Intelligence Services Amendment (Establishment of the Australian Signals Directorate) Bill 2018 Introduced
Wednesday 21 February 2018 @ 2.49 p.m. | Legal Research
Last week (15 February 2018), the Turnbull Government introduced the Intelligence Services Amendment (Establishment of the Australian Signals Directorate) Bill 2018 (Cth) into the House of Representatives. The Bill aims to establish the Australian Signals Directorate (“the ASD”) as an independent statutory agency, reporting directly to the Minister for Defence.
The Bill is the result of recommendations made by the 2017 Independent Intelligence Review. An unclassified version of this report was released on 18 July 2017 by Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull. In December 2017, the Prime Minister appointed Mr Mike Burgess as the Director-General designate of the ASD.
Speaking about the evolution of the ASD in his second reading speech, Minister for Veterans’ Affairs Mr McCormack said:
“Recent years have seen a dramatic expansion of the information security role the signals directorate plays as a result of the explosive growth of the internet and moves to online service delivery by Australian governments…
It is clear the Australian Signals Directorate has evolved from a primarily Defence signals collection agency after World War II to become Australia's national signals intelligence authority for collecting intelligence, supporting the military and undertaking cybersecurity, and affects operations through the application of advanced technologies.
The Australian Signals Directorate is now a national asset with a national focus, playing a much broader role than defined by its previously exclusive Defence focus.”
The Bill has been referred to the Senate Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade Legislation. The Committee is accepting submissions until 9 March 2018, with the Committee due to report on 21 March 2018.
Key Amendments
The Explanatory Memorandum outlines six key amendments made by the new Bill:
- amending ASD’s functions to include providing material, advice and other assistance to any person or body listed in the Act (rather than Commonwealth and State authorities only) on matters relating to the security and integrity of information that is processed, stored or communicated by electronic or similar means, which will allow the ACSC to liaise with industry;
- amending ASD’s functions to include preventing and disrupting cybercrime. This section will provide ASD with a function to prevent and disrupt, by electronic or similar means, the use of information and communication technologies to commit or facilitate serious crime by people or organisations outside Australia. Serious crimes, such as child exploitation and illicit narcotics, will be captured by this new function;
- establishing ASD on a statutory basis, and providing provisions for the appointment of the Director-General of ASD to control ASD and its staff;
- requiring the Director-General of ASD brief the leader of the Opposition about matters relating to ASD;
- giving the Director-General of ASD powers to employ persons as employees of ASD under this Bill (outside the frame of the Public Service Act 1999);
- amending other legislation as appropriate to replace references to ‘Director of ASD’ with ‘Director-General of ASD’, and to remove references to the Department of Defence.
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Sources:
Intelligence Services Amendment (Establishment of the Australian Signals Directorate) Bill 2018 (Cth), Explanatory Memorandum and Second Reading Speech - available from TimeBase's LawOne service
