{"id":35042,"date":"2017-10-25T14:30:42","date_gmt":"2017-10-25T03:30:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/?p=35042"},"modified":"2017-10-25T13:47:59","modified_gmt":"2017-10-25T02:47:59","slug":"home-affairs-from-hobbit-to-hobbes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/home-affairs-from-hobbit-to-hobbes\/","title":{"rendered":"Home Affairs: from hobbit to Hobbes"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/figure>\n

The Home Affairs Department\u2019s secretary-designate, Mike Pezzullo, provided an explanation<\/a> of the \u2018philosophical context\u2019 behind the new institution in a recent presentation. Even allowing for the public nature of the event and the need to be entertaining on such occasions, the presentation\u2019s language raises unsettling questions.<\/p>\n

Pezzullo introduced a straw man by raising Hobbes\u2019 Leviathan. Hobbes\u2019 Sovereign had didactic value for Pezzullo by emphasising how international trade, mass people movements and global communications have subverted the former significant capacity of government to manage its borders. Whereas in the past managing borders was primarily a physical activity within the control of government officials, those borders have become permeable through new technologies and international trade arrangements.<\/p>\n

However, Australia doesn\u2019t have an all-powerful sovereign to whom personal freedom has been ceded in return for security from domestic and external threats. It is a democratic state that draws its political culture from a combination of English common law and the prerogatives of England\u2019s unwritten constitution, the values of the French and American revolutions, and its own constitution and history.<\/p>\n

The real question is why the existing institutions of Australia\u2019s pluralistic representative democracy are inadequate for the contemporary security task. From what will Australians be better protected as a result of this new organisation, and are the civil and political costs worth it? Australia is apparently ill-prepared for the \u2018emerging \u2026 \u201cdark universe\u201d\u2019 of globalised \u2018terror, crime, and indeed evil\u2019. Reassuringly, Pezzullo doesn\u2019t think that we\u2019re facing the \u2018end of days\u2019, although to avoid Armageddon Australia must \u2018purposefully attack the problem and make it not so\u2019. But even allowing for rhetorical flourishes, he does seem to be arguing that the metaphorical equivalent of Sauron lies out there beyond our borders.<\/p>\n

At one level, that assessment is correct and deeply important. Globalisation and technology have facilitated<\/a> the appalling criminal activities of human trafficking and slavery, child sexual exploitation, and drug smuggling as well as money laundering, fraud and cybercrime. Opportunities have increased<\/a> for political and commercial corruption, organised crime, tax evasion and sanctions busting. Extremist violence\u2014including the recruitment to and the proselytising of extremist causes\u2014has been transformed<\/a>.<\/p>\n

According to Pezzullo, Australians, like \u2018comfortable hobbits\u2019, are blissfully unaware of the grave dangers that exist just beyond their borders. They hold on to an \u2018obsolete\u2019 notion that \u2018home is safe\u2019 and \u2018outside is dangerous\u2019. The hobbits, and presumably Australians in general, are ignorant of \u2018the sacrifices that have been endured to keep them safe\u2019. Those assertions are yet to be demonstrated.<\/p>\n

Australia\u2019s security and law enforcement organisations do a vast amount of unrecognised work in countering criminals, extremists, spies and cyber-saboteurs by disrupting and anticipating their nefarious activities. It\u2019s a difficult and demanding task and the nature of a lot of their work is necessarily clandestine and covert. The anticipation, disruption and apprehension of criminals and extremists has saved many lives and much property. The increasing complexity and interconnectedness of the world is making their job harder.<\/p>\n

Pezzullo\u2019s proposed response to this mounting challenge is radical and revolutionary and alarming. It amounts to more than ensuring that the security institutions are strengthened and better resourced. The \u2018state \u2026 has to repurpose and re-engineer itself\u2019. Apparently, \u2018we need to rethink the structure of government and, indeed, the architecture of security\u2019. That encompasses the protection of Australia\u2019s \u2018democratic institutions in relation to foreign interference and political subversion\u2019 and \u2018the cohesion of our communities in terms of their fragmentation and fracturing\u2019.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s undeniable that Pezzullo\u2019s experience in defence and security management gives him far greater insight than the average citizen into the specifics of the contemporary threats posed by criminals, potential adversaries and violent extremists. His contention that Australia must adapt, and perhaps profoundly, its \u2018models of policing, security intelligence, customs, immigration, transport security, [and] border protection\u2019 is undoubtedly based on that experience and knowledge.<\/p>\n

But it doesn\u2019t automatically follow from his presentation that a powerful \u2018single accountable minister\u2019 who is \u2018at the apex of the entire security apparatus\u2019 is the only or even the best solution. In Pezzullo\u2019s vision, the minister will be accountable politically to the Prime Minister and Cabinet for this security apparatus as it \u2018embed[s] itself invisibly into global networks and supply chains, and the virtual realm, in a seamless and largely invisible fashion, intervening on the basis of intelligence and risk settings. Increasingly, at super scale and at very high volumes\u2019. That sounds frightening.<\/p>\n

The context and brevity of Pezzullo\u2019s remarks and the unclassified nature of the event placed significant constraints on how direct he could be. If the hobbit analogy is taken at face value, Australians are potentially vulnerable to \u2018fake news and global campaigns of information subversion and psychological warfare designed to undermine our democratic institutions and public discourse\u2019 from beyond the allegorical Brandywine. How this is to be protected against in our democracy isn\u2019t clear.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s always a conflict between liberty and security. Liberty<\/a> here is \u2018the collective term for fundamental civil, political and social rights, in addition to physical liberty\u2019, and includes the right to privacy. There are some protections<\/a> of these rights in Australia, although they\u2019re already heavily qualified<\/a> in relation to some security matters.<\/p>\n

However, the lengths Pezzullo indicates that government now needs to go to in its Manichean struggle seem extraordinary. The concrete detail is missing about what the ominous-sounding disruption, transformation, embedding, repurposing, re-engineering and rethinking of the basic institutions will do to our pluralistic democracy. How will Australians be affected?<\/p>\n

Until we have clarity in these areas, we won\u2019t know the terms of that other Hobbesian contribution to political philosophy: the social contract<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Home Affairs Department\u2019s secretary-designate, Mike Pezzullo, provided an explanation of the \u2018philosophical context\u2019 behind the new institution in a recent presentation. 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