As Anthony Albanese restructures Home Affairs, it can be revealed that the drones Labor claimed were being used to monitor released asylum seekers were decommissioned months before the High Court’s ruling on indefinite detention.
When Andrew Giles raised the use of an Australian Border Force drone fleet in monitoring detainees released from indefinite detention, and then backtracked days later amid an uproar, he defaulted to saying he had relied on departmental advice.
The Saturday Paper can now reveal the fleet of 41 DJI drones the then immigration minister cited were not being used for that purpose. In fact, the intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance devices were permanently retired seven months earlier over national security concerns.
DJI Technology is a Chinese company blacklisted by the United States over links to China’s military.
“It’s very good news that the ABF has retired their high-risk DJI drones, which are not safe to be used in any national security context, but Border Force should have been more transparent about it,” shadow home affairs minister James Paterson told The Saturday Paper.
“When they first briefly took these out of service and paused using them, they implied that they would potentially return to using them again if the security issues could be overcome. But clearly, the security issues couldn’t be overcome.
“They are too dangerous to use.”
Paterson has pursued DJI drones in an opposition campaign to call out risks to government departments and agencies. The Liberal senator has highlighted concerns over other China-made technology or Chinese government ties, including the use of Hikvision cameras and TikTok on government devices. Following recent US bans, he also points to concerns over antivirus software from Russian security vendor Kaspersky.
“I strongly suspect that they are in utilisation across a range of critical infrastructure sectors, like ports, airports, rail, road. Who knows?” Paterson said, referring to DJI drones.
“These are cheap drones. They are popular in the commercial and the consumer market, so I’d be very shocked if they’re not being used in critical infrastructure.”
In a television interview on May 30, Giles claimed ABF drones were being used in some cases to keep track of people released by the NZYQ High Court ruling on indefinite immigration detention.
Giles, who was shifted to the skills and training portfolio in this week’s reshuffle, admitted days later he had relied on departmental information that had to be clarified.
The Saturday Paper asked the new Home Affairs minister, Tony Burke, about the drone decision and was told Australian Border Force stopped using DJI drones on October 16, 2023. The decision was based on cybersecurity risks, the broader security environment and maintaining “interoperability with Commonwealth partners into the future”.
“They have guns, which makes them very distinctive to the rest of the department. And I think what that led to was effectively an organisation that was not focused on delivering policy outcomes, but more about itself. It had become a law unto itself.”
There is no official detail on what the ABF fleet of drones is used for, but it is more likely employed in searches for illegal tobacco plantations. An Australian Border Force spokesperson gave a general response that drones were used for frontline operations and investigations, particularly to increase officer safety.
In an answer to a question on notice, the Australian Border Force said it had bought four new remotely piloted aircraft systems on June 21 this year. These American-made drones are not yet operational, but the ABF said the new technology had been subjected to cyber and security assessment and was “blue-listed” by the US Department of Defense.
According to former immigration department deputy secretary Abul Rizvi, the drones issue was “shemozzle all around” and reflected poorly on the culture of the Australian Border Force.
“It’s always seen itself as separate because they have uniforms, which make them very distinctive to the rest of the department,” he told The Saturday Paper.
“They have guns, which makes them very distinctive to the rest of the department. And I think what that led to was effectively an organisation that was not focused on delivering policy outcomes, but more about itself. It had become a law unto itself.
“It sounds like a mix-up in the briefing and a mix-up in the reading of the briefing.”
Rizvi is a critic of Home Affairs, the Turnbull-era super department that grouped together the security functions of four or five different departments and which was run for most of its existence by departmental boss Mike Pezzullo.
Anthony Albanese’s appointment of Burke as Home Affairs minister is proposed as a stopgap for what the prime minister described as a “dysfunctional department and a dysfunctional system”. Immigration returns to a cabinet role, as Burke now has that title as well, along with the workload of multicultural affairs, cyber security, arts and leader of the House.
Insiders say the appointment is intended to keep immigration off the front page, amid strident opposition efforts to weaponise the portfolio.
Burke’s record in the portfolio when he last held it has been the subject of criticism from the opposition, although the prime minister has strongly defended him.
“Tony Burke is someone who has been successful in everything he has done and undertaken,” Albanese told reporters. “The only people who are a cheer squad for people smugglers are some of the Coalition members who consistently try to talk Australia down. That’s not my approach.”
As part of the restructure, responsibility for the domestic spy agency ASIO will be returned to the Attorney-General’s Department. Albanese says this is a “sensible proposition” but there is concern that many of the policy functions have been left in Home Affairs. Burke retains responsibility for domestic security, counterterrorism, counterespionage and counter-foreign interference.
Some see the decision to move ASIO as a step towards dismantling the super department.
“I think it’s in name only because it’s frankly just the next step along the journey,” one Home Affairs insider told The Saturday Paper. “It seems strange to only move half of it. It’s like another big bite has been taken out of it.”
Former Liberal attorney-general George Brandis praised the return of ASIO to Australia’s first law officer.
Along with then foreign affairs minister Julie Bishop, he opposed Home Affairs at the time it was established. This week he called it a “Frankenstein’s monster” that came from judgement “sacrificed to ambition”.
“I wouldn’t have created the Department of Home Affairs, simple as that, for reasons that I’ve made clear,” Brandis told The Saturday Paper.
“It was also done against the very strenuous advice of Duncan Lewis, the director-general, and also Andrew Colvin, the commissioner of the AFP. Now, what a future government does, I can’t speculate about, but it’s more important that the agencies have been returned to the Attorney-General’s Department than anything.”
Justin Bassi, who was Malcolm Turnbull’s national security adviser at the time Home Affairs was created, sees ministers now wearing two hats, political and legal.
“Now the one minister is both the Home Affairs and immigration minister, and you had the separation of security and law with the Home Affairs minister being the chief security minister and the [attorney-general] being the first law officer,” says Bassi, now executive director of the Australian Strategic Policy Institute.
“Now the attorney-general is both the security minister and the first law officer in relation to ASIO.
“I think that it made more sense how it was.”
There is wide consensus that there is no perfect split of the roles and functions, but there is conjecture over the reason for the change and whether it is deliberate.
For the new minister, the ASIO move to sit alongside the AFP is “logical” and he is “completely supportive”. He also assures people that ASIO is an agency that is constantly briefing other agencies and ministers.
Brandis, however, questions the sense of having the policy function in one department and the operational agencies in a different department.
“Most of the domestic intelligence and law enforcement functionality which lies with the agencies is no longer in the Department of Home Affairs,” he told The Saturday Paper. “It is essentially the immigration department with the policy area of the old Attorney-General’s Department – stranded, essentially, within the old immigration department – rebadged, and I don’t think that makes a lot of sense.”
Brandis refuses to speculate on the future of Home Affairs.
“In a way, the definition of good government is silence,” he said. “Just as the definition of a well-running machine is an inaudible hum. So, what matters to the public is that the structures are optimal, that the machine runs well.”
Bassi welcomes the recently publicised move by Labor to return ASIO director-general Mike Burgess to a permanent seat on the National Security Committee of cabinet, but said there needed to be clarity on why the participation of the intelligence chief was downgraded to a case by case basis in the first place.
He also wants a better explanation for stripping the law enforcement agencies out of Home Affairs.
“It re-creates the problem of the attorney being effectively poacher and gamekeeper, where you have the attorney being responsible for ASIO and having to make that security assessment first and then having to switch hats to say whether the legal framework has been met to enable him to provide sign off on warrants,” he says.
Bassi points out that Burke is now responsible for both illegal immigration and migration.
“That, to me, puts a difficult challenge on the one minister who has to, again, be necessarily a proud supporter of immigration, but then switch hats to stop illegal immigration,” he said.
“We should be having a discussion about how important migration is to Australia. We’re an immigrant country. We’re the most successful multicultural country in the world.”
There are now real questions as to whether Home Affairs will survive beyond the next election.
Certainly, the Coalition view is that it should be returned to its original super state.
“We think the Home Affairs portfolio worked,” Paterson said. “It stopped the boats, it stopped terrorism plots, it stopped espionage and foreign interference plots. And we think it makes sense to have all those agencies operating together under one roof, under one minister, the Home Affairs minister.”
Under Labor, Bassi regards the removal of almost all agencies from Home Affairs as suggesting a “pathway to the future dismantling of the Home Affairs Department”.
“I’m not sure that there has been stated reasons for why the ASIO has been taken out of Home Affairs. That’s why it perhaps suggests that this is the next stage, just as the first stage was removing AFP and other agencies in 2022,” he says.
For Rizvi, the end of Home Affairs has been marked.
“I mean, fundamentally, other than the name, surely, this is the end of the Home Affairs experiment, isn’t it?” he said.
“I thought the objective of creating Home Affairs was to inject a national security and law enforcement perspective into immigration policy and management. That was the impression I had.
“But for most of our history, we haven’t taken that view. We’ve taken the view that immigration is about nation-building.”
This article was first published in the print edition of The Saturday Paper on August 3, 2024 as "Exclusive: Border Force drones retired over security concerns".
Exclusive: Border Force drones retired over security concerns. By Karen Barlow, The Saturday Paper