 It's a great pleasure to welcome you all to the National Security College here at the Australian National University on this almost fine February morning in Canberra. I'm Rory Medcalf, the head of the National Security College and it's a great pleasure in a moment to introduce the Vice Chancellor who will internally introduce our special guest today, the Minister for Home Affairs and Cyber Security, the Honourable Claire O'Neill. Before we begin, I'll acknowledge the traditional custodians of the land where we're meeting today, the Ngunnawal people and pay respects to elders past, present and emerging. A few framing thoughts about the event this morning. We'll shortly hear an important speech by the Minister and then there'll be opportunity for a brief conversation with the Minister. I'll ask a few questions to draw out some themes of the speech. There'll also be a vote of thanks by the director of the Crawford School, Professor Janine O'Flynn. I would remind you please have your phones on silent. This is a public event so by all means tweet or use social media or whatever suits you but please phones on silent. There will be a recording of this event made online afterwards and of course the full text of the speech will be available. With that and before proceeding further also acknowledging the wonderful turnout we've had from senior leadership not only of the university but the Australian national security community and the broader security and diplomatic community in Canberra including the Secretary of Home Affairs, the Director-General of ASIO, the Australian Electrical Commissioner, Coordinator-General of the National Emergency Management Agency and I believe we may have the Assistant Minister for Foreign Affairs here as well. Welcome. Canadian High Commissioner and representatives from the UK and other diplomatic missions. Thank you again for being here this morning. With that I'll introduce the Vice Chancellor of ANU, Professor Brian Schmidt. Thank you Rory. Thank you ladies and gentlemen. I too would like to acknowledge and celebrate the first Australians on whose traditional lands and Rory thank you for your acknowledgement. A thousand generations have been meeting here on the lands we are today and I pay my respects to elders past and present. So it is a privilege this morning to welcome the Honourable Claire O'Neill, MP Minister for Home Affairs and Cyber Security and all of the distinguished guests, the ones that Rory mentioned and anyone we happen to forget. There's so many people in the audience it's a little hard to keep track. It is nice to see such a strong turnout early in the year, early in the hour and reminds us the significance about what the Minister is going to be talking about today and what we hope is a central place that the University can have in convening interesting conversations for the nation, the region and the world. We see ourselves as a trusted partner to have hard conversations the nation needs to have. Since 1946 and our region, the ANU has done its best to try to fit in the ecosystem here in Canberra to do things that are just not done by the other institutions of the nation and it means drawing on academic excellence and trying to help the country understand its own interest from a very diverse and rigorous point of view and help the nation there pursue it and so it is great to have the Minister being prepared to engage with us. As a National University we have the National Security College which is just 13 years old but feels like a long-term institution and that has been through the support of Commonwealth agencies and several governments. It is a very specific manifestation of the commitment, a special partnership between the University and the Commonwealth and the commitment of the University and the Commonwealth working together. Under the leadership of Professor Rory Metcalf the college has renewed and deepened its commitment to the mandate of providing capability uplift to the nation through education, research, practical engagement and policy and tomorrow the college will take its mission further and commence an innovative program courses and briefings for parliamentarians of all sides. The college's work rages from professional development programs to futures analysis and enriching the public debate and at the bedrock of its academic contribution is the Masters of National Security Policy degree delivered through our renowned Crawford School of Public Policy of which you are in right now and so I am pleased to see our brand new incoming director Janina Flynn here who you will see and it's great to have you back. She being part of this venerable institution for many years before of sconding off to Melbourne but it's always people always come back to Crawford. More than 10,000 Australian government officials have completed short courses at the college and many amongst its hundreds of academic alumni are serving across departments and agencies. These are the next generation of leadership and we want to make sure they have every piece of expertise they can. The Department of Home Affairs is a key stakeholder and there is great interest in the university and right across the academic sector in understanding how the priorities of home affairs are evolving under the Albanese government. They do affect us as they affect everyone but we are definitely more in the firing line than people may think of these. Safeguarding sovereignty is a core obligation of government. We look forward to hearing the minister's remarks today on that issue including the vital subject of countering foreign interference. As the foreign influence on interference issues continue to evolve it is worth noting the serious efforts and measures are in place here at ANU to identify and mitigate the associate risk. We're trying to be really on the front foot here and lead the conversation about how we might do this effectively. Our approach to countering foreign interference is consistent with the country agnostic per approach of the Australian government and developed in ways that reinforce academic freedom and trusted international linkage at their core. The minister's own background reflects a special appreciation both of education and of our nation's international connectedness. Her career is consistently combined academic achievement with engagement with the community. Claire O'Neill studied law at Monash University being elected to the city of Greater Dandenong Council while she was still a student and then going on to become the mayor of the city of Greater Dandenong. Later she studied public policy at Harvard University and worked on the New York Stock Exchange. After consulting to key industries around Australia Claire was elected to federal parliament in 2013. She represents the electorate of Hawthorne in Melbourne's southeast one of the most diverse electorates in the nation. Without further ado please join me in welcoming Claire O'Neill. Lovely. Brian thank you for that very warm introduction and I want to just join with you in acknowledging that we're on Nullarwall and Nambry land here today. I always feel very special actually giving speeches in the land around Canberra because as Brian pointed out this land has been the place for critical discussion about our nation's future for thousands and thousands of years and I do feel that deeply when I talk about critical issues that face our country in this area of Australia. I want to acknowledge my very friend my good friend and collaborator Tim Watts who's down the front here. We get to work together we've been working together for almost a decade now we've written a book together and we now work very closely together on the issues that I wanted to speak with you about this morning. I want to acknowledge along with Brian Janine and Rory for welcoming us to the National Security College. You mentioned Brian that it's sort of hard to imagine the National Security College not existing and I actually really agree with you. How did it come to pass that we did not have this institution that's become such a critical location for conversation about these issues there really isn't anything else like it in Australia and I'm very grateful that it exists. I want to acknowledge two very important people here who work with me on the issues under discussion today the first of those is the secretary of my department Mike Pazullo media star and I want to acknowledge DG Burgess who's down the front here who leads AZO with such brilliance and diplomacy so thank you Mike for being here and I want to thank all of you and in particular the young people who are here if you're studying national security I want to start by thanking you it is an act of patriotism merely to undertake the studies that you're interested in looking around this room I can see lots of people here who I assume will be going into home affairs to de facto defence and I'm very hopeful that we'll be working together in the years to come. When the Albanese government was elected last year we assumed a new poster for the national security conversation in Australia one that is assured and not anxious we opened a new chapter in the challenge to keep Australia State safe our government strongly values integrity openness and transparency now in the national security sphere some of these concepts are hard to put into practice but in some of these areas also knowledge dispels fear knowledge can make us stronger and knowledge can keep us safe that's why I want to talk to you today I want to open up a national conversation on an issue that AZO has stated is one of the biggest domestic security challenges we face now as you know a lot of the security conversation we've had as a nation over the past 20 years has been dominated by the discussion about terrorism and that is always going to remain a focus of the Australian government because threats to life are our priority but it is no secret that we face enormously significant challenges when we look beyond our borders the most significant since the Second World War how we manage those challenges will define the Australia that my children live in as adults our ability to manage and shape those challenges will depend on how free and fair our democracy is and how encouraged and enthusiastic our public are about engaging with it the stronger our democracy the more choices we have about how we engage with the world today I want to speak in a bit of detail about one of the main threats that faces our democracy and that is foreign interference espionage is something that most people in this room would be very familiar with this is the use of spies and spying to obtain government secrets foreign interference is something quite different its activities carried out or directed by a foreign state that are coercive corrupting deceptive or clandestine I consume a lot of intelligence today in my role as Minister for Home Affairs and of course my understanding of this problem has grown enormously over the eight months that I've been in this role but for some people in the community the threat of foreign interference is ever present it is relentless it is insidious and it not only affects individuals in our community it fundamentally undermines our democratic processes and today I want to talk about one thing that I think we as a nation can do together to tackle this problem my view coming into this role is that the discussion about about foreign interference hasn't sufficiently penetrated beyond the parliamentary triangle yet our best defence to arm people who are possible targets of this information is to assist them with all of the context and information they need to recognise foreign interference and to report it I want to have a conversation about this which is open which is informed and which is non-partisan and this is very very important because partisanship in this conversation is a huge problem if we give any minor hint to the Australian community that we are trying to politicise this problem that we are trying to use this problem to win votes with certain sections of the community the trust falls out of the discussion and we lose that ability to speak with people openly and frankly about the problems at hand so we've got to change the nature and the tone of this discussion and this is the one that I'm trying to lead as minister we want to have a goal my goal is a public discussion about this problem which is open apolitical and commensurate with the size of the challenge that we face and that challenge is enormous so it's time to bring foreign interference out of the shadows and into the light foreign governments try to influence what happens in other countries all the time in perfectly legitimate ways Australia does it that's why we have embassies that's why we've got many friends from the diplomatic corps in this room right now that's why we work through international forums like the United Nations but what makes foreign interference so problematic and illegal is covertness and deception that is the attempts by foreign governments to secretly influence our cherished democracy and coerce people living in Australia to behave in ways that undermine that democracy for the benefit of a foreign power so when and how do we see this problem presenting in Australia we see it in the covert influence foreign governments attempt to exert over diaspora communities and to be clear this is almost always unsuccessful because of the deep loyalty that almost all migrants and their communities showed to this beautiful country of ours we see it when diaspora communities peacefully protest about the actions of their government from their home country in some instances in many instances they will be photographed they will be harassed they will be followed as a result we see it when members of those communities speak out publicly against violence or intimidation in their home country we see it when people in those communities or their families back home are threatened harassed or intimidated because of actions that they have undertaken here in our free and fair democracy to be absolutely clear this kind of foreign interference is commonplace it is happening around our country every day we see it too on social media where foreign governments covertly try to sow division around political issues that are felt deeply within the Australian community they are trying to deliberately deteriorate our social fabric and cause conflict and painful rifts between neighbours who have lived together peacefully for many years we see it too in our universities as your vice chancellor here said where foreign governments attempt to covertly influence how topics are discussed and covered in our fiercely independent university lecture theatres and of course we see it in politics where foreign governments try to win over elected leaders or party activists to push for changes in everything from planning laws to foreign and national security policy or even just to simply build a picture of how decisions are made foreign interference is not hypothetical it is not merely something that lies in our future it is happening today and we need to do more to tackle it today as Minister for Home Affairs there is something direct and practical I can do to help equip Australians to fight this problem and that is to talk as openly as I can about what foreign interference looks like in Australia and as a government we will call out egregious acts of individual countries when it isn't in the national interest to do so today I want to share a bit more detail about foreign interference from one country in particular and that is Iran I want to stress that foreign interference doesn't just come from one country and if I can look back and provide a small critique of the discussion that I heard in previous years it was that sense that this is just about one country it's not we see it from many countries around the world and Iran is one of them since September last year Iran's theocratic regime has been jolted by nationwide protests in response to the tragic death in police custody of 22 year old Mahasa Amini Kurdish named Gina Tehran's brutal response to those protests has seen more than 400 people killed including at least 50 children it has failed to quell this uprising but it has triggered further protests against this regime around the world and of course we've seen that here in Australia now I noted before it is perfectly legal for anyone in Australia to criticise a foreign regime and tens of thousands of Australians have done something brave and come out and done that here in our country what we will absolutely not tolerate under any circumstances are attempts by foreign regimes to disrupt peaceful protests or try to push violence in those protests or try to suppress specific views being expressed nor will we tolerate hostile acts in the form of surveillance harassment or intimidation against individuals or family members here in Australia the Australian government and our security agencies watch these matters carefully and they do act to protect Australians and their democratic rights last year asio disrupted the activities of individuals who had conducted surveillance in the home of an Iranian Australian as well as conducted extensive research of this individual and their family I just want to step back and and and and say this again we have here someone living in our country who is being followed watched photographed their home invaded by people at the direction of a foreign power this is happening in Australia and it's something that asio was on to like a shot so I want people to understand to those states who operate in the shadows we have a very simple message we are watching you where our national interest is served by calling out your involvement in these operations we will absolutely do it and to those Australians who are making their voice heard we are acting to try to protect you now the example I've just mentioned there is not the only story of asio detecting foreign interference in Australia of course there are examples everywhere there are examples of foreign governments tasking human sources to collect sensitive personal information of individual cedars dissonance by the foreign government due to their activism here in Australia this is commonplace there are examples of individuals attending peaceful protests here in Australia who again are monitored their photograph is taken their followed home and protesters take the foreign governments take that information back home and sometimes that information is used to harass family members who live in that foreign country there are examples of individuals arranging counter protests to instigate arguments with activists at peaceful protests with the intent of provoking violence all this being done at the behest and at the request of a foreign government there are many examples of harassment of academics and staff who work at various media outlets and think tanks and as I said earlier these kind of activities will not be tolerated foreign interference will be detected and it will be disrupted but I think as a nation we can still do a lot more because one of the main points that I want to get across to you today is that this problem doesn't just sit with our security agencies that's why I've been so encouraging of director general Burgess's attempts to bring asio out of the shadow in educating our community as to how people in Australia can protect themselves against foreign interference and that's something that DG Burgess has taken very seriously well before I came into this role we're working together to do a lot more of this engagement that's one reason why I've asked the counter foreign interference coordinator within the home affairs department to develop an attribution framework for the Australian government we don't want to just disrupt these operations but we want to deter future ones by imposing costs on their sponsors by outing them where it is possible to do so I would like us to see Australia do this more and more because we have to stop this happening in the shadows we have to bring it into the light what we need in Australia is a community of people who are alert to what foreign interference looks like so we can be on guard and help to detect and resist future interference when it happens my main experience of dealing with this problem since I became Minister for Home Affairs is that most people who would be targets of foreign interference whether we think about politicians or academics or community leaders they desperately want to understand this threat so they can protect themselves there is an enormous thirst for knowledge amongst this community of people who might be targets of this because they do want to do what they can to protect themselves now for a lot of people in this room you would have spent most of your life now working in national security if you were approached by a foreign government or you became the target of foreign interference you would probably have your heart skip a beat or two it's a very stressful experience now imagine what it feels like being a community leader running a community group where you suddenly come under the pressure of a foreign government it's really scary and we need to reach out and help people who are targets of this type of interference so one of the most vital and important pillars of the new government's engagement on these issues is really thinking about how we can reach out to those people and try to help them understand this problem and there's some really good work that was already happening in this regard when we came into office in each state and territory there is a dedicated home affairs counter foreign interference engagement officer who works hand in hand with a network of people who we believe might be targeted engagements of foreign interference but i'm asking asio and home affairs to do more and one of the ways that we will do that is this year these two agencies are working together to develop for the first time a very significant program of community outreach which will identify individuals within the Australian community who might be targets of foreign interference and design and execute on a program to reach out to those people to help them understand what foreign interference looks like and to make sure that they understand what they can do to respond and how the Australian government will help protect them so this is the kind of open engagement that i want to maintain as minister for home affairs we need to build trust with communities of people who might be targets of foreign interference because i think anyone who is watching the geopolitical context will understand that this problem is going to grow not diminish one of the best examples of the power of this type of collaborative approach to foreign interference is the work that he's been done with our universities here in Australia since my time in this role i've been genuinely struck by the commitment and enthusiasm for Australian universities who i think honestly were a little bit suspicious about this problem to begin with to try to tackle it our university our universities understand at a deep level the essential role that they play in our democracy educating almost now half of all school leavers our universities are providing Australians with knowledge and critical thinking skills that are going to be core national assets for us running a strong democracy and facing into the challenges that we face the work that the Australian government has done with our university sector is actually of global interest and whenever i sit down with ministers of home affairs or my equivalents in other countries around the world this is one of the subjects where they are most interested in the work of the Australian government and that's why i'm so pleased to be having this conversation with you today here at the Australian national university despite the enormity of the challenges you're probably aware that we have the university foreign interference task force as the kind of centrepiece for the work that we do with the universities and the value of this work was acknowledged in the parliamentary joint committee on intelligence and securities inquiry international security risks affecting the Australian higher education and research sector which the government will table its response to very shortly the university of sydney said that due to Australian government intelligence advice they were aware the security threats Australia faces were real and increasingly sophisticated and during the senate inquiry universities repeatedly pointed out their commitment to countering foreign interference and the dramatic increase in their level of awareness since regular engagement with government agencies like asio in the first discussion that i had with universities around foreign interference really the first thing that they said to me was firstly we do not want foreign interference on our campuses ironclad commitment to that and secondly we need more information we need to know what the red flags are we need to know what to look for so we were able to deal with that very quickly by getting asio to come and brief the university vice-chancellors about this matter the point i want to make today is it's not just the universities this is a wide broad problem that our country faces and we are only going to solve it if we have a trusting open accountable conversation with the Australian public about what this problem is where it's going and how the Australian government can help them to solve it so i think that's all for today but rory i'm very thrilled to be sitting down with you very shortly and let's get into a few questions thanks everyone and i think for the record we'll be recording a podcast later this week where we'll go into these issues in some more detail that was a good plug there rory but i naturally the national security podcast please please subscribe so we're just three very brief questions now i think that's a that's a hard hitting speech and i think it tells those who work in national security things that we probably have been thinking about but for the broader community i think there's quite some eye-opening specifics there can i ask you really why now you know is there some significant policy shift in the in the works is it a particular response to recent events what's the what's the timing or what's the logic of sharing this message with us today thanks rory so as i mentioned in my speech i've been home affairs minister now for eight months i as you can imagine consume enormous amounts of intelligence in the work that i do and i think one of the things i've really been struck by is the disconnect between what i'm reading in intelligence and the public conversation about these matters and that really worries me because i see that gap as a national security risk foreign intelligence is not something that we are going to fight and defeat and tackle by me and and mike basala on mike burges you know sitting in rooms talking about it the best protection that we have here is a public that understands this problem is real i talked a bit in my speech about trust rory and i just really want to underscore that point i have a very multicultural community in my electorate and i have a community where i've got lots of activists who are very active in protest movements against the country that they came from a lot of big refugee populations those people need to trust me they need to trust the australian government and if there is any hint of politics in all of this the trust disappears and then when we really need to engage those communities they're not going to believe that the government's there with their best interest at heart and that's a real problem for us so i really want to try to reset this conversation around openness sharing the information we have and around apoliticalness in the national interest and that's the conversation that i think is going to make the country safe for the future you just asked me why now um you know frankly probably we could have been doing this a few years ago um that wasn't the choice of the previous australian government and i don't say that too too much to politicize it just to make the point that this is an urgent national problem it is growing it is not getting smaller and anyone following the geopolitical outlook can see as clear as a bell that there is a significant problem that is going to get worse as the years pass we've got to plant that seed with australians that there is foreign interference in our country it is insidious and it is relentless and it is everywhere and the only way we're going to protect ourselves is an australian community who understand what is going on and know what to do when they see it thank you and you've referred to the geopolitics so i'll go to that now uh because again it's not just why now it's it's it's also the question of why iran i mean there's some particular cases you've identified of a very disturbing activity and i think you know many of us have looked with horror at what's been unfolding uh in iran the courage of people in terms of resistance but of course there is a if you like a constellation of of foreign interference actors out there and of course so much of the debate in recent years has been about china yeah so it'd be interesting just to hear more thoughts on on on why the focus on iran and your speech and where does china russia authoritarian powers sit in that hierarchy of threat how pervasive is the foreign interference threat from those players so it is pervasive and it is coming from many different directions and the reason i'm talking about iran today is because this is an area where i think there hasn't been a lot of public discussion there's plenty of conversation about iran and what iran is doing geopolitically but i think it will be news to a lot of australians that this is having very significant impacts on the life of diaspora communities in particular right now what i would really like to do is try to broaden the conversation to reflect the accurate picture and that is that we are the subject of foreign interference from very many countries this is not just a china problem although it is a china problem and it's really important for me to be open and honest about the different directions from which this comes today i've chosen to talk about iran it's really important that we put that matter on the public record but this will be the first in a series of interventions worry where i'm able to speak about some specific examples of foreign interference we see from specific countries and iran's first cab off the rank so i know time's short and we will have a longer conversation another day but i just want to go to that question of expectations on the community which i think you you put really quite front and center now it wasn't so much expectations on the community it was really a sense of government's obligation in a democracy in a multicultural democracy to communities but as you say communities are not only if you like the first line of of what is attacked they're also a first line of defence so how would you frame the reasonable pardon me the reasonable expectations that government should place on diaspora communities in in in their own role in combating the threat of foreign interference thanks rory i think the language we use is is really important and when it's framed as obligations and expectations i i don't think that's the most constructive way for us to talk about this remember that these diaspora communities are the victims of foreign interference and it is our job as australians and as australian government agencies to wrap ourselves around these people and protect them they're the ones that are subject to the hurt and the harm that comes from this so in terms of obligations of course we want people to report nefarious conduct when it comes into their orbit and they can do that through the national security hotline but the main message to diaspora communities and multicultural communities today is that australia's democracy is our most valuable national asset and our multiculturalism is a core part of that we are going to be a successful brilliant country for many centuries to come because of those diaspora communities now our job as australians and as national security experts is to help protect them to help them understand our democratic values extend to them too and so this is really what this is about trying to work with those communities in a trusting collaborative way to show them that we're on their side do you have time for one more job universities so you've and I think we're here at australian national university we've had some observations from the vice chancellor today we've had I think you're very clear message about where universities sit in both the the risk and the response to the risk of foreign interference any further thoughts on how you see universities if you if you like essentially balancing the you know the international openness that is so much at the core of of the you know the university tradition and what makes universities in a country like australia such a national asset how to balance that we've been part of the the national policy response to foreign interference how if you're a vice chancellor how do you how do you square that circle I'll leave that to the Nobel Prize winners in the room I think so yeah really difficult question and this is a little bit of a cultural shift that has to take place it's not the only cultural shift that has to take place I mentioned before about the work that dj Burgess has done at asio one of the issues for us as an intelligence community here is thinking about openness and transparency when these organizations are by their very nature closed and secret so this is a challenge that dj Burgess is has worked on really well with asio but I just point out universities are not the only organizations here having to shift a little bit how they think about these big problems for the universities of course I think the most important thing is the it's the management of risk and I would say Brian you know I'd love to hear your thoughts about this but there probably was a time perhaps a decade ago where the belief was openness everyone's welcome all views are welcome and there was a real resistance to acknowledging that there might be objectives of foreign governments trying to influence what happens I do think that's really shifted and the universities I think are doing a good job of trying to think about partnerships in particular so this is a work in progress as I say this problem is going to get bigger not smaller over time and I think that structure that we have set up to deal with the universities is the centerpiece of something that will help us protect Australian universities and democracy for a long time to come thank you we'll leave it there we're just warming up but this will hopefully wet the appetite for the podcast I know your day your day minister is is very crowded I want to thank you for making time today but before we go I might invite my colleague the director of the Crawford School Professor Jeanine O'Flynn to give a vote thanks thank you Rory and minister thank you for your address today I'm sure others here will agree it was both substantial and very challenging you provided a frank and necessary message about the government's priority at a time when the international environment remains difficult and uncertain the vice chancellor and professor Metcalf have already noted in your speech your speech the context of the mission of the Australian National University and the National Security College I'd underscore their remarks and add that at the Crawford School of Public Policy as the academic home of the National Security College we are profoundly committed to robust discussion of all areas of public policy we go where the evidence takes us with openness and transparency and we're fully committed to tackling the complex challenges of our time in partnership with you and with the community open debate and open engagement with policymakers with academics and in our classrooms are absolutely pillars of our work which is why there's such interest here in government providing assurances that we can continue to engage in this way here at the ANU we're fully committed to doing so and we appreciate your support for our independence minister your government's agenda continues to develop and as it does I encourage and invite you and your colleagues to continue looking to the ANU particularly to the National Security College and to the Crawford School as partners in the contestability idea of ideas and also in thinking about the big issues that are shaping our nation we are really very delighted that you've chosen to launch this incredible critical national conversation here with us at the ANU today so please join me today in thanking the Minister for Home Affairs and Cyber Security the Honourable Claire O'Neill MP for sharing a significant speech today and given the time of the morning I want to also invite you to join us for some breakfast if you have to rush that's fine grab something to help sustain you for the day but thank you again to all of our distinguished guests and minister for you coming here today to join us to open this national conversation thank you very much