Which cabinet minister has responsibility for counter-terrorism in Australia? Our national security dictates that it shouldn’t be a difficult question given, to misquote Mark Twain, reports of terrorism’s demise have been revealed as exaggerated.

In the past week we’ve seen the terror threat level in Australia raised to ‘probable’ due to an increase in multiple violent ideologies, and the shocking but thankfully thwarted Islamic State plot in Vienna targeting a Taylor Swift concert.

Australia has had a successful counter-terrorism track record, thanks to highly capable intelligence and law enforcement officers, as well as effective strategy and administration. Operations and policy, as the success shows, go hand-in-hand.

But last week’s machinery of government change in which ASIO, and therefore control of CT operations, returned to the Attorney-General’s portfolio has added confusion rather than clarity—not because of the debate about whether ASIO should work to the security minister or the first law officer but because Home Affairs has kept CT policy and co-ordination, which means multiple ministers now have counter-terrorism responsibilities. This split across the government on who has authority for counter-terrorism is not what we need when ASIO assesses the security environment as more challenging than ever.

Since 2022, when terrorism was judged to be a reduced threat, incremental modifications to Australia’s CT framework have divided the legal, intelligence and investigative functions from the co-ordination and policy functions. The centralisation of CT efforts in the Home Affairs portfolio has been gradually unpicked but the functions haven’t fully gone back to the Attorney-General, leaving them spread over portfolios and leaving Australia with an unsatisfactory foundation for effective national security.

The problem is exemplified by the plight of the CT Co-ordinator position, which was originally established within the Prime Minister’s Department. This both recognised that the Attorney-General’s portfolio wasn’t the right place from which to co-ordinate Australia’s top security threat and invested the role with responsibility as the principal adviser on CT to the prime minister with direct access to the National Security Committee of Cabinet and influence over national CT policy and strategy.

The Co-ordinator role was moved to the Department of Home Affairs when it was created in 2017—along with the Australian Federal Police (AFP) and ASIO. This maintained separate lines of effort on CT policy and operations, but within the same portfolio and responsible to the same cabinet minister as the key agencies.

But in June 2022, the government moved the AFP from the Home Affairs portfolio back to the Attorney-General, for the first time splitting the peak law enforcement agency from the primary security agency, ASIO. Then, in July this year, ASIO returned to the Attorney-General’s portfolio.

Yet this latest shift has left the CT Co-ordinator and CT policy functions within Home Affairs, isolated from the key agencies and lacking direct insight into the immediate issues faced by the key operational agencies. The reality of the bureaucracy is that agencies within one portfolio will keep their minister informed of issues before they advise other portfolios.

It leaves a series of difficult but important questions about CT responsibilities, including on the mandate of the CT Co-ordinator. Do the CT agencies in the Attorney’s portfolio have any obligation to brief the Co-ordinator on CT operations in a crisis, or to support its broader co-ordination function? And where does responsibility sit for briefing the government on an emerging CT crisis if ASIO and the AFP are obliged to first brief the Attorney? How is the Home Affairs Minister briefed, not to mention who is responsible for briefing the PM? If there’s any confusion here it is sub-optimal for the co-ordination of such a key national security issue, whether in terms of co-ordinating agencies to prevent terrorism or, in those devastating situations, when having to respond to it.

Given we are being told counter-terrorism is once again the principal security threat to the nation, clear lines of responsibility under a single minister would bring streamlined decision-making and a more cohesive and strategic approach.

If Home Affairs continues to exist as the central security ministry, then it should fully embrace this role and re-integrate all related functions. Alternatively, if the Attorney-General’s portfolio is to resume primary responsibility, then the framework should revert to its former state, in which the Attorney-General’s office takes over all CT responsibilities. A half-way measure is not in the national interest.

If the split between policy and operations is here to stay, the CT co-ordinator should return to the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet as the central role with the imprimatur of the PM—seen neither as the Attorney’s nor the Home Affairs Minister’s. After all, ministers responsible for topics being co-ordinated by other ministers is rarely a recipe for openness and trust.

The lack of clarity we now see also highlights the pressing need for an update to Australia’s CT strategy. Former Home Affairs Minister Clare O’Neil vowed to revise and update the strategy, yet we still have no new framework—a concerning delay given the evolving nature of the terrorist threat and the accompanying risk that we are left unprepared for the next evolution. The fact that ASIO has been effective in preventing individual attacks does not diminish the urgency of updating the strategy.

It should acknowledge the persistent nature of the threat and outline a robust approach to mitigating risks over the long term. Policy agencies must be responsible for actively identifying trends and setting long term strategies. Otherwise, too much burden is placed on the intelligence community with all care and no responsibility taken by the policymakers. This is a recipe for eventual disaster and shows the need for a cross-government National Security Adviser—though that’s a story for another day.

As we continue to confront the challenges of terrorism, a cohesive and well co-ordinated approach will be vital for safeguarding Australia’s future. Confusion aids no one except our adversaries, so let’s not wait for the next review of a terrorism incident to recommend the need for clarity on which minister is responsible for counter-terrorism, a clear mandate for the CT Co-ordinator and an updated national strategy that reflects the evolved and current threat.