the 'defence shield' proposal may have prompted Turnbull to raise the yellow peril bogeyman and his interest in Joel's associations with Ms Liu.

Will he be after Penny Wong's scalp next as an agent of China in her drive to reduce carbon emissions or maybe a drive to sabotage our rice growing industry by depriving it of water ?

The prospect of losing these toys would most surely raised the ire of
the hawks in our Defence Department to encourage them to take steps to have him dismissed in favour of someone more amenable to their culture.

Peter
My understanding is that the initial interception has to be made on foreign soil. If a POI arrives on Australian soil (Australian citizen or foreigner) then another agency takes over the investigative process. If the Act did allow for local investigation by DSD then as you say it has to be under Ministerial direction or approval. Hardly likely to come from Fitzgibbon himself in this case.

You might find this link of interest:

http://www.igis.gov.au/inquiries/docs/Brereton_2003.pdf

As far as analysis goes, AGs and PM&C take more of an oversight role and involve themselves with policy matters and I am not aware of any analysis or investigative role in the context of particular cases.

After years of close observation, I'm convinced that two fundamental causes entrench and perpetuate corruption and inefficiency within Australia's defence organization. Given Defence's cultural and structural situation, any sincere Defence Minister embarking on reform and efficiencies will confront deep, Rum enmities.

First: the ADF itself still clings tight to archaic, barbaric feudal symbols, and actual chains of command, in obeisance to inherited powers and privileges in a foreign country (indeed, a country on the other side of the world). The effects of such a strange cult are profound and not to be under-estimated. Silly, elitist notions of genetically inherited privilege, and mere ladder-climbing games to attain such privileges from below, all encourage an appalling culture of mediocrity, arrogance, and indignant refusal to be held to standards deemed normal and healthy in wider "common" society. In such an odd environment, the genuinely talented and highly motivated are often viewed with suspicion, hostility and even contempt.

In this sense of course, the beat-up about China in this Fitzgibbon case is no wonder, because China, whatever else its shortcomings, has sought aggressively to stamp out such lazy, anti-meritocratic notions of inherited, networked privilege. By contrast, people chasing trappings of rank above all else believe there's nothing else to prove!

Second: the ADF's size and structure (and therefore the civilian Defence Dept too) bloated into vast bureaucracies devoted largely to the more politically self-interested pursuits of expansionist self-administration and self-justification. One aspect of such "sheltered workshop" dysfunctionality are those very questionable and costly procurements (Abrams, Seasprites, Superhornet, etc.). Another is its equally vast commissar-style cohorts of commissioned officers: all much more expensive to raise, pamper and educate, but with little return except greater institutional loyalty/obeisance (and thereby deeper corruption). In fact, studies within recent decades showed officer-enlisted ratios approached 1:5 and even 1:3!

Australia cannot afford such a strange, aloof and spoilt state-within-the-state. By contrast to recent decades' dysfunctional defence culture, Australia has relied on reserves for its earlier magnificent military achievements, largely because a healthier Australian society compelled its military to integrate within the wider society of real work and notions of merit.

Hi Pelican

http://www.igis.gov.au/inquiries/docs/Brereton_2003.pdf is indeed interesting.

The issue of whether or not DSD might arrange/permit another country to spy on Brereton came up. In the UKUSA community such an issue may not be as unusual as it appears.

I invite you to comment on http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=8745 . In return I'll reveal a Canadian doc off the interent on this type of sharing arrangement.

THERE - we could continue chatting generally about the intelligence background to the Fitzgibbon affair including the scenario of DSD involvement.

Hope to chat soon :)

Pete

"If history (certainly that of the Howard years) is any guide, it is not of itself a sackable offence"
Does Howard set the standard of accountability for the current government? Thinking about this I'm reminded of the standards required in other places. In 2006 the Energex CEO resigned after admitting that he had traded in shares which were on the banned list.

He made a loss on the shares and there was no indication revealed publicly that his share holdings impacted on his decisions as CEO or that they were the result of insider knowledge. The total value of the shares involved was relatively small compared to his annual income. http://www.news.com.au/couriermail/story/0,23739,20592516-952,00.html

The share trading appeared to be a silly mistake on his part. He was in a position with a high level of accountability as is the minister and he payed a high price for something which he lost money on.

I don't know what kind of job Fitzgibbon is doing but his failure to declare the gifts was a serious omission on his part which in some circles might well be a sackable offence regardless of how well good a job he is doing.

R0bert

Yes, UKUSA is a very odd creature (wikipedia gives enough away, whatever the spook-stasi scum want to claim about a dissident here).

ANZUS should suffice as the basis for any such arrangements in the context of Australia's post-WW2 strategic orientation and partnerships. But ANZUS was circumvented by UKUSA and UKUSA's isolation into intelligence business. Such separation accentuated that area's already great potential for corruption by removing it from properly broader, overarching diplomatic oversight and constraints.

The most obviously retarding and insidiously sick aspect of UKUSA is its predisposition towards assumptions about "threat". By the early, post-WW2 definition of UKUSA, any potential threat could not possibly come from within any of the UKUSA authorities themselves, whereas such potential threat MUST ALWAYS reside - at least in a dormant condition - in the areas designated for each UKUSA member's areas of intelligence responsibility!

Such a blinkered and prejudiced club membership as UKUSA explains just how easily the "Iraq WMD" and (variously black and grey) "terrorism" fictions were achieved. It also explains this latest nonsensical, sleazy beat-up insinuating some Chinese compromise of the Australian Defence Minister. There's some seriously imperialist, "race" and plain ethno-linguistic baggage within the very prejudiced concept that UKUSA prescribes (just ask the French and Germans too, for example).

It also helps explain why such contextual utterance of the word "intelligence" brings suspicion and laughter from so many in the wider community.

With compromising commitments like UKUSA, forget about real national sovereignty, or government supremacy over its bureaucracy and military.

With yet another secret first class trip to chat to the chinese political leaders, I wonder if Joel Fitzgibbon might actually have something to hide. What else Fitzgibbon is lying about?

The old saying "there is no smoke without a fire" is probably true here. Putting JF in charge of the directorate is like putting a fox in charge of the chicken coup.

I think his claim of the spying being because of his attempts to reform the directorate is an attempt to divert attention from the fact that he has been caught with his hands in the cookie jar and has a serious security question mark over his head.

The directorate might need reforming, but JF is not the one to do it.
He must go.

Isn't the Defence Department out of control?
News of the Prime Minister's temper tantrum was leaked by people who handled the RAAF report of the incident. Its quite easy to check who accessed that report and fire the lot. As Tumbrell well knows the Army is supposed to be subservient to the government of the day in our democracy.
I agree that Fitzgibbon doesn't sound up to the job, perhaps he is being used as the sacrificial anode and as soon as the reforms are through a competent person will become the Defence Minister

The Queen of England (and of Australia if you want to go along with it!) has been the largest non-institutional shareholder of Rio Tinto. The beat-up over Chinalco's bid is a sickening distraction from the fact that outfits like Rio are non-Australian and un-Australian for starters!

Following their bosses' leads via UKUSA, Oz's real defence and security traitors are just doing what they've always done - pushing the paranoid, anti-Asia line to cover their actual subservience to other foreign interests, while hammering any political elements who dare challenge such treachery.