The ‘Security of Security’: making up the Australian intelligence community 1975–2015

The legal and institutional arrangements for Australian security and intelligence underwent major changes in the 1970s. Existing agencies were publicly acknowledged for the first time, new agencies were established, new powers of investigation and surveillance were introduced and an emergent ‘intelligence community’ was formed. As in Canada (and the USA), numerous ‘crises’ in Australian intelligence practices led to and informed various commissions of inquiry that made visible previously hidden intelligence institutions and associated surveillance practices. Subsequent inquiries, security and intelligence plans, national statements and reforms in Australia built upon these developments, which were indicative of a good measure of continuity in intelligence and surveillance arrangements. This chapter identifies how intelligence and security arrangements were 'problematised’ from the 1970s, and a new ‘intelligence community’ was created as an object of governing.