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46 U.W. Austl. L. Rev. 144 (2019)
Designer Intelligence Or Legitimate Concern: Establishing an Office of National Intelligence and Comprehensively Reviewing the National Intelligence Community Legal Framework

handle is hein.journals/uwatlw46 and id is 128 raw text is: 








        DESIGNER INTELLIGENCE OR LEGITIMATE
 CONCERN?: ESTABLISHING AN OFFICE OF NATIONAL
 INTELLIGENCE AND COMPREHENSIVELY REVIEWING
 THE NATIONAL INTELLIGENCE COMMUNITY LEGAL
                             FRAMEWORK

                                GREG CARNE*

The establishment of an Office of National Intelligence (ONI) to collect, co-ordinate,
integrate and share intelligence from a variety of sources signals a significant new
intelligence facilitative role in Commonwealth governance. The ONI Act provides a
reformative framework for implementing the prospective recommendations of the
Comprehensive Review of the legal framework governing the National Intelligence
Community (NIC). This may well produce an increased securitisation of the Australian
polity, a broadened intelligence use and interoperability, and a transformative impact
beyond rationally justified national security protective definitions. Harmonising
intelligence activities across the NIC may be aided through a Government discourse of
safety and security, and the absence of a Charter of Rights to reconcile public policy
contestations through criteria of legality, necessity, proportionality and related
jurisprudence, from other comparable liberal democratic states.

                                [SINTRODUCTION A'r

     The Office of National Intelligence Act 2018 (Cth) (ONI Act), in framing co-
ordination and leadership roles for an expanded Australian intelligence community,
provides   indicators  and  predictors  of  likely  recommendations    of   the
Comprehensive Review of the Legal Framework of the National Intelligence
Community (Comprehensive Review).1 The creation of specific roles within the
Office of National Intelligence (ONI), anticipates, prior to the Comprehensive
Review recommendations, an increased importance of the ten intelligence agencies
or agencies with an intelligence role or function,2 through co-ordination, integration
and the sharing of intelligence. Such developments anticipate the ONI emerging as
a powerful centralising organisation in Commonwealth governance, through which

*Associate Professor, School of Law, University of New England, New South Wales, Australia.
1 Attorney General's Department 'Comprehensive review of the legal framework governing the National
Intelligence Community' with attached Terms of Reference (Mr Dennis Richardson AO, reviewer) <
https://www.ag. gov. au/NationalSecuritv/Pages/CoMprehensive -review-of-the-le ga!-franework
governinL-the-national-intelligence-communm asx> (as at 2 September 2019).
2 ASD, ASIO, ASIS, AGO and DIO (Defence Intelligence Organisation) and the Australian Criminal
Intelligence Commission are the intelligence agencies; Austrac, AFP, Department of Home Affairs and
the Defence Department (other than AGIO or DIO) are the agencies with an intelligence role or function.
Collectively, these ten agencies constitute the National Intelligence Community: see definitions of
'national intelligence community', 'intelligence agency' and 'agency with an intelligence role or function',
in s.4 of the ONIAct.

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