Defence

Feature

Looking over the intelligence world

By Kathryn Fitch

When I told a friend I had an interview with the Inspector General of Intelligence and Security she looked horrified and asked what I'd done. After assuring her I was in the unusual position of asking the questions, she told me a story about her husband - a senior public servant - being so distracted with nerves after being called to an Inspector General's office for an interview, that he'd nearly turned up with odd shoes on. Call it referred nerves, but I admit it is with some trepidation that I turn up to talk with Ian Carnell.

It turns out that my nerves are unfounded - Mr Carnell is affable and... well, friendly. Sitting on a large comfortable couch in his office, he smiles at the story.

"I don't tend to encounter blind panic - but I do say to people that they can gauge the level of seriousness by the means I'm using," he says.

"Sometimes I'll talk to people purely informally, sometimes I'll ask them for a statutory declaration, sometimes I'll have a more serious interview with them. On occasion, when it's really necessary, I'll use my Royal Commission powers. Clearly if it gets to that point it's a matter of considerable seriousness."

Appointed to the Inspector General role in March 2004 after 28 years of public service, Mr Carnell is quietly spoken but with an authoritative presence. He says his experience in administrative law and forensic investigation work - garnered in policy and program administration and fraud control - have given him a useful background for this role. A general understanding of management issues and how mistakes are made has also been useful.

The Inspector General of Security and Intelligence is appointed by the Governor-General for a fixed term and can only be re-appointed once. It is Mr Carnell's responsibility to act as the independent officer overseeing and reviewing the activities of Australia's six intelligence and security agencies (see sidebar). He says he's not about efficiency and effectiveness, which would compromise his ability to be independent, but about legality and propriety. He prefers prevention to retribution.

"The whole original intention as stated by Justice Hope in his second Royal Commission, was that I look at allegations, as it were, or concerns about the agencies and either clear them or take them to task. Mostly - thankfully - it's a matter of reassuring people that the agencies have acted properly, rather than taking them to task," he says.

"The larger part of our time is spent on inspection activity, as opposed to formal inquiries. There is a good relationship with the agencies. They are committed to accountability and they understand it's useful to have a role like mine.

"Ideally, you wouldn't see me doing many inquiries, because inquiries tend to mean something has gone wrong. The focus of the office is on inspection activity, so we're all about preventing and forestalling.

"I talk to as many groups of staff as I can to try to make sure the culture is right. The better the governance, culture and internal controls, the more agencies will be doing things legally and properly in the first place, and the fewer complaints I'll get and the fewer inquiries I'll have to do. I'm all for a quiet life."

Standing L-R: Jodie Williams, Neville Bryan, Robyn Kelly, Jane Trevor. Sitting: Ian Carnell.

When inquiries are necessary, the media quite often turns them into a major event. According to Mr Carnell, the media offers a unique challenge because they often speculate on scant details, producing fanciful stories. Unlike other government organisations, which are able to answer their critics or readily admit fault, his office and the agencies often just have to wear it because of the highly classified sort of information that they deal with.

The subject of inquiries differ greatly because the roles of the agencies are quite disparate - and complaints can range from allegations of unlawful bugging of telephones and doing improper things during searches, to poor recruitment practices and delays in security assessments for visas.

The Australian Security Intelligence Organisation tends to attract the most complaints - it has a domestic focus and has more potential to interfere with the rights of Australian citizens and residents - followed by the Australian Secret Intelligence Service and the Defence Signals Directorate. Much less time is spent on the Defence Imagery and Geospatial Organisation, the Defence Intelligence Organisation or the Office of National Assessments but Mr Carnell feels that it makes sense for the whole community to be in his legislative jurisdiction.

His office gets through an enormous amount of work with only four staff, but will soon be expanding with recruitment action for an additional two team members currently underway. It's probably just as well because the Flood Report is going to mean the already busy team will take on the additional responsibility of periodically reviewing the Defence Intelligence Organisation and the Office of National Assessments. Originally, the focus of the Inspector General Intelligence and Security role was on the agencies that collect information, because of the potential this has to impact on people's lives.

"The Flood Report is really signalling that I need to play a distinct role in relation to assessment. That is, not to critique the quality or second-guess assessments but to provide some assurance that there is not improper outside influence - either policy or political - on assessments," he says.

Talking to Mr Carnell, I have the sense that he really enjoys his job in ensuring a healthy balance of prevention and natural justice - a kind of good-cop/bad-cop rolled into one.

"Success for me is not catching you out 30 times in a year and being able to write 'you beauty, I gotcha' 30 times. In fact, the general culture, governance and admin controls mean that agencies are, in the vast number of instances, acting legally and properly. There's the occasional error - and providing lessons are learned from that and fed back into the internal controls- that's the way things should operate," he says.

"I'm all for prevention and remediation rather than hanging people. Having said that, if I find that you've acted in bad faith or recklessly, then my job is to be the proverbial tonne of bricks."

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