 and welcome to the ANU National Security College. Thank you very much for joining us here tonight. My name is Nicola Rosenblum, and I'm the Deputy Head of the National Security College. This evening, I'd like to acknowledge and celebrate the first Australians on whose traditional lands we meet, the Ngunnawal and Nambri people, and pay my respect to their elders past and present. I'd like to welcome here this evening senior members of the national security community. Thank you for coming. Also, those who are studying or have studied at the college, or who have participated in our courses. Some of... We also have some of our National Intelligence Community NSC Scholarships. And of course, I'd very much like to acknowledge Kate Simon and the friends this evening who have joined us. Thank you so much for coming. And of course, NSC staff who are putting on this wonderful event this evening. So, this evening, we have brought you here to hear from Paul Simon, the Director-General of the Australian Secret Intelligence Service, in conversation with Professor Rory Madcaf, head of the ANU National Security College. It's not often we get to hear from a Director-General of ACES. And of course, Paul also has a very distinguished career in the military and intelligence more broadly. So, he'll have a lot of different reflections that he can draw on. There will be an opportunity to ask questions towards the end. And refreshments will be served again at the conclusion of the event, back outside the door. The event this evening is being recorded. And so, in terms of social media, if you'd like to acknowledge that you are on social media, that you are here at the event this evening, please go ahead. But we would ask you to refrain from posting anything on social media about the content until after the recording has actually gone public and we've had a chance to check that we're happy with the content. Of course, can everyone please just quickly for me, check that your phone is on silent or switched off. And I'll now hand over to Professor Rory Madcaf. Thank you. Thanks very much, Nicola. Again, I would echo that warm welcome and the acknowledgement of country as well. And this is a real privilege. So, I was just reflecting, Paul, that you've been in the public eye a few times this year. It is, of course, fitting, as you all know, that it's Halloween and it's when the spooks come out. I just had to throw that in. I'm sorry. But, you know, better in here than out on those wet Canberra streets at the moment. But seriously, Paul, you've made a number of statements in the last year or two that really, I think, speak to the increased transparency of our intelligence community. You've obviously had reasons for doing that. I know you spoke, I think, at the Lowy Institute earlier this year. You've also done over the years a number of interviews and conversations in the public eye of the kind that once upon a time it was pretty inconceivable that a Director-General of ASUS would do. So, I guess, just to begin with, why come out of the shadows? I know that this is a certain stage in your career where perhaps you feel a tiny bit more at liberty to do that, but there's clearly a purpose. Why? Rory, well, firstly, thank you very much for the invitation. And I guess we're going to pretend like we're sitting at a dinner table talking to each other. Fisite. Fisite. Yeah, fisite. And I'll try and keep that camera out of my peripheral vision as I try and answer your dinner questions. Thanks for the invitation. And to those that have come here tonight, thank you very much for coming. And my, if your view of Halloween is like mine, it probably wasn't a bad excuse to get out of home and not have to deal with the challenges of Halloween, but it is a great pleasure to be here. And I think that the incentive and the motive to talk in a, I think, sensible, as best I can make sensible and calibrated way is to address a couple of issues. I think if you look through the now 70-year history of ASIS and you Google ASIS, then a big part of its profile is born of problems, issues, dramas, controversies that go back decades. And of course, you can't undo those sort of situations. You can't undo your history, but the history is so unbalanced. And it seemed to me when I came to ASIS in 2015 that as I saw the calibre of the people, as I worked my way through the history of the organisation, I was very concerned that we ought to, well, I was concerned that we were getting a very skewed view of the service and obviously in a very competitive market where, like the other agencies, and I acknowledge the agency heads that are here and the deputies that are here, but it is a competitive market and we as a community have a story to tell and I think it's a pretty positive story. The second issue, I think, is one of the moment that we are living in. And by that I mean, in my view, we are at a critical juncture in national security and because of the geopolitical situation, the challenges are growing, not decreasing. And interestingly, enough when you're in an organisation like mine and you think about, well, what are the vulnerabilities that you have in a world where there's misinformation, disinformation and the like? Social licence and this idea of a director general speaking to the broader public or those that are curious, those that want to know. I think it merits increasingly, carefully, changing the way in which the organisation is viewed. If the situation declines further, it's not inconceivable that for an agency like ours, if you didn't do something about social licence, if you didn't give the public a sense of what type of people you are, are you Maverick, are you Rogue, what type of organisation, given there's so much fiction out there, then it's not beyond your imagination that actually an adversary intelligence service and all intelligence services are adversaries in a way, that you could use misinformation, disinformation and dislocators at a moment when we least need it as a nation. So in other words, if you haven't built that social licence, if you haven't built some understanding of the type of role that we have, the work that we do, the type of people that we are, the type of people we need, then I could envisage a day where it could actually be used against us. So I think I'm keen to, over time, see the service gain more and more of a profile. Of all of the intelligence agencies, it's probably the one that at least should be hungry for a profile. Rachel, Mike Burgess, Andrew Shearer, they have a genuine public education responsibility, given the nature of the work that they do, whether it be in the cyber world, whether it be in security like Mike does, or Andrew, who fundamentally informs business and the public about a whole range of things. I think they should always have a higher profile, but no profile for ACES is a problem too. And part of this was proving to some of my people that it is possible. You can have a proper conversation. You can give people a sense of the type of organisation, the type of people we are, and you're actually not divulging any great secrets. And of course, what I'm going to do now is ask you some very personal questions to get you really comfortable, and then we'll come back to the topic of ACES. And who knows, in all those years of tradecraft, probably a bit hard to overcome, but I think that's a really useful articulation of the logic of what you're doing. And I think there are many of us in the public debate who would encourage this. I think it's been very refreshing, if I may say. But let's now talk a little more about the service and then move on to your own career and this particular phase that you're at now. But how do you see as the evolving purpose of ACES, of the Australian Secret Intelligence Service? Because not every middle power, not every country of our size, necessarily has this capability, this kind of service that's all about foreign human intelligence. So just tell us a little bit about what's the point of ACES? Well, I think, I mean, the fundamental point about ACES is that human agency matters. I mean, humans make a difference. And intelligence is the business of understanding a human agency and the calculations that humans make, whether they be political leaders, economic leaders or whatever. So there is always a need, you know, we're a social animal and there is this concept of human agency that really does matter. So overall, that's why I would argue human intelligence is really important. The three areas that we... that is built into the sort of DNA of ACES haven't changed that much, but the priority and the apportionment of resources will change over time in many ways dependent on the government itself, the government's priorities and the risk appetite of government. And, you know, the sort of mission that we have, the scope of activities that we have, is directly related to the risk settings of government and what government wants from us. Three main areas, obtaining secret intelligence. Acknowledging that human agency matters. It matters in the affairs of state. It matters in the national interest. And all countries are acting in their national interest. So it's our job to try and help the government know and understand and build relationships with agents as we know them as. Those people who are willing to be ultimately directed and controlled by us and answer the questions that we're seeking to answer for government. So that's the first issue. And so the need for secret intelligence and the reports that we write, you know, have been really ever since the 13th of May 1952 when we were created. We've always been doing that. The audience changes. It's very wide. So, you know, in a COVID crisis, all of a sudden, agencies that you wouldn't normally see as a core customer of us had a very strong desire to better know and understand, especially countries in the region, of what was really going on, whether what was being said publicly was grounded in truth. And so, you know, we have to evolve and adjust to the circumstances, but that's the secret intelligence. Intelligence diplomacy is a second area that we engage and it's not just ACES. All of us in the intelligence community undertake intelligence diplomacy, but it's this concept of, you know, political leaders will talk to political leaders, diplomats will talk to diplomats. What is unique, I think, about intelligence chiefs talking to intelligence chiefs is that normally, nations are more than... It suits nations to, in many ways, you know, neither confirm nor deny that certain conversations, sensitive conversations have been underway or, you know, we'll just say that, you know, we're not going to talk about, you know, a particular relationship or a particular meeting. So it is true that an agency like ACES can undertake intelligence diplomacy, both with nation states and state actors, but also with non-state actors. And with the authority of the minister, the foreign minister, there are a number of non-state actors that it's fundamentally in Australia's national interest that we have a conversation with those senior leaders and it's often me or, you know, one of the intelligence chiefs that will, you know, open that line of communication depending on what the issue is. So that's the second area. And the third area is really in this... In the Intelligence Services Act, ACES has this quite unique, I think, function in Section 6 of the Intelligence Services Act, which effectively says that within the scope of, you know, political, economic, military activity offshore in the foreign intelligence, at the direction of government, you can undertake activities at the direction of government. So that's where we really step into the sort of activities where Australians overseas find themselves in peril and need to be brought home in situations where ACES is used to penetrate, you know, people smuggling syndicates or the like, again in the national interest. So undertake high-risk activities where we're acquiring intelligence but we might also take that intelligence and disrupt offshore at the direction of government. So it's a pretty broad scope, actually, of the things that we can do. And it comes back to sort of what I was saying about the government. Government's risk appetite and settings change over time. Its settings in the, you know, 50, 60s and 70s are very different to what they are right now. The demand pressures on ACES, frankly, are very, very high. And that's just simply a reflection of the times we live in. The skill set. The skill set, this requires, though. I mean, we'll come to this at the end. I want to come back to the workforce issue at the end. But there's not necessarily one size fits all for all of those activities. So have you seen the demand change for the skill of, you know, I hate to use the word average but I'm sure there are no average ACES officers. But the skill set for your officers, has it changed substantially in recent years? Well, firstly, the type of person we need, if you set aside the sort of some subject matter experts, you know, some data engineers, data scientists, those types of people, then many of the people that we need, the criteria hasn't actually changed that much, Rory. I mean, they need, as a foundation, a solid IQ and they need a solid education. They need a really solid recollection memory. We train them a memory and accuracy of language is really, really important. So, you know, sort of high IQ is assumed. It's the EQ piece in our business because it is taking, you know, it is human agency. It is human relationships. It's building trusting relationships with people who are undertaking some perilous risks to themselves that we've got to build that level of confidence. So, good people skills becomes an important ingredient. So, I mean, what am I seeing? Well, I'm seeing probably, like everybody, the generation coming through, the digital literacy is already much higher than, you know, our generation. So, that's a great start. Frankly, and I know Rachel's really, you know, recruiting very, very hard and the numbers have been quoted that, you know, are showing an interest in ASD. It doesn't surprise me that, you know, there are a lot of very intelligent people that are hungry to get a really good job, whether it's in ASD or ASUS and the like. So, there is plenty of talent there. The literacy, the digital literacy really helps. But it is also true that we need certain people with those sort of generalist, you know, high IQ EQ, and then we will superimpose on them people with very, very specific specialist skills, you know, when or how we need them for particular activities. I was going to say it must be an incredibly rare combination to someone who has all of that, especially with the technical skills that may be demanded now for some of the intelligence work that is a hybrid of human and signals intelligence. Can I ask about recruitment, though, in that sense? What are your recruitment options to find those very special people that you need? And given that the intelligence community as a whole and the national security community as a whole is also on a, you know, a recruitment drive needs to be to meet those challenging strategic circumstances, where do you find those people? Are there avenues that are about building a national security or intelligence career across agencies rather than just with ASUS? What do you do? Well, I think this is a body of work that we've been working on. And, you know, Andrew, you know, and I has been sort of leading the way here in, you know, very much seeing ourselves as a community. And as long as people recognise that having joined the community, some people will have a better predisposition, you know, because of their personality, their character, to anyone, you know, of the agencies or maybe a number of other agencies. But we should be really clear about this. It's a very rare individual that can swim through all of the different agencies. I mean, they're very different, you know, qualities and levels of expertise that we need, you know, in the various organisations. So there are similarities, but I think it's within our gift and I think that's what we're trying to design at the moment is the community very much as a community, harnessing our, I guess, our collective touchpoints with the public or with business or the like, improving the knowledge and understanding of who we are and what we do. And then we take it from there. And we can manage that, I think, inside the community. But, you know, for anyone who is interested in national security and is at school now or at university or the like, because of the strategic circumstances we find ourselves in and because of the sort of programs that you have here at ANU and, you know, various institutions around Australia, the sheer demand on the intelligence agencies, and I would say probably defence more broadly and we'll wait to see the Smith-Houston review and its outcomes, but it's just hard to see the trajectory of being anything other than this is a growth industry and we need good people and it's a great career. You know, and I can say that after 42 years, it is a fantastic career, incredibly demanding. But what a special community to be part of. So you can now throw a portal into the sort of the community. We can help work with people and point them in the right direction depending on the sort of skills they have. Thank you, Paul. Let's talk about your career and I think it's no secret that you're on the verge of a transition if you like and I think you'll be sorely missed in your retirement very soon, but I'm sure we'll be seeing you somewhere in the national security landscape. The world's changed a lot during your career. Your career's evolved and of course we know, began as a military career and you've reached the rank of Major General, Deputy Chief of Army, Director of DIO before you moved across the lake. You know, did you imagine that your career would lead to this point and are there any reflections you can make on that journey? Well, I certainly didn't think that I'd be Director General ASA so I can say that unequivocally, Rory. So I graduated with my good friend in the front row in 1982 and the interesting thing about 1982 was, it was the year of the Falklands War and for me, at 21 years of age, I was deeply interested in the Falklands War. It was very distant but a very serious war and I talk about human agency. Well, you know, I reflect back on this now but if you look at the calculations that General Galtiery made at the time and you look at the calculations that Margaret Thatcher made and the calculations that the First Sea Lord made at the time, I mean humans matter and that's why human intelligence is such an important discipline and I think any serious country dealing with national security issues needs to have a human intelligence agency. That was the environment that we walked into and in fact the year after I graduated as a bit of a relief for the Brits who had fought over in the Falklands, the battery that I was in artillery as was Paul my battery, that luck Paul yours wasn't, mine was sent across to the UK to work with 2.9 Commando Regiment who had fought in the Falklands War so they had literally just come off very, very difficult operations and what struck me about that I sort of thought about subsequently for our generation is that through the 80s and the 90s and certainly through the 80s and 90s the link between if you like grand strategy, strategy, operational concepts and tactics in an Australian context, there was a certain imbalance, a certain dissonance that I lived through and I think my generation lived through. Some of the doctrine made imminent sense at the strategic level but frankly for those of us at the tactical level that we're trying to master tactics or realise operational concepts there was a bit of a gap, a bit of a dissonance and I think for Australia for a long time and our experience was that that was sort of hard to get your head around hard to fully align in your mind I think what's evolving and what's changed and in particular and again I think this is where the Houston and Smith review will be really very informative, very instructive and I think very quite cathartic I think for the nation is that for the first time because of the challenges of the geostrategic competition that's underway we're on the cusp of I think gaining a real alignment between grand strategy, strategy, operational concepts and tactical proficiency and ultimately the big challenge is what equipment, what capabilities do we need and the priorities are getting so sharp now I can see that the generation that are entering this world international security will not be as quite as perplexed as we were with our generation because of that alignment or lack of alignment that we lived through so as best I can see things Australia is at a really important turning point I think the hard questions that are going to be asked of the nation and some genuine conversations about our preparedness for conflict none of which we hope, we clearly want peace and stability in our region there is no doubt about that but it is our job in the national security community in the defence community to present options to government and to think and prepare for the worst case and I think that's particularly stark right now and I think it's going to be very demanding whether you are going to pursue an academic life or a practitioner's life or the life of the strategist or the like these are really really interesting times So this is meant to be the bit where we're talking about you Paul but you're taking us to the big strategic issues that I had coming up in my narrative that leads to a few other questions so I think the question of are we prepared as a nation for the contingencies, the crises that may come we know that there will be shocks we just don't know exactly what or when maybe you do but most of us don't we know there will be shocks it sounds to me as if you're and please challenge me on this but it sounds to me as if you're suggesting there is going to be a need for a more robust national conversation at some point about what we're prepared for as a nation you know including if you're essentially mobilising in the event of crisis is that a reasonable observation to make I think that for any nation as competition as strategic circumstances shift it's incumbent on all governments informed by officials like us to lay out the prospects of conflict again peace and stability is something we all want but it's hard not to see with the current settings how we could be sort of over prepared for conflict right now because it takes time and I think the reality from my point of view is priorities become clearer as risks become greater I think there is a correlation I wouldn't want to characterise and this is a very difficult issue for government how to get the right balance here history won't be kind to us if we are underprepared if we don't make the investments now but I also recognise there are a number of other challenges on government I think the word mobilisation for the general public is that was my word I know but it can be so easily construed in people's minds of where we've been and where we might go I think that for a country of our size of our relative wealth of our education the sort of standards of the quality of life that we want to maintain I do think that the country has to have a more I think there are going to be some challenges some challenging conversations in the years to come that remind us all that if we want to preserve this then it genuinely needs to be some form of whole of government whole of nation effort that lays out in pretty clear terms the sort of risks that we face and how we should start psychologically preparing ourselves for more difficult times So perhaps preparedness is the word thank you Paul look back to you for a moment then I do want to move to the future including for Asus and then I want to open to the colleagues in the room for their own questions you've talked a bit about your own journey you didn't expect to end up where you are but you know here you are and I think we're all very very grateful for that were there any surprises twists and turns along the way that you might want to share with our audience and in a moment I'm going to ask you a little bit about the international dimension of your work if there's anything you know that particularly either profound or perhaps perhaps surprising perhaps amusing from that side of your experience that's a hard one so I think there are many surprises and it's the nature of our agency you know we are an operational agency we're not a bureaucracy we're not a government department we are engineered for risk and we are agile and adaptable so no two days are the same and I think it's one of the great joys of being in Asus is that no two days will be the same and I think it really surprises some really really happy ones some that really do make you want to jump up until the nation what we've done or what we've achieved and there are some tough issues as well because it's a risky business so the truth is that while the organisation you know it has processes and it has accountability and bureaucracy it very deliberately brings that level of process bureaucracy and accountability down to the least appropriate to the sort of work that we do so that we can focus on undertaking activities not admiring process not admiring bureaucracy and that's part of the challenge as I think a director general to get that right but it does mean that it's a very big challenge and I think one of our some of our counterpart organisation Foreign Intelligence Services that are obviously much larger is that they stovepipe people and they cohort people they narrow their skills and then it all comes together as one great big sort of organisation for us the real joy is there will be surprises because you're going to be put into extraordinary situations now I have mentioned publicly earlier in the year the exfiltration of people that had been providing information to the Australian Government for years in Afghanistan that we needed to get out and we take that relationship with those agents very very seriously and we were determined to get those agents and we did and that was extraordinarily difficult because you might recall that it was around the airport and it was difficult to get out beyond the airport but we had to get some individuals who were in great personal peril at a time when Taliban had set up 56 checkpoints you've got to get these people through and so when you say are there surprises? Well at the end of the day what happens in that situation but we are literally working day and night with each other to adjust to the circumstances in a very agile way and were there surprises? Absolutely but the greatest surprise of all was we got them all out and we got all our people back and that was extraordinary but that's not preordained by any means so we're engineered for risk but there are always surprises and those individuals that found themselves to get the satellite comms the Jane that I talked about in the anecdote with the Lowe Institute you know all the people who were talking the agents and their families through were look this is how we need you you need to completely trust us and we will walk you through how to get safely to where we're going to meet you and then pull you onto the aircraft I mean it's that level of tactical detail that has strategic consequences in the work that we do and these are young men and women on the ground that are doing this and I'm not interfering I'm trying to help them in any way I can make sure they've got the best sort of support they can but they're on their own and to a degree human intelligence is like that you know my background in the military and I know I'm avoiding talking about myself but the difference between you know the military and I love my military career I mean I absolutely adored it but the difference between the military and ASUS is when you graduate and you increase in rank you always have you know formations around you if you're you know you've got a battalion around you or brigade around you but you're and you're in a chain of command and you've got that comfort that the way the Australian Defence Force you know practices and the way it conducts itself on operations is smart people who are very attentive to the safety and security of the soldiers that are there so you've got this incredible umbrella around you and of course you build in responsibility to the point where yes you become you know Brigadier responsible for people in the Middle East or in East Timor and those sorts of things and you know there's surprises every day but you've got this incredible ecosystem that sits behind you the sort of surprises that we get involved with is you know individuals who are meeting with an agent in the region and there are calculations that they're making as they undertake that meeting where something looks or feels wrong and they have to make a decision and it's them alone making a decision am I going to proceed am I not going to proceed am I going to turn left am I going to turn right now obviously we train people to have a very very good sort of personal awareness of this but that's the difference you know there is some level of support that we can provide them with the great infrastructure that we've got in the intelligence community but it does boil down to surprises because of individual choices that people make at a very quite a young stage in life that have genuine strategic implications and some of those reports and some of those meetings they have will be on the desk of the Prime Minister they will be on the desk of the Foreign Minister the next day so there are plenty of surprises we will keep it on you just for one moment longer leadership you will talk about this Paul your advice to young colleagues who may be starting out whether it's in a career in Army or in the military in the ADF career in the intelligence community the national security community are there steps along the way where perhaps you could they could take a few shortcuts based on lessons that you've learned the hard way shortcuts to be effective not shortcuts to do you know I don't have any gems of wisdom I would say a couple of things one is our personality our character traits and I think I can say this now looking back you know the age that I am doesn't change the fundamentals are there whether you care for people whether you are interested in people whether you are aggressively ambitious you know some of those things are well and truly set by the time you're in you know year 10, year 11 and 12 and it is what it is but my comment would be the more you know yourself the more you're comfortable in your own skin the more that you observe others the more that you can adapt and try and work on your strengths and minimise your weaknesses and except the fact that we all do have a lot of strengths and we've got weaknesses as well and I think what leadership these days both demands and seeks leadership but people who they're not trying to be someone else so in the security world insecurity insecure people whose behaviour manifests that insecurity manifests in any number of ways I think can set a very bad climate and culture in an organisation so I have no perfect formula any different now than I was you know 50 years ago 55 years ago I've read a lot I've observed a lot I've come under some leaders who were quite poor and it was because of insecurity their own insecurity and I could work that I could work that through in my mind and I've worked with some excellent leaders outstanding leaders you know in the military in the intelligence community and the like and you just pick the eyes out of it and some respects adapt your style and that's all I've ever sought to do I think the culture in it's sort of easy to come into into ASIS I think it had a culture in the past that was so closed and so secretive that some of the light that I've tried to shine on ASIS has been partly designed to have people recognise that you know working with sharp elbows in the community and being all secretive that's not the answer actually collaboration, co-operation coordination together you know I think that is the responsible way forward I think it's really important that government knows that that's the way we feel and that's the way we act we need to remember that this is genuinely non-political comment there is no vote in politics to give my organisation more money or Rachel's or Andrew's or Chris's there's no votes in it so we have to have proven performance we've got to make the arguments ourselves and give government the options but there are no votes in it and I'll finish there because it's a long answer to your question and I'm wondering all over the place but there are not only no votes in politics but there is one really interesting situation where the two major political parties are being forced almost to go against the grain the way they think about the current geopolitical situation we face if you're liberal, small little liberal if you look at the doctrine of Robert Menzies it's small government it's staying out of the way of people letting industry thrive small government stay out what's going on right now and is that because of the demands on national security then we saw with the previous liberal government they had no choice they had to step into issues like Huawei they had to step into issues like rare earth minerals those sorts of interventions are quite philosophically at odds with the philosophical underpinnings of the Liberal Party but that's the nature of the time and of course with the Labor Party well they would much prefer to be spending their money on childcare and health and education and a whole range of things and as I say there is no vote in giving us more money so both governments informed by the advice that we give them are to a certain extent swimming against the tide these times we really are at an inflection point inflection point with having the broader I think nation understand the level of risk that we've got without becoming alarmist without overreaching it but highlighting the fact that our risk settings are changing and the nation needs to adjust accordingly but also our political parties are also recognising there is no turning back the situation demands that some of those philosophical underpinnings have to be subdued because responsible national security decision-making demands it Last question from me and then I'm going to open up to the floor if that's alright and I may come back with a few questions later but I suspect I won't because I know there will be a huge amount of interest in what you have to say Paul and that actually goes to the strategic environment how profoundly has it changed what do you see is the big risks and challenges that we've seen as you've said geopolitics come back to the fore we're dealing with obviously China's behaviour in the region in the Indo-Pacific and the way that's evolving and of course China's actions with regard to this country over the years as well but we've also seen the use of direct military force by Russia against Ukraine and everything that means for the globe and there are other concerns and issues too but I see the changes in the strategic environment and in particular how does that affect what we're going to need in intelligence Big questions, Rory I think let's talk a little bit about Russia Ukraine because I think for our community the significant change that we've all observed is the declassification of intelligence early in the conflict for which risk is involved especially in our world and protecting the sources that we have but that declassification of intelligence gave governments in Europe in particular some material advantage that allowed their publics and their governments time to distill what was going on and make some calculations about sanctions around provision of aid whether it was lethal aid or non-lethal aid that's a game changer and I think the provision of intelligence in that particular conflict and the use of intelligence there's no turning back I just don't think there's any turning back and perhaps the conventional wisdom was these are the deepest and darkest secrets that shouldn't be declassified but you shouldn't then bemoan a public that is struggling to come along informed if it's not been given the information that it needs especially in a world where disinformation, misinformation is so rampant so I think that's something that we are very carefully and consciously thinking about at the moment in terms of everything's changed if I think about my relationship and even if I talk about it with human intelligence, with our friendship with CIA, with the Brits, the Canadians and the New Zealanders we were formed in 1952 the reality is that from for the first 50 years of our existence everything was about the Soviet Union it was the Cold War and the Soviet Union and in the, if you like the cascading world of human intelligence the Soviet Union was the principal concern and the batting order was really, really clear in my world, CIA, Brits Australia I would argue maybe arguably ourselves and the Canadians we then obviously from September 11 went through a period of time where we were all focused on terrorism in the national interest and it was all hands to the pump now we're making the adjustments that are very much addressing China and the prospects that we saw for China when I was in the DIO 10 years ago are very different than what we see now and so the whether we like it or not and the influence of China into our region and the intelligence that we're acquiring about what China is the type of activities they're undertaking in the region is being shared with government and I think you're seeing in government's language very much a very strong desire about peace and stability listening to the region but in a context where you know there is some very alarming signs and so I think what we're going to see is maybe for the first time ever in an organisation like mine that relative order is changing and with that comes certain responsibilities because a lot of the issues are playing into our region and I could well see a situation of relative importance the priority, the resources that are assigned to the human intelligence agencies actually reflect that the Cold War is over that we're still managing terrorism people smuggling, kidnapped Australians and other issues but our primary focus is China its behaviour, its actions and trying to understand and reveal the gap, the delta between what's being said and what's actually happening on the ground So we've got to be prepared for our intelligence whether we like it or not is what I'm hearing That's right Thanks Paul, let's open it to the group and just to remind colleagues in the room that we are recording this this is not going anywhere live although it will in due course be broadcast so feel free to ask any question you want but I'm not going to oblige you to identify yourself and my colleague with the microphone will come to you and we'll start with this gentleman over here Thank you Thanks for speaking to us In the technological advance since we've seen in the past 30 years do you think that's been beneficial or detrimental to human intelligence a field that's traditionally been more face to face and how's the service adapted to those changes? It's a really good question and I think I talked about scale in size of people but there is a scale issue in technology as well and I think we're all grappling with that scale and if I just tell a bit of the backstory I think the backstory is that in the 50s, 60s, 70s the intelligence community government R&D led the way and business followed and of course that's completely flipped now the real innovation lies outside government and the trick is that this is something that we take very very seriously is to be tapped into venture capital to be tapped into startups especially for an organisation like ours we can't be caught out with some new technology that really is quite out there and be slow to recognise it so there's been a lot of work in the last few years inside our community to be tapped into that system, that ecosystem and it's critical absolutely critical and we've got the touch points but there's more work to do because we've got to be hungry to be innovative to be tapped into all of the emerging technologies and we just cannot be again, history won't excuse us if there's a certain technology that we've missed that exposes my people exposes the sort of work that we do so I think it's that we're bringing our DNA of all of the intelligence agencies that we care deeply about the development of technology we were probably all a bit slow but this is some years past of making that recognition of the flip between government R&D and what the outside world produces I think there are some issues for example government to government with some of these protections that were put in in a form of time were fit for a form of time but I would seriously question given the demands that have been placed on it whether they're truly fit for purpose for the type of work that we're going to do now and into the future and so I think we all need to be sort of hungrily thinking about are we as well tapped into emerging technology is government and government R&D especially you know the Five Eyes relationship as agile as it should be and are we still holding on to some behemoths that made sense perhaps in the Cold War when government was at the cutting edge but is now no longer the case and frankly as a foreign intelligence service I can pretty well match many government capabilities that have constraints on them in a trusted world like the Five Eyes I can go to effectively intelligence supermarkets around the world and I've got a lot of capabilities I need and I don't have any other hassle so that's the way we've got to adjust Thanks and just to build on that Paul what about the dramatic improvement in the scale and the quality of open source intelligence in recent years I mean how does that affect the value add of your service? I mean open source is a massive game changer and has been since the advent of the internet and the like for me so I'm conscious that a former CIA deputy director indicated that it might be time to set up another agency that's purely open source and would provide I think she said competition with the intelligence agency You've been clearly getting inside information on our courses Scarlett I confess I agree with her about the importance of open source intelligence but I don't agree to set it up as a separate agency in competition with with the intelligence agencies I think cooperation, coordination not competition is the answer and maybe perhaps that's a reflection of because the US is so large they will set up these very large agencies and operate that way I think one of our strengths is the cooperation and coordination and frankly we need different things from open source the demands that Andrew needs in providing on a daily basis the best information to the prime minister and to the senior ministers about what's going on I guess to agree the information that goes into those products could be seen as a competition between open source and intelligence agencies I've got no problem with that I mean Andrew has to you know and his people have to make that calculation about what is passed on to the prime minister but of course that's a calculation that dismisses the fact that social media open source can be so easily manipulated and adjusted and it's a calculation that the team have got to make Rachel and I and Chris have different needs for open source but still very very important needs so I've got to be able to swim in that open source world but I've got to protect with assumed identities or protect the sort of work and why I'm showing interest in open source for my own purposes so that's why for me setting up a separate agency is not the answer I think every agency will have a certain touch point to open source open source intelligence and we'll do it in a way that makes it as you know sort of fit for purpose for what our needs are and they are different needs but we don't need to create another monster we should keep that as lean and a central to our mission and our core purpose as we can Thank you we'll go to a few others around the room and I'll then go to one of my colleagues from the National Security College are there any other questions from anyone in the group I know that we have I think a couple of the scholarship holders from our Women and National Security Intelligence Scholarships so if if any of you have questions we'd be delighted to hear from you as well but I'll go to this question here in the middle first please wait for the mic sorry, yeah Director General Andy Matts from Department of Industry Science and Resources I think one of the really interesting things about the changing geostrategic environment is that parts of the Australian Government that have never been part of the traditional national security community all of a sudden find themselves in the front line managing some pretty manipulative coercive activity I guess my question for you is how does your agency respond to that how is it that you provide support to those parts of the Australian Government and adjust to the new normal Okay, thanks Andy Well I think I sort of touched with COVID just as an exemplar of where all of a sudden we absolutely swung towards Department of Health and those departments that ordinarily don't get a lot of information from us but they're thirst and their need for knowledge about what was being put in the public domain and what the truth was which comes back to the challenges of open source it was our job to ground truth that and the collection agencies were absolutely put our sources onto that particular challenge and we made sure you know Brandon Murphy and the people that needed to know what we were obtaining got that information so we can adapt very very quickly to whatever the priorities are and obviously Andrew and I and the team and I you know that was a central part of the reporting they did I think I mean there will always be challenges because some departments are better set up and I think what we have learnt more broadly and I know the demands on skiffs and I know the demands on vetting and all of that is just growing and growing and growing but that's the nature of the world we're going to live in and the I think you know in many respects what we're dealing with for example in SCONS the Secretary's Committee of National Security is that intersection between intelligence national security policy and economic policy so you know we've talked about a whole range of you know issues that are bearing on the government and calculations that we need to make about investments that's costing the taxpayer in that economic security or economic investment space in our national interest it's very hard to get the architecture right I don't think any country has that architecture right of how you build that conversation across the board and where it's been thought about but more and more I think our conversations there is that intersection between sort of department that you're in the sort of work that we do and I think that's a work in progress it's inevitable that the demands and the product and the intersection is only going to increase not decrease Thank you any more questions I'll go to Dr Will Stoltz from the National Security College Thank you Rory and thank you Paul Paul you mentioned that the scope of what your agency's activities is directly related to the risk appetite of politicians primarily I imagine the Prime Minister and the Foreign Minister but it strikes me that the vocational background of those people is so starkly different to yours and that the world of ASIS and the National Intelligence Committee could appear to be quite esoteric to someone who's had a career as a union official or anything else that they're coming to the role of Prime Minister or Foreign Minister as so can you tell us a bit about how you and your counterpart agencies go about educating and preparing parliamentarians for interacting with your agencies and perhaps what more needs to be done to broaden the aperture of that risk appetite that you were mentioning before Well hopefully they read papers like yours Will that talks about agencies like ours look it's a really it's a really interesting challenge actually and I think those of us in the front row from the moment government was formed before we used this year as an example from the 21st of May the intensity of the briefings of the the issues that we need to impart on key ministers is very intense and I guess we see it as a duty of us to impart that knowledge as rapidly as we can to help them but of course they're dealing with a whole range of other issues I think the nature of the times are such that there is a genuine recognition that we have something to offer there's a lot that's going on and if you've been out of power for a long time there's a lot to catch up on and speaking very frankly the sort of conversations that I think we've all been having has led to observations by ministers which is sort of wow I mean to a degree a wow about the range of things that we do the intensity of what's going on and as you say off the backdrop of what might be a union background or whatever and I think then it's really encumbered on us in the way we run our agencies is to build that trust and confidence very very quickly so I started right at the end at the start of the stuff started at the start about being yourself not being cavalier making it very very clear that you respect the Intelligence Services Act that the governance and accountability that we carry as Director-General's to Parliament through the Parliamentary Joint Committee of Intelligence and Security through the Inspector-General of Intelligence and Security we take those really really seriously so I think what we have done very well this year I would say is provide confidence about achieving outcomes that are high risk it might often lead to a conversation which is Paul I'm not so sure and we talk about it and it is all about trust it's all about agencies delivering well but reminding them that this is not a no risk game we're engineered for risk and really it's up to the Government to decide what those risk settings are clearly if we lived in Israel and I was the Director-General of Mossad the risk settings are very different that's just the way it works if other countries have very different risk settings so we'll be guided by that risk appetite but that's a big part of the conversations we have in the early days with Ministers is to sort of see where where it settles and I'd have to say and this is genuinely a non-partisan comment agencies like ours have benefited from both sides of politics and both sides of politics have benefited from us the work that we do and it's very much the way we go about it in building that confidence and that trust Thanks Paul we're almost at time but I have room for maybe one more question from the group so if anyone has a question and I think there we are in the middle please Thanks Paul for your time and thanks Rory as well for leading the discussion just a quick question can you Paul share on how you have observed diversity across your career within the national intelligence community how that has developed and changed any observations or maybe a hard moments where you realise diversity would be a good thing and further where and how future diversity can be encouraged across intelligence in Australia is a very personal journey so when we were first employed by the government we went to an all male institution I went from on graduates for four years I then went to a unit all male I then went to one job where there were a couple of women in the workplace vast majority male and then for the successive postings after that all male I mean this was the army you know of the 80s contrast that with my last three bosses have been Julie Bishop, Maurice Payne and Penny Wong, guess what and ASIS as an organisation in fact the Defence Force recognised I think in the latter part of the 80s and through the 90s that diversity is central to its capability and I was part of that journey and I was certainly when I was Deputy Chief of Army which Rory mentioned and the like and walking through with Army with leadership the fact that diversity was central to the capability that the military have and I think it's a great credit to the current generation of senior leaders in the military. For me in ASIS it's a no-brainer because the most obvious point is that you should never be able to observe what an ASIS officer is you know whatever their background that richness of diversity sits so centrally and comfortably in the way we are now and need to be into the future as a both the right thing to do the best way to get capability but also as a protective mechanism to make sure that you know that they don't employ these people or whatever so we have really stepped up I would say some in the room but I won't identify because I can't identify them here but really stepped up the we've done this in the intelligence community more broadly diversity and inclusion as a central pillar of the way we think the way we act I am dealing with an ASIS where the balance of diversity is not what we want so we specifically bring people in to ensure that the richness of the conversation in the board reflects the richness that all board discussions have when you have that diversity that diversity in the committee so I deliberately will bring people in not because of the position they're in but to make sure that I've got the right voices in the board meeting and we have benefited from that I have benefited from that, there's no turning back as far as I'm concerned Thanks Paul, I'm going to wrap up on I think another question that certainly reflects the challenges and the era that we live in and that's about ethics so I guess at one level there's something that is obviously ethically challenging about what ASIS does you steal others secrets at another level though I assume, I imagine that there are all sorts of processes for calculating the ethics of decisions when it comes to operations whether it's to do with the welfare of your people or looking after your agents or whatever it may be is there anything with us about whether and how you foreground ethical questions when you're either seeking ministerial authorization for activities or whether you're making those decisions internally do you have some sort of framework for processing that? Thanks Rory, so I mean the central pillars of any submission that I put up to the minister of which there are many many every week authorizations go to the minister legality propriety and risk are the central pillars that underpin every submission I write to the foreign minister and so the legality is sort of fairly straightforward and the guidebook is the Intelligence Services Act risk pretty straightforward you use ISO 31000 which is the international standard for how to do risk management and we use that and replicate in great detail in our activities and the work that we do with the foreign minister and look at the risks the consequences the likelihood the normal sort of international standard of risk management. Propriety though is the issue and the relationship between whether it's a proper activity it's the proper thing to do and people's ethical compass that's where the richness often in the workplace exists I brought in an ethics counselor into ASIS and that ethics counselor was there that if anyone felt that they were going had an ethical dilemma they could put their hand up and they could talk to the ethics counselor now not so much in the last couple of years but as my wife Kate knows you know the first couple of years in this job the phone would often ring in the middle of the night because there were issues with in the Middle East with communicating intelligence that might lead to kinetic action where I'd have to be woken in the middle of the night and provide an authorization and so for some of our people that were caught in that targeting chain ethical issues became a very very prominent matter and that's why I brought an ethics counselor in. I have said to the staff that if there's any activity that they are developing or undertaking and they have a personal ethical issue firstly they can put their hand up and they can say that they wish to opt out and I guarantee them there will be no career detriment by putting up your hand and saying you have an ethical dilemma but in return I want them to have a conversation with the ethics counselor who's been trained at the St James Ethics Centres and well grounded in contemporary ethics and historical ethics and actually have a proper adult discussion about what is troubling you and trying to ground it in you know ethical discourse so interestingly a number of people have put their hand up no detriment to the career, put my hand up I'll talk to the ethics counselor which is what I've asked them to do and after a series of conversations have opted back in so at the heart of your question is this is not something that we can dismiss lightly it is important in the human intelligence space and I think in recognition of that I've put those sort of processes in play and I think with this thinking generation coming through there's no turning back it's got to be available to people to have those sorts of conversations well I I know Paul that you feel that one or two of your answers were a little long but that's the point and this has been a real masterclass for us and I know that among the group in the room here we have our senior executive service course this is day one of their four week course so it's perfectly timed that you've chosen to speak with us today and we've hosted our invitation my closing question is to you what next Kate would you like the microphone we're talking only a week or two away yeah yeah no I've so between mid-November when I start some leave and finish the job and mid-March when our son gets married to his fiance I'm doing nothing I'm doing nothing and I'm proud of this but I have never taken long service leave and I've and I have worked very hard and I've worked hard in this job so I'm being really frank it's actually time to stop and do nothing for a while so I'll do nothing and then Kate knows me well enough to know you know come March I'll get some itchy feet and we'll see from then you know it's not it's not zero miles an hour but it's not 100 miles an hour and we'll work out between them what the right speed is well look all I can say is thank you Paul I think on behalf of all of us thank you for your service thank you Kate and your family and close friends for your service really in supporting Paul through all these years thanks also for your support of the National Security College I can't resist putting that plug in because both through your support as one of the agencies that supports our work, our participating agencies arrangement but also the direct support through the scholarship that you and other heads of the intelligence agencies and I acknowledge here today Andrew Shearer, Rachel Noble and it's also good to see Chris here representing Mike that's making a huge difference in building new generations of talent for the National Security College. I'm not going to ask you to applaud yet because I'm going to hand back to my colleague Nicola Rosenblum to close proceedings but just to say please stick around thank you very much thank you Rory, Paul thank you very much Rory said it on behalf of the college thank you for your contribution of your very long and distinguished career but I think I'd ask everyone here to thank Paul for his remarks this evening and to thank him very much for a