Matt Thistlethwaite (Kingsford Smith, Australian Labor Party, Assistant Minister for Defence) Share this | Hansard source

Innovation has delivered much progress for society, particularly information, communications and technological innovation. Access to information has been liberated for many groups within our community because of technological advancements associated with the internet, with cloud computing, with artificial intelligence and with the development of microprocessors. But it has also shown up vulnerabilities in government systems, and potentially provided access to information for the wrong people.

The other thing to note about innovation is that the amount of data and information being captured, stored by governments and transmitted between government departments and, indeed, between governments internationally has increased as well. That, of course, has brought with it the risk of unprecedented threats from espionage and foreign interference. That's why the Albanese government takes this issue so seriously. That is why we are legislating this change to the system of ensuring the integrity of Australia's most sensitive intelligence information at a number of levels of government. We're taking these assertive steps to safeguard our nation's most sensitive information and our capabilities—basically, the government's top-secret information. We're fortifying our environment against foreign interference and ensuring that our intelligence community has the capacity to recruit individuals that we know we can trust to protect our nation's secrets into the future.

The Australian Security and Intelligence Organisation Amendment Bill 2023 extends and solidifies our security environment by establishing a new national TOP SECRET-Privileged Access Authority within the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation. The TOP SECRET-Privileged Access Authority will be the central body that has responsibility for issuing Australia's new highest level of security clearance, the TS-PA clearance. This will supplant the existing top secret positive vetting clearance. The new TS-PA clearance is founded on the new TS-PA standard, which enforces a stricter minimum standard when it comes to security clearance requirements. The TS-PA standard incorporates contemporary psychological and insider threat research. It will be the most extensive examination of a person's credentials to ensure that they can be trusted to deal with the nation's most sensitive information.

Under the Australian government's Protective Security Policy Framework, individuals that require access to security classified information or resources must possess a security clearance at the appropriate level. The goal of the security vetting process is to evaluate an individual's suitability to hold that clearance and to continue to hold that clearance into the future. There is also a regular process of continuing to verify whether or not that person is appropriate to continue to hold that clearance into the future, and that includes whether a person demonstrates the required integrity and loyalty to protect Australia's classified information and resources.

Currently, there are multiple vetting agencies that issue top secret positive vetting clearances, including the Australian Government Security Vetting Agency, ASIO, the Office of National Intelligence and ASIS. This system results in inefficiencies concerning clearance recognition, staff mobility and, unfortunately, resource duplication. This bill is designed to remedy those inefficiencies. Gradually, ASIO-issued TS-PA clearance will replace the positive vetting clearance. The positive vetting operations of vetting agencies currently authorised under the Commonwealth Protective Security Policy Framework will shift to ASIO. The reforms will encourage shared initiatives and investments, improving interoperability and resource-sharing as the Australian government provides crucial national security capabilities. It will also enhance the mobility and flexibility of our highest-cleared workforce, allowing the Australian government to allocate resources optimally to its highest priorities.

Centralising Australia's highest-level clearance within ASIO will fortify our nation's security environment further. It will enable ASIO to utilise its security expertise in its existing holdings in assessing an individual's suitability for a security clearance, taking into account the most current and accurate information about the security threats facing Australia. This measure is an aid in thwarting those intending to do our nation harm. If a foreign government tries to pilfer our secrets by implanting a foreign operative within our intelligence community or by recruiting insiders, ASIO will be well equipped to handle it.

Under a Labor government, oversight and accountability for the intelligence community remain a priority and are indispensable. This bill aims to establish a more consistent and robust review framework for security clearance decisions and assessments. This will ensure that individuals affected by adverse decisions have a clear right to review, encompassing internal and external merits review. It will also facilitate the operations of the Quality Assurance Office within the Office of National Intelligence. The QAO will be created to independently assure the quality and consistency of clearances that are issues by ASIO. ASIO's operations will continue to be overseen by the Inspector-General of Intelligence and Security and will possess powers similar to a royal commission. It's critically important that we ensure that the Commonwealth's most privileged information, capabilities and secrets are protected, and that is what this new system will allow us to do.

We've seen in recent times that the Australian government has moved to an online security vetting program called myClearance. That was introduced by the previous government and is currently being rolled out. The myClearance program is a digital system for sponsors, applicants, assessors, decision-makers and clearance holders. Unfortunately there have been some issues with the rollout of this particular program. It was due to go live last November. When it did, there were some issues with the system. There were problems that applicants were having with inputting data into the system and general fields not accepting certain data. Therefore applications were delayed or rejected by the system. Seven years of planning went into this scheme under the former government, and there was a $307 million price tag, but so far there have been problems with it. Several thousand lower-level clearances have been successfully granted through myClearance, but issues have emerged with the processing of the more complex, top-level security clearances.

It's my view that there has been insufficient oversight of this project from the beginning and that it was probably in some respects too ambitious in terms of the time line that was put in place. Unfortunately, it reflected badly on the previous government, in that a number of defence policies and intelligence and security policies were announced by the previous government without the requisite oversight and investment to ensure that the programs were delivered before they were launched. We all know that the former government were good at announcements and not so good at oversight and following up. Unfortunately this is one of those projects. It was approved in 2018, and final approval was given in 2020. Nonetheless, despite the system being plagued by data issues and not connecting to the dependent systems of government that ASIO needed to process clearances, we are now working on a remediation project for the scheme.

I'm receiving regular updates from the team within the Australian Government Security Vetting Agency and Defence to ensure that we get this project back on track as quickly as possible. With the Defence strategic review having been recently released and the AUKUS partnership having been announced, we know that there is going to be a greater need for Defence and our intelligence agencies to partner with industry to deliver those important capabilities into the future. An important part of that partnership is ensuring that people that work in defence industry have the appropriate security clearances to do the work that they're engaged to do. If there are delays with people getting those clearances, there can be delays in government delivering that capability into the future, and we want to avoid that at all costs, particularly given that AUKUS is going to create 20,000 jobs in the Australian economy over the coming decades. Having a properly functioning system with integrity around security clearances is going to be vitally important to ensuring that Australia can deliver that capability into the future, so we've put in place a remediation plan to get this project back on track as quickly as possible.

The Albanese government takes these issues very seriously. We're acting to drive oversight and action to fix this system and address the growing backlog of clearances. We're heeding the Director-General of Security's warning that more Australians have been targeted for espionage and foreign interference than at any time in Australia's history. That is why getting that myClearance system fixed as quickly as possible is so important, but it's also the reason for a reform such as this to ensure the integrity of Australia's most sensitive data is maintained. That is what this new system of top secret classification and security vetting will deliver, and that is why this bill is so important for our nation.

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