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The nation's overseas spy chief has warned that Australian intelligence agencies are likely to face heavier responsibilities as Western nations grapple with an increasingly assertive and powerful China.
Key points:
- Paul Symon said there were some "very alarming signs" in Asia and the Indo-Pacific
- He said Australia was focused on preserving peace but also needed to prepare for conflict
- An expert says the biggest anxiety for intelligence chiefs is the "prospect that Xi Jinping will initiate a hostile invasion of Taiwan"
The director-general of the Australian Secret Intelligence Service (ASIS), Paul Symon, who is due to retire shortly, gave a wide-ranging speech to the National Security College in Canberra earlier this week.
Mr Symon said that during the Cold War the "batting order" among Western intelligence agencies was clear, with the United States taking the lead, followed next by the United Kingdom, and then Canada and Australia after that.
But he said the balance of responsibilities within Five Eyes spy agencies was shifting as they tried to glean more information about an increasingly authoritarian and powerful China.
"I think what we're going to see is, maybe for the first time ever in an organisation like mine, that relative order is changing," he said.
"And with that comes certain responsibilities because a lot of the issues are playing into our region."
Mr Symon said there were some "very alarming signs" in Asia and the Indo-Pacific, and "the prospects that we saw for China when I was director of DIO [Defence Intelligence Organisation] 10 years ago are very different than what we see now".
The director-general also said while ASIS would remain focused on issues like people smuggling and terrorism, in the future its "primary focus" would likely be Beijing's actions and "trying to understand and reveal the gap, the delta, between what's being said and what's actually happening on the ground".
William Stoltz, from the National Security College, said Mr Symon was suggesting that Australia's stature in the Five Eyes intelligence community — which includes the US, the UK, Australia, New Zealand and Canada — was steadily growing.
"The shift away from coalition military operations in Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria to countering Chinese power in the Indo-Pacific has brought the focus of the Five Eyes closer to Australia's region, where Australia presumably has more to add in terms of human intelligence collection — spies — and signals intelligence collection," he said.
"Australia has also been an early mover in recognising and responding to China's espionage and foreign interference in this region, and so our agencies have been a source of advice to those countries who have only more recently begun to adapt."
Concerns over regional war for Taiwan
Mr Symon also painted a grim picture of the prospect of war in the region, warning "history won't be kind to us if we're underprepared".
He repeatedly stressed that Australia was focused on preserving peace and that conflict was not inevitable.
But he also said it would be hard to be "over-prepared for conflict" because Australia was a prosperous country facing an increasingly fraught strategic outlook.
"If we want to preserve this, then it genuinely needs to be some form of whole-of-government, whole-of-nation effort," he said.
"That lays out in pretty clear terms the sorts of risks that we face, and how we should start psychologically preparing ourselves for more difficult times."
Dr Stoltz told the ABC that Mr Symon and other senior intelligence figures were most worried about the prospect of a regional war over Taiwan.
"The biggest anxiety for Symon and all our intelligence chiefs is undoubtedly the prospect that [Chinese President] Xi Jinping will initiate a hostile invasion of Taiwan in the next few years," he said.
"By talking about a whole-of-nation effort, Symon is acknowledging that to prepare Australia for war in our region, the intelligence community and departments like Defence, DFAT and Home Affairs will have to work with a wider range of organisations that traditionally haven't had a role in national security."
Dr Stoltz said Mr Symon was also likely hinting that state governments and the private sector had not done enough to prepare for a possible conflict, and needed to move more quickly to protect Australia's critical supply lines and key infrastructure, as well as build up reserves of essential resources.
"Symon is right to talk about psychologically preparing ourselves because while we've had many official pronouncements that conflict has become more likely, many of us observing government and the private sector's responses have been frustrated with an absence of urgency to make hard decisions and adapt Australia's way of doing things," he said.
"But government decisions will be led by what the public is willing to accept, hence why it's important ASIS and other agencies not only speak publicly but consider being more open with their intelligence so the community can better appreciate the risks we face."