The Australian’s Adam Creighton has written a cracking article today on the huge blow-out in spending on Australia’s securities agencies, which are due to receive a huge slab of additional funding under the Abbott Government’s new counter-terrorism program:
[Securities agencies] combined funding between 2000 and 2010 grew at a compound annual rate of almost 15 per cent, almost triple the growth of health or welfare spending, poster children of Australia’s sustainable spending movement…
In 2004 the Howard government decided to take stock, commissioning a wide-ranging inquiry…[that]… found the level of resourcing “sufficient”…
Since then ASIO’s budget, the largest of the group, has jumped from around $150 million and 700 staff to about $600m and 1780 staff this year. The budget of ASIS, the only federal agency not to disclose staff numbers, has tripled to about $300m… ONA’s has grown from about $15m to $50m.
The Coalition government — of “budget emergency” fame — this week announced it wants to toss another $630m into the ballooning budgets to stamp out and hinder “home-grown terrorism and Australians who participate in terrorist activities overseas”.
…the security state is the next likely incarnation of modern democratic government, one that slowly chips away at longstanding liberties and absorbs more and more public money in the vaguely reassuring name of “security”.
Included in the Government’s announced counter-terrorism program is, of course, its flawed data retention plan, which will require telecommunications companies to store detailed information about the calls and internet use of its customers for two years. The plan was hatched without consultation and without any cost-benefit analysis to determine whether the scheme is justified. Even the Communications Minister, Malcolm Turnbull, was left out of the decision on data retention, presumably because he has formerly been an avid opponent.
It is worth reciting what Turnbull said about data retention 2012, whereby he recorded “very grave misgivings”:
Neither, said Turnbull, had there been any explanation given by the policy’s backers (principally the Attorney-General’s Department and law enforcement agencies) as to what costs and benefits have been estimated for what the Liberal MP said was a “sweeping and intrusive new power”, or how such costs and benefits were arrived at, what (if any) cost was ascribed to “its chilling effect on free speech”, and whether any gains in national security or law enforcement outcomes would be monitored and verified, should the proposal be enacted…
“Leaving aside the central issue of the right to privacy, there are formidable practical objections. The carriers, including Telstra, have argued that the cost of complying with a new data retention regime would be very considerable with the consequence of higher charges for their customers”.
Indeed, just today, Optus warned that data retention would cost it “more than $200 million to implement”, and said that “costs would be passed on” to internet users.
It is quite remarkable that a Government which champions so strongly for cuts to “red tape” and “ending the age of entitlement”, and talks endlessly of consulting business, can announce such a costly scheme without widespread consultation and analysis.
Ending the age of entitlement clearly does not extend to Australia’s spooks.
