A project that David Schaefer (from ANU) and I have been working on for some time has started to come to fruition.
In 2025 we began guest editing a special issue of the journal Intelligence and National Security on the topic of intelligence reform in Australia. This was partly prompted by the wait for the unclassified report of the 2024 Independent Intelligence Review, and also by our long-standing research interests.
Intelligence reform is a key theme in the field of intelligence studies, but intelligence reform in Australia has rarely received comprehensive academic attention. There’s been plenty of excellent work like historical scholarship on ASIO, legal scholarship on the oversight arrangements for Australia’s intelligence community, and assorted other scholarship on reform issues like the evolution of signals intelligence and the Five Eyes partnership. Yet there have also been glaring gaps.
David had elsewhere shown in detail how intelligence rarely features in studies of Australian defence and foreign policy, and argued that this means “distorts the scholarly research and public understanding of policymaking in Canberra”. Looking internationally, a quick search through core intelligence studies journals reveals limited examination of the Australian intelligence experience, including in the sub-section of the field concerned with intelligence reform.
So last year we sought to put together a special issue of Intelligence and National Security on intelligence reform in Australia, and were lucky enough to get fantastic contributions, overwhelmingly from early-to-mid career scholars and current or former practitioners. This year, we have been delighted to see some of the articles coming out.
So far, four articles have been published online. They are shared below, and I will share more as the next articles from the special issue are published.
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Melanie Brand and Brian Cuddy, “Beyond secrets and surveillance: understanding analytic reform in the Royal Commission on Intelligence and Security“
Abstract
The 1974–77 Royal Commission on Intelligence and Security laid the foundations of Australia’s modern intelligence enterprise. This article tracks Commissioner Robert Hope’s thinking regarding analytic reform, including the principle that analysts should work independently of both collectors and policymakers. Hope upheld the ideal of analytic independence for foreign intelligence while muting its importance for security intelligence. This inconsistency suggests that Hope’s goal was not only to improve the quality of Australian intelligence but also to bolster its public legitimacy. Emphasising analysis allowed Hope to show that intelligence was more than the shadowy work of stealing secrets and surveilling threats.
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David Schaefer, “Was Justice Hope wrong? Defence, diplomacy, and assessment in Australian intelligence reform“
Abstract
More than 50 years after commencing his first Royal Commission, Justice Robert Marsden Hope’s contribution to Australia’s intelligence community remains a point of almost universal acclaim in scholarship. This article offers a more revisionist interpretation of Hope as an agent of reform, exploring the weaker aspects of his thinking about intelligence and their implications for the scope of reform today. The focus is Hope’s pessimistic account of Australia’s intelligence assessment arrangements in the 1970s, which was overly critical of Defence involvement and failed to reckon with the analytical influence of Australia’s diplomatic service. Whereas much of Hope’s thinking still has value for the task of intelligence reform, his neglect of diplomatic expertise in the practice of assessment now impedes more creative thinking about the organisation of intelligence and its capacity to support Australian statecraft in the future.
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Abstract
The 2001 Intelligence Services Act (ISA) was a pivotal moment in the history of Australian intelligence; it was also a revealing case study of bureaucratic challenges, which can hinder intelligence reform. Drawing on released Cabinet documents, this article reconstructs the slow experience of placing Australia’s principal foreign intelligence capabilities on a legislative basis – despite being recommended by the 1995 Samuels–Codd inquiry into the Australian Secret Intelligence Service. Contrary to popular impression, agency officials supported legislation but wider questions arose about oversight and transparency. Questions only resolved by the sudden need to affirm the legality of Australia’s foreign intelligence operations.
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Andrew Zammit, “How routines shape reform: the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation’s mandate to counter foreign interference“
Abstract
This article examines the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation’s evolving mandate to counter foreign interference, comparing Cold War era reforms with 21st century reforms. It finds that recent reforms differed dramatically from those of earlier decades, taking a more outward-facing and coercive form. This can partly be explained by Australia’s foreign relations and domestic political incentives. However, a key factor is that Australia’s policy routines for intelligence reform changed markedly throughout the early War on Terror years, shaping what reforms were perceived as appropriate and necessary in response to resurgent concerns over foreign interference.
The Murphy Raid 