commonwealth of australia official committee hansard · interrogation of omar al-faruq. e) any...

COMMONWEALTH OF AUSTRALIA

Official Committee Hansard

SENATE FOREIGN AFFAIRS, DEFENCE AND TRADE REFERENCES

COMMITTEE

Reference: Security threats to Australians in South-East Asia

FRIDAY, 28 NOVEMBER 2003

CANBERRA

BY AUTHORITY OF THE SENATE

INTERNET

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SENATE

FOREIGN AFFAIRS, DEFENCE AND TRADE REFERENCES COMMITTEE

Friday, 28 November 2003

Members: Senator Cook (Chair), Senator Sandy Macdonald (Deputy Chair), Senators Hogg, Johnston, Marshall and Ridgeway

Substitute members: Senator Stott Despoja for Senator Ridgeway

Participating members: Senators Abetz, Boswell, Brandis, Brown, Carr, Chapman, Collins, Conroy, Coonan, Denman, Eggleston, Chris Evans, Faulkner, Ferguson, Ferris, Forshaw, Harradine, Harris, Hutchins, Kirk, Knowles, Lees, Lightfoot, Mackay, Mason, McGauran, Murphy, Nettle, Payne, Santoro, Stott Despoja, Tchen, Tierney and Watson

Senators in attendance: Brandis, Collins, Johnston, Kirk, Santoro and Stott Despoja

Terms of reference for the inquiry: To inquire into and report on:

The performance of the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT) and other relevant agencies of the Commonwealth Government in the assessment and dissemination of threats to the security of Australians in South-East Asia in the period 11 September 2001 to 12 October 2002, including:

a) The assessment made by DFAT and other relevant agencies of the Commonwealth Government of the threat to Australians in South-East Asia from al Qaeda (and associated terrorist organisations) prior to 11 September 2001

b) Any change in the assessment of the threat to Australians in South-East Asia from these terrorist organisations arising from the terrorist events of 11 September 2001 and the decision by Australia to participate in military actions with other coalition partners against al Qaeda in Afghanistan in November 2001.

c) Any further changes in the assessment of the threat to Australians in South-East Asia from these terrorist organisations arising from the arrest and interrogation of the so-called ‘Singapore bombers’ in the period December 2001 to February 2002.

d) Any further change in threat assessments to Australians in South-East Asia arising from the arrest and interrogation of Omar al-Faruq.

e) Any subregional variations on the assessment of the threat to Australians in South-East Asia in the period 11 September 2001 to 12 October 2002, in particular within Indonesia including Jakarta and Bali.

f) Any differences between the assessments of the threat made by DFAT and other related agencies of the Commonwealth Government agencies, and the assessments of the threat made by the United Kingdom, the United States, New Zealand, Singapore and Canada over the security of their nationals for the same period.

g) Any differences between the assessments of the threat made by DFAT and other related agencies of the Commonwealth Government and the content of the travel advisories, embassy bulletins and travel bulletins provided by DFAT over the period 11 September 1002 and 12 October 2002.

h) Any differences between DFAT travel advisories, travel bulletins and embassy bulletins between the period 11 September 2001 to 12 October 2002.

i) DFAT’s conclusion on improvements to the dissemination of travel advisories, travel bulletins and embassy bulletins to the Australian travelling public in the future.

WITNESSES

ASHTON, Mr Graham Leonard, General Manager Counter-Terrorism, Australian Federal Police ............................................................................................................................................................... 368

BONIGHTON, Mr Ronald Bruce, Deputy Secretary, Intelligence and Security, Department of Defence ............................................................................................................................................................ 342

KEMISH, Mr Ian, First Assistant Secretary, Public Diplomacy, Consular and Passports Division, Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade................................................................................... 379

LEWINCAMP, Mr Frank, Director, Defence Intelligence Organisation, Department of Defence........ 342

PATERSON, Mr William, First Assistant Secretary, South and South-East Asia Division, Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade................................................................................................... 379

ROACH, Mr Jeff, Director, Consular Information Section, Consular Branch, Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade............................................................................................................................. 379

SMITH, Mr Richard Campbell, Former Australian Ambassador to the Republic of Indonesia ........... 358

SMITH, Mr Rod, Assistant Secretary, Consular Branch, Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade ............................................................................................................................................................... 379

WARDLAW, Dr Grant, General Manager Intelligence, Australian Federal Police ............................... 368

Friday, 28 November 2003 Senate—References FAD&T 341

FOREIGN AFFAIRS, DEFENCE AND TRADE

Committee met at 9.09 a.m.

ACTING CHAIR (Senator Kirk)—I declare open this meeting of the Senate Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade References Committee. This morning the committee will continue its public hearings into the assessment and dissemination of threats to the security of Australians in South-East Asia during the period 11 September 2001 to 12 October 2002. The terms of reference set by the Senate are available from the secretariat staff, and copies have been placed near the entrance to the room. The hearing this morning is open to the public. This could change if the committee decides to take any evidence in private. Today’s hearing will suspend for lunch at around noon, resume at 12.45 p.m. and adjourn at 3.30 p.m. Today’s hearings could be disrupted from time to time by division bells, given that the Senate is sitting this morning. Please bear with us if we need to attend to any responsibilities of that sort should they occur.

Witnesses are reminded that the evidence given to the committee is protected by parliamentary privilege. It is important for witnesses to be aware that the giving of false or misleading evidence to the committee may constitute a contempt of the Senate. If at any stage a witness wishes to give part of their evidence in camera, they should make that request to me as the chair and the committee will consider that request. Should a witness request to present evidence to the committee that reflects adversely upon a person, the witness should give consideration to that evidence being given in camera. The committee is obliged to draw to the attention of the person any evidence which, in the committee’s view, reflects adversely on that person and offer that person an opportunity to respond. Witnesses will be invited to make a brief opening statement to the committee before the committee embarks on its questions.

FAD&T 342 Senate—References Friday, 28 November 2003


[9.11 a.m.]

BONIGHTON, Mr Ronald Bruce, Deputy Secretary, Intelligence and Security, Department of Defence

LEWINCAMP, Mr Frank, Director, Defence Intelligence Organisation, Department of Defence

ACTING CHAIR—I welcome Mr Bonighton and Mr Lewincamp. We invite you to make an opening statement to the committee if you wish, before questions.

Mr Bonighton—We have no opening statement to make on this occasion, but we hope that the answers to the questions on notice coming out of the last hearing provide plenty of background to get into some detailed discussion on the matters at hand.

Mr Lewincamp—I just wanted to respond to a couple of pieces of evidence, given by witnesses in the open hearings last week, which were not quite accurate. I want to put this on record on two matters. One is that a couple of your witnesses indicated that Australia, and DIO in particular, had no real terrorism or counter-terrorism capability prior to 11 September 2001. Witnesses also made the comment that agencies had failed to detect the changing nature of Islam in South-East Asia and that we had not seen people returning from Afghanistan as a potential threat. Those witnesses were Dr Wright-Neville, Professor Babbage and Mr Williams.

On those two matters, the then Joint Intelligence Organisation in 1989 created a terrorism cell with three military staff. By 2001, prior to September 11, there were six staff in that terrorism cell. Their principal tasks were to analyse the modus operandi, the capabilities and the operational links of terrorist groups and individuals, to analyse regional counter-terrorism capabilities and also to analyse terrorist incidents to help inform special forces training. So we did have a well-established counter-terrorism capability through the 1990s. That was at six people by 2001. It now stands at around 10 people, allowing for fluctuations of people leaving and arriving.

On the second point, we did report extensively on the growth of radical and extremist Islam in the region consistently and well before September 2001. For example, in May 2001 we indicated that Indonesia provided fertile ground for extremist groups with diverse motivations and international connections. Certainly there was some debate about al-Qaeda and the extent of its influence and presence in the region, but there was clear agreement across the community about extremism and the capacity for terrorist attacks within South-East Asia. In August 2000, we reported explicitly on al-Qaeda’s reach into the region and on the brotherhood of Mujaheddin—people who had received al-Qaeda training and shared operational experience in Afghanistan—and their presence within the region. I wanted to correct the impression you may have gained from some of your witnesses last week about those two matters in particular.

ACTING CHAIR—Thank you, gentlemen. Some of my questions relate to evidence we have received from others in the last few weeks. I turn first to some of the issues that were raised with us by Professor Babbage on the intelligence agencies’ capacity to deal with terrorism issues



before terrorism got the profile that it has now. In his evidence last week, Professor Babbage said:

If you went back five years and you looked at all of these organisations, but particularly ONA and DIO, the primary

assessment organisations, you would find their involvement and focus on intelligence relating to terrorism was really

rather modest, I would suggest. This was a product, quite frankly, of the international security situation and the

intelligence priorities that had been set right through the Cold War. Then after the Cold War, of course, there were

significant modifications.

But if you think practically about ramping up intelligence assessment capabilities and processing to deal with terrorist

groups, there is a whole stack of new skills sets that are required, different sorts of personalities are required and, in some

important respects, entirely different people are required. These agencies have had difficulty scrambling to ramp up

capacities to do this. This is not something that is unique to Australia. Other members of the Western intelligence

coalition, if you like, particularly Britain and the United States, have had similar problems. My view is that if there have

been shortcomings in the intelligence assessment community as a consequence, it has been more because of those

practical issues.

I understand from your comments, Mr Lewincamp, that you were seeking to address the thrust of what Professor Babbage was saying. I am sorry; I was trying to write this as you were speaking, but I understand that, as of 2001, there were six staff to deal with these issues. Is that correct?

Mr Lewincamp—Yes. There were six staff in our counter-terrorism cell specifically dealing with these particular issues—that is, the nature of the terrorist groups in the region plus the nature of the counter-terrorism capabilities of regional countries. I should also add that we had a number of geographical analysts in particular countries looking at different forms of radicalism and extremism within those countries. For example, desk analysts working on Indonesia would be looking at the range of radical groups within Indonesia, and similarly in Malaysia and the Philippines. So the total analytical effort devoted to these issues was more than just the people in the counter-terrorism cell.

ACTING CHAIR—So were these people working on the geographical analysis in addition to the six staff?

Mr Lewincamp—Yes, they are.

ACTING CHAIR—How many staff did you have then?

Mr Lewincamp—There were probably two or three within Indonesia and perhaps one for the other major countries focusing on these issues in particular. It is hard to be more specific than that.

ACTING CHAIR—I am trying to get an idea of the skill range or the skill set of these people—how much experience they had, where they had come from and if they had been recruited from elsewhere. Could you tell the committee a bit more about that?

Mr Lewincamp—Not quite now but at that time at least half of our counter-terrorism cell were military personnel with special forces background and that type of experience. They



understood very well the nature of the counter-terrorism task and the nature of the organisations that they would be operating against. They had a lot of skill in terms of analysis of the terrorist target.

We also have civilian analysts with a range of different skills and backgrounds who are looking at this particular issue. Many of our geographical analysts, for example, are specialists on those regional countries with a very good understanding of the society, the religion and the groups themselves.

ACTING CHAIR—We may have covered this before but for my benefit could you outline to the committee how DIO interacts with other intelligence organisations, such as ASIO and ONA? Is there information sharing on a regular basis? How does that work?

Mr Lewincamp—There is ongoing informal contact with all of the other agencies. On top of that, we are the recipients of each other’s product. As an all-source assessment agency, DIO would receive information from agencies such as the Defence Signals Directorate, the Defence Imagery and Geospatial Organisation, ASIS, ASIO, overseas reporting through Foreign Affairs and Trade and information from allied agencies. All of that information comes to DIO, as it goes also to ONA. We would make our assessments on that. Our analysts would check their judgments, usually, with analysts working in organisations such as ONA and ASIO. There is a lot of informal contact about the nature of the conclusions we are drawing, but each of the organisations DIO and ONA would publish separately on those particular subjects. It is not our responsibility, as you are aware, to provide formal threat assessments—that is done by ASIO—but, if we were aware of any particular issues or activities which were of concern as representing possible threats, we would communicate that directly and immediately to ASIO.

ACTING CHAIR—And to DFAT as well?

Mr Lewincamp—DFAT are not part of the intelligence community. DFAT would receive our product, but direct communication with regard to threats, for example, would be between ASIO and DFAT, rather than directly from us to Foreign Affairs and Trade.

ACTING CHAIR—So the information goes from you to ASIO, who then prepare threat assessments and pass that information on to DFAT. Is that correct?

Mr Lewincamp—That is not quite right. The informal contact would generally be with ASIO but our formal product would also go to Foreign Affairs and Trade. So they would see our published product directly, as well.

ACTING CHAIR—Is that published product that goes to DFAT a public document?

Mr Lewincamp—No, it is not public. Most of the documents are highly classified. That is why, to digress a little, I am a little intrigued by the way in which, last week in your hearing, people operating in the academic world were able to speak with such confidence about what we were writing.

ACTING CHAIR—In the fifth paragraph on page 4 of the answers to questions on notice that you have given to us, you state:



On 5 August 2002, DIO assessed that: Reports over the past month indicate an increased threat of a terrorist attack against

Western targets, possibly in August .... Despite uncertainty over the credibility of sources, contradictory information and a

general lack of detail, remnants of the regional extremist organisation, Jemaah Islamiyah (JI), continue to possess the

capability and intent to undertake future attacks....

It goes on to say:

Extremist organisations … such as JI … pose a greater threat to foreigners in Indonesia than do domestic extremist

groups.

It certainly seems, with hindsight, a very accurate assessment.

Mr Lewincamp—Yes.

ACTING CHAIR—I am just trying to understand the assessment you made. Where was that contained? Was that contained in advice you passed on to ASIO? Was it in one of these confidential classified reports that would have gone to DFAT?

Mr Lewincamp—Yes. It would have been in a formal report which would have gone to a wide range of customers around Canberra, including other intelligence agencies, policy departments and ministerial offices.

ACTING CHAIR—So it definitely would have gone to DFAT?

Mr Lewincamp—Yes.

ACTING CHAIR—So definitely DFAT, ASIO and ONA. Is that correct?

Mr Lewincamp—Yes.

ACTING CHAIR—And the Minister for Foreign Affairs?

Mr Lewincamp—Almost certainly. I could check that but I am fairly confident it would have, on that type of subject.

ACTING CHAIR—It went to the department. Can you continue and give me a few more ideas as to where it would have gone? You said it went to a number of agencies but perhaps you could give me a fuller idea.

Mr Lewincamp—Perhaps I can talk in general terms about the way in which we do our distribution. We publish to all the other intelligence agencies so they can see what we are writing. We publish to the key policy departments, which are Defence, Foreign Affairs and Trade and Prime Minister and Cabinet, in particular—and usually to the ministers of those departments, so the Prime Minister, the foreign minister and the defence minister. There will be a range of other customers, depending upon the particular subject matter and our knowledge of the interests of different people in that material. We would also distribute it to allied intelligence agencies with which we have close association.



ACTING CHAIR—So, once this material has been distributed in the way that you have described, is there any follow-up to that or is it then just left up to these persons to contact you for further detail or more intensive briefings if that is what they require? Is that how it works?

Mr Lewincamp—Yes, that is normally the way it works. We publish continually on this subject. In this period, we were probably publishing on this particular subject every second or third day. So a constant stream of material is being provided. But in general, yes, you are correct. We would await any particular questions from those customers and any requests for follow-up briefings.

ACTING CHAIR—Can you recall whether or not there were any requests for follow-up briefings following this advice on 5 August?

Mr Lewincamp—There was none that I recall.

ACTING CHAIR—If there were such requests for further information, would that be something you would know about and be involved in?

Mr Lewincamp—It would depend on the level of the request. For example, this material would also go to many operational units in areas of Defence. It may well be that somebody working in one of our operational areas would phone a desk officer and ask a few questions, and I may not be aware of that. But if on the other hand a head of a policy department or a minister followed up, I would be aware of that.

ACTING CHAIR—You say in your answer that ASIO renewed its threat warning on 9 August. So it seems that they were perhaps taking into account what had been provided in your publication.

Mr Lewincamp—Yes. As I said, ASIO have access to our reporting and to ONA’s reporting and they also have access to the direct intelligence material themselves. So I cannot determine whether we were influential in that reaffirmation or whether they had come to the same conclusion themselves. But it is true that, during that period, the threat was uniformly assessed as high.

ACTING CHAIR—At the top of page 5 of your submission you say:

In an assessment prepared on 17 September 2002, taking account of information gained from the JI arrests, DIO assessed

… … …

You go on to say:

What is important, however, is that JI had connections with regional extremists and al Qa’eda, and intended targeting

Western interests. JI had also established the conditions and set the ground-work for a foreign team to complete the

operation … The JI operation in Indonesia is only now becoming apparent but seems less structured than in Malaysia-

Singapore. JI’s structure in Indonesia has not been disrupted.



… We assess that JI itself has only a low capability to conduct small-scale bombing attacks against poorly secured targets

and was reliant upon external assistance to complete operational planning and to execute anti-Western attacks … While

the arrests of [key JI members] have reduced JI’s capability in the immediate term, the remnants of JI contain all the

necessary ingredients to plan and conduct terrorist attacks in South-East Asia … JI’s flexibility and the contact network of

its key players at large will help them gain the support of other extremist groups in South-East Asia … the remaining JI

members to draw on their regional connections and transnational associations to al-Qa’eda to pursue anti-Western attacks

in the future.

I have read that out at length but, again, it seems to be quite an accurate assessment of the situation, only three weeks or so before the attack in Bali. So could you inform the committee about the process of distributing that advice and whether or not it differed in any way from your normal distribution which you have already outlined for us?

Mr Lewincamp—No, that would have been distributed in the same way as I mentioned before and to the same range of customers. But I would disagree slightly with you, and it is in the sense of being very self-critical. I think that where we fell down in the accuracy of the assessment—and I made this admission at the last hearing that we appeared at—is that we did underestimate the scale and extent of an attack that JI might undertake; we had assessed that they were more intent on a lower-level, lower-scale type of activity. You will notice in the next paragraph, which you are probably about to come to, that we said that ‘local JI capability will restrict any attack to small arms or improvised explosive devices’. But we went on to say:

Although this might obviate mass-casualties, if timing and location come together a large number of casualties could

result.

So we had—if I was being very critical of our performance in that period—underestimated the scale of the attack that occurred at Bali but in general we were well aware of the overall intent of JI to undertake attacks.

ACTING CHAIR—From what you are saying to us, this information was communicated to DFAT, ASIO, ONA—the usual list of persons. From your recollection, was there any comment or seeking of further information from DFAT to your organisation?

Mr Lewincamp—No, I do not recall. But the type of information we are talking about here was also the judgment being made by ONA and ASIO—there was a fairly consistent judgment across the community. So I do not see anything unusual in somebody not coming back to us to ask for confirmation.

ACTING CHAIR—The travel advisories that are prepared by DFAT: you do not have any contribution to them?

Mr Lewincamp—We have no involvement.

ACTING CHAIR—Are they forwarded to you or made available to you, or is there not that kind of exchange of information between you and DFAT?

Mr Lewincamp—They would be available in the organisation, as they are to any member of the Australian public, but I am not aware of them formally being distributed to us.



ACTING CHAIR—I want to refer to the paragraph you just quoted from in your assessment where you said that the local JI capability would probably be restricted to small arms and improvised explosive devices but if the timing and location were to come together there could be a large number of casualties. I wonder whether or not there was any discussion amongst DIO members or any publication that was a bit more specific. You talked about timing and location and a large number of casualties. Was there any discussion about the type of location that would bring that about, such as a nightclub or a place where foreigners gather or a hotel? Was there any discussion along the lines of possible locations?

Mr Lewincamp—I cannot recall any direct association between JI and the type of locations that they might attack in that sense. We had made the assessment that there were a range of targets across the Indonesian archipelago that they might attack. If I could refer you to about three paragraphs further on, which you may have been coming to, in an assessment in January 2002 we said:

South-East Asia does offer a range of soft and symbolic targets for anti-Western Islamic terrorists ... Most vulnerable and

numerous of Western interests in the region are tourists and expatriate business people.

So we did at times make that type of judgment, identifying those types of targets that would be attractive to the extremist groups.

ACTING CHAIR—Bali was not identified specifically, it seems.

Mr Lewincamp—No. At the request of the government we have obviously gone back over our intelligence prior to October 12 last year and there was no explicit reference to Bali in any of our product.

ACTING CHAIR—In the paragraph you were just looking at you say:

A number of tourist nodes in the region are proximate to areas of past or present Islamic armed activism—the Kra Isthmus

in Thailand, Lombok and Banda in Indonesia and the Sulu Sea area ...

It seems that at no point was Bali mentioned. I notice that Lombok was identified. Was Bali not identified.

Mr Lewincamp—That particular sentence relates to past activism. We were just making an observation about geographical proximity to those areas. As I recall, our focus at the time was very largely on Java. Most of the information that we were receiving was fairly specific to a likely attack or likely attacks in Java itself. We were not explicit about geographical location, because we had no specific intelligence relating to that and, of course, once you start mentioning specific locations you are then in a very invidious position if the attack occurs somewhere else. We had made the assessment that the attack could occur anywhere in Indonesia and therefore no place should be specifically isolated.

ACTING CHAIR—And that the threat, essentially, was high throughout the whole of Indonesia, which is what ASIO concluded.



Mr Lewincamp—Yes. You are talking about an extremist group that will be looking for a target of opportunity, and they may decide that such a target is a small school in a city in Java or an expatriate business association somewhere else in Indonesia. You cannot be specific in the circumstances, without particular intelligence.

ACTING CHAIR—It seems fair to say that you had identified that Western interests were likely to be threatened in the region.

Mr Lewincamp—Yes, we had.

ACTING CHAIR—I know you are relating it to past activity, but in this paragraph you note that Western interests in the region are tourists and expatriate businesspeople, so you had narrowed it down to groups of persons. I do not want to sound disrespectful, but did it not occur to you that Bali might seem an obvious place where there are a significant number of Western interests at any one time, particularly tourists?

Mr Lewincamp—It is, but it is not the only place in Indonesia where there are large groups of Australians. Some of the figures cited to the committee about the percentage of Australians in Bali compared to the rest of Indonesia sound to me to be far too high. You are absolutely correct—it is a significant group of Australians—but, equally, there are thousands of Australian residents elsewhere in Indonesia who have a more ongoing profile. Whether you are talking about businesses or businesspeople operating in Jakarta or local schools in Jakarta, there are a range of targets which would have high symbolic value as well.

In retrospect, we might have put out a publication that said, ‘This is where all the people are concentrated.’ But at that stage we had no specific intelligence which isolated Australian interests compared to other Western interests. So we would have had to take into account US presence, UK presence and Israeli presence, for example. Once you put that patchwork across the Indonesian archipelago, it would be very difficult, I think, to isolate Bali as deserving particular attention.

ACTING CHAIR—But, if you are talking about gatherings of westerners in a particular place in Indonesia, then I think it is fair to say that it is most likely that Bali is where you are going to find the most concentrated groups of westerners together at one time and in one place.

Mr Lewincamp—Yes.

ACTING CHAIR—I appreciate what you are saying about there being high-profile people across the archipelago, but they would not usually gather in the one location as westerners do in Bali.

Mr Bonighton—I do not think there had been any real terrorist action in Bali either. Certainly in the December 2000 bombings, which we found out later were done by JI, Bali was not one of the areas targeted, although there were a fair range of targets across Indonesia. So there was no form, no track record, of Bali being involved.

Senator BRANDIS—Were either of you, by any chance, listening to the evidence given by Mr White and Mr Borgu last night?



Mr Lewincamp—No.

Senator BRANDIS—I am not suggesting that you would not have had more interesting things to do last night! Let me try and summarise—and I hope I do them justice—a proposition they put to us, because I want to invite you to give us your thoughts on it. The proposition was that there is a structural shortcoming in the relationship between the various intelligence-gathering agencies at the moment, which would be best addressed by having at the peak level, and sitting immediately below the National Security Committee of cabinet, some sort of integrated body in which the various assessments that come up the line from ASIO, ONA, DIO, DSD, AFP, and any other relevant agency, are pooled and an integrated holistic—which is the word that Mr White kept using—view of all of the intelligence assessments can be arrived at, which can be conveyed to ministers. Mr Holmes, do you think that does justice to the proposition that was put? One point that Mr White was at pains to make is that there should be one person—and I think he suggested the Director-General of Intelligence and Security—who takes responsibility for this peak level of integrated intelligence pooling. I want to know what you think. Perhaps you have read the Hansard of Professor Babbage’s evidence. Professor Babbage was of a contrary view, you will recall. He thought the functional relationships between the agencies were about right. I would be interested in your comments on that view.

Mr Bonighton—Perhaps I could start, but I will ask my colleague to comment, since he is right in the firing line of the assessment business. It seems to me that one of the characteristics we have in the Australian intelligence community is that we understand the functions that each of us do, and they are pretty well defined. I think the threat assessment area is one that needed to be looked at because of the increasing incidence of terrorism. I think we now have that sort of role being played in the National Threat Assessment Centre, and that of course is under the control of the Director-General of ASIO, with the participation of the other agencies. On the assessment side, I think I will pass to Mr Lewincamp to give his perspective.

Mr Lewincamp—At the moment in the Australian system there are two all-source agencies—DIO and ONA—with the responsibility for providing holistic assessments on foreign intelligence, so we already have quite a funnelling effect, if you like. The other agencies that produce material are single-source agencies that relate to a particular type of information, whether it is human intelligence, technical intelligence or imagery, but ONA and DIO have the responsibility of providing an integrated view with slightly overlapping responsibilities, but we independently write these particular assessments. So there already is somebody in the system who has the responsibility for providing a coordinated holistic view of the intelligence to government on the wide range of issues with an international dimension, and that is the Director-General of the Office of National Assessments. We provide some material as well because we write generally on security defence, military type matters, and there is some overlap. So I suppose the one difference between the way the current system operates and that which Hugh White or Aldo Borgu might be suggesting is that we have two people doing that. And this government enjoys the contestability of advice, so they might be getting two slightly different perspectives on these issues. I am not sure what value would be added by trying to have a further integrated body sitting above the current process to do the sorts of things that Mr White mentioned.

Senator BRANDIS—Do you agree with me that there is an intrinsic tension between the value of contestability and the desire of some to have a holistic view? It seems to me that, if



everybody is basically singing from the same hymn sheet, that is going to compromise the desire of having contestable advice.

Mr Lewincamp—I agree with you and I put great value on the contestability of advice: somebody writing from a slightly different perspective and coming at it from a different angle. I think our system benefits greatly from that contestability—more so than some of our allied systems, which do not have that built in.

Senator BRANDIS—You will appreciate that one of the key issues with which this committee is seized is the question of whether the current structure of the agencies, and in particular the functional relationships between the agencies as they currently stand, is optimal. Professor Babbage’s evidence—I am reading from page 293 of Hansard—seemed to suggest that the functional relationships as they stand at the moment are about right. He said:

I do not think the fundamental problems that I think are the challenges of the last two or three years have been driven

primarily by the lack of coordination or, frankly, even the relationships between those agencies. If you went back five

years and you looked at all of these organisations, but particularly ONA and DIO, the primary assessment organisations,

you would find their involvement and focus on intelligence relating to terrorism was really rather modest, I would suggest.

This was a product, quite frankly, of the international security situation and the intelligence priorities that had been set

right through the Cold War. Then after the Cold War, of course, there were significant modifications.

But if you think practically about ramping up intelligence assessment capabilities and processing to deal with terrorist

groups, there is a whole stack of new skills sets that are required, different sorts of personalities are required and, in some

important respects, entirely different people are required. These agencies have had difficulty scrambling to ramp up

capacities to do this. This is not something that is unique to Australia ... My view is that if there have been shortcomings in

the intelligence assessment community as a consequence, it has been more because of those practical issues.

I said to him:

As I hear you, Professor Babbage, you are telling us that you do not think that there is any intrinsic problem in the

functional relationships between the agencies or the allocation of functions—

between them—

but that there has been, to a degree, a failure sufficiently to appreciate or anticipate the emergence of terrorism as a core

focus of attention. Is that right?

Professor Babbage’s answer was:

I think that is right. There has been a natural lag in finding people with the best combination of skills, language

backgrounds and so on and applying them in the right ways to get the sort of traction that is required here. But that is a

problem that all western intelligence communities have had.

There are two issues there. One is whether the functional relationships are right and the other is whether there has been a lag time in developing the competencies to deal with the new world of counter-terrorism based intelligence. I invite you each to comment on both of those propositions: the appropriateness of the functional relationships and, to use Professor Babbage’s words, ‘the ramping up’ of sufficient counterintelligence capability within the existing agencies.



Mr Lewincamp—I addressed the second question in my introductory remarks.

Senator BRANDIS—Yes, you did.

Mr Lewincamp—I disagreed with Professor Babbage. We had a counter-terrorism capability much earlier than he acknowledges. We were ramping it up much earlier than he acknowledges. So I disagree strongly with his depiction of that as scrambling to catch up. We were aware of the different nature of the terrorist target and the skill sets required to deal with that, and we had put resources into that at an earlier stage.

On the second question, I would make a slightly different point to that made by Professor Babbage. The real difference with the terrorism target is that it crosses the traditional divisions of responsibility within our government structure and between our organisations. It crosses the foreign-domestic divide, the civil-military divide and the law enforcement-security divide, and it engages a number of civilian agencies that traditionally security and intelligence organisations have not had to deal with closely. So the real challenge of the terrorist target is the involvement of a much broader range of actors with an interest in it and with information relevant to the target. It is the challenge of that coordination which is the real difference.

Senator BRANDIS—I am sorry to interrupt, but can I invite you to develop this thought too. I suppose there is also almost a prior issue here—that is, the extremely broad range or scope of the very notion of terrorism. It seems to me that people speak quite freely about terrorism and what they are describing is almost any form of political violence short of war in its orthodox conception. We speak of state-sponsored terrorism and terrorism by state-sponsored actors, and what people seem to be generically describing at a very high level of generality is any form of political violence short of a traditional war.

Mr Lewincamp—I agree. There is a lack of clarity about the concept of terrorism. It is now used very broadly, as you say. It is almost any form of political violence, perhaps even beyond just political violence. But it tends to be indiscriminate in nature and to have civilian targets or a targeting of the innocent, the uninvolved or the unassociated. It has that sort of connotation.

Senator BRANDIS—That may be, but, for example, in Iraq today, when you have people who have loyalties to the now deposed regime blowing up American servicemen, some people say that is a continuation of a kind of insurgent war and other people, including President Bush, are very conscious to avoid saying that—they say that it is a form of terrorism, even though it is directed to military personnel.

Mr Lewincamp—We could have quite a discussion about those examples. I think if you are talking about the bombing of the UN headquarters in Baghdad, that is clearly terrorism. If you are talking about an attack against US or coalition forces on patrol in Iraq then there are differing views about whether that is terrorism or whether that is the war continued by other means.

Coming back to the issue in Australia, I was talking about the challenge of coordination between these areas. You can meet that challenge either by improving and enhancing your coordination arrangements or by putting in place a new structure. In the Australian system, we have decided—or the government so far has decided—to meet that challenge by enhanced



coordination mechanisms rather than by putting in place a major new institution. For example, in the United States, they have put in place the Department of Homeland Security.

Senator BRANDIS—Do you agree with that? I know that is inviting you to comment on policy, but I am going to, anyway. Do you basically agree that that is the right decision?

Mr Lewincamp—My personal view is yes.

Senator BRANDIS—Mr Bonighton?

Mr Bonighton—Yes, I agree with that. I think too there is another dimension to this which is not often brought out. There seems to be an assumption in some areas that, if we had been looking for this intelligence, we would have stumbled over it—it was there to be had. I just wanted to reinforce from a collection point of view just how tough a target organisations like JI are. They recruit on the basis of kinship, community and religion and it is very difficult for other organisations to penetrate them. Their communications do not stand out in any way. They have no stand-alone communications. They are using the telephone and maybe the Internet. They look like ordinary people going about their everyday business. Their training camps are the sorts of things that a church youth group might have out the back of the Dandenongs in Melbourne.

Senator BRANDIS—I seem to remember about 30 years ago there was a training camp out the back of the Dandenongs outside Melbourne that was being used by the Croatians—the Ustashe, wasn’t it?

Mr Bonighton—And it looked just like a church camp. Even when they are communicating, they are using dialect and cover terms. They are not talking about attacks and bombings; they are talking about parties, celebrations and good news. So it is very difficult to get the information in the first place, before anyone even starts assessing it. I guess the big problem for us is that the local police and the local intelligence agencies tend not to have even an inkling that these people are there and are planning these sorts of things. So getting a tip-off, a lead or an entry point is extraordinarily difficult. I certainly know that, when walking around our agencies after the Bali bombing, you got a real sense of the anguish of our analysts: ‘Was there something more we could have done?’ It is just extraordinarily difficult. We are making progress. The sorts of things Professor Babbage is talking about—developing new skills and techniques—is an area where we have made considerable progress, and we needed to.

Senator BRANDIS—I must say that it seems to me that that is the sharp end. Whenever there is a major failure there is a great risk that people will come along ex post facto who are non-expert and say, ‘The way to deal with this is to set up a new structure.’ I am familiar with an organisation that, whenever it has a major failure, somebody says, ‘We have to rewrite the Constitution.’ Reconfiguring the structure is, in a sense, the easy way out which does not necessarily guarantee solving any problems at all.

Mr Bonighton—Yes, Senator.

Senator JOHNSTON—I would like to take up an issue that Senator Brandis raised. We have talked about the distinction between a new organisation and the enhancement of existing agencies. In terms of the decision to enhance, were you engaged in the process that arrived at



that conclusion as being the best conclusion? I am asking you to get into areas that are a bit sticky for both of you to some extent, but I think it is important that we do that. Did we consult the professional men on the ground who are running these agencies in making that decision, or was the decision made on high and in a vacuum?

Mr Lewincamp—Since 11 September 2001 there have been to my recollection two major government reviews of the nature of the counter-terrorism arrangements here within Australia, both led by very senior officials within government, and on both of those occasions there was wide and full consultation with all members of the Australian intelligence community.

Senator JOHNSTON—Do you think that the decision to enhance was broadly received in a positive way by the three or four principal agencies involved?

Mr Lewincamp—It is very difficult for me to answer that question, but I am not aware of anything to the contrary.

Senator JOHNSTON—I have just one more question. When defence personnel travel in circumstances where they go from an operational status in a foreign country to a civilian status—in other words, they take some leave in and around, let us say, Jakarta or even Bali from time to time; rare circumstances, I suppose, but something that I think is bound to happen from time to time—do we provide them with distinct defence intelligence as to the status of stability in those regions that is different from and comes from a different source from what DFAT would provide?

Mr Bonighton—Perhaps I could start with that one, Senator.

Senator JOHNSTON—Do you understand what I am getting at there?

Mr Bonighton—Yes. I think we probably ran across this ground in the previous appearance.

Senator JOHNSTON—Yes. I was not here; I apologise.

Mr Bonighton—Basically, if people are going on R and R—on leave—they would be referred to the DFAT web sites and the DFAT travel advisories. That would be the way that would happen. On operational deployments we would expect that DIO would do a military threat assessment which would take into account a much broader range of activities.

Senator JOHNSTON—So we have horses for courses in terms of the status of our personnel. If they are in their own time they get the civilian advisories; if they are operational they get the departmental military status.

Mr Lewincamp—Dare I say, Senator, it is not quite that simple.

Senator JOHNSTON—I am sure it is not.

Mr Lewincamp—They are the two end points, if you like, and there is a third option in the middle, as Mr Bonighton said. We write military threat assessments if the ADF is going overseas in formed units for particular operations or exercises where there is a full assessment of the



range of threats in that operating environment. Secondly, we write security threat assessments if ADF units might be passing through a particular area—not for an operation or an exercise but just visiting a particular location, either in small groups or in a large unit. A ship visit to an Indonesian port would be an example. In that case we would write a security threat assessment related to that particular visit. Sailors who might be leaving the ship and going out in their own time would still have access to such a security threat assessment when they were going on shore leave in that particular port.

Senator JOHNSTON—That is exactly what I am talking about. That is a very good example, and I thank you for it. I take it that you are telling me that servicemen are different to civilians in that context, even though they are not in uniform and they are tourists. Where do you draw your information from? Is it different from where DFAT would draw its information from?

Mr Lewincamp—No, the sources are exactly the same. What we are trying to do in those documents is talk about the specific threat to military personnel, either identifiable as such in uniform or not. There are some differences related to the fact that they are associated with military forces of Australia, and we try to identify those specifics threats.

Mr Bonighton—You are also looking at crime levels and all those sorts of things.

Mr Lewincamp—Yes.

Senator JOHNSTON—Are our servicemen when they are not in uniform different to Australian civilians? Do we acknowledge there is a potential for a targeted threat against servicemen who might be identifiable as a group of servicemen? I know in Perth and Fremantle we can tell when the American servicemen are in: we can see them all travelling round, even though they are not in uniform, hear their accents and all the other things.

Mr Lewincamp—Certainly.

Senator JOHNSTON—Australians would stand out very prominently. So you look at the fact that they are military personnel, even though not in uniform, and we have a different assessment?

Mr Lewincamp—Yes. We do have a process for that particular circumstance. If, on the other hand, a serviceperson from Australia decides to buy a holiday to Bali off his own bat then, as Mr Bonighton said, he would access Foreign Affairs and Trade travel advisories.

Senator JOHNSTON—As any other citizen would?

Mr Lewincamp—Yes.

Senator JOHNSTON—Thank you, gentlemen.

ACTING CHAIR—I had one final question. You talked about the fact that you prioritised high-profile individuals across Indonesia as being perhaps possible persons who may be at risk—is that fair to say?



Mr Lewincamp—No, I do not recall saying quite that.

ACTING CHAIR—Not as such, no; you are right. Can you please repeat it, because it was not clear to me.

Mr Lewincamp—In looking at the Australian presence in Indonesia we said that the groups that really do stand out are the tourists in tourist centres and expatriate business personnel or maybe the children of expatriates who are attending a particular school in different parts of the archipelago. They are the sorts of groups that stand out and are readily identifiable as Australians—or westerners.

ACTING CHAIR—The point I was trying to get at was that it was individuals rather than say assets or buildings. Is it fair to say that you are looking more at gatherings or groups of westerners or individuals rather than Australian assets as such?

Mr Lewincamp—I would not characterise it as either/or, but clearly our priority would be for people. We also do have concern about assets and we do report, as do the other allied agencies, about threats to particular assets. For example, over the last few years, there has been regular reporting about attacks against US mining or petroleum facilities, for example, in the Indonesian archipelago. So we look at that as well.

ACTING CHAIR—The limited knowledge that I have about the activities of these extremist groups suggests that they like to target places of ‘Western decadence’ shall we say. You have talked about school children and groups like that, but would it be reasonable to believe that a higher threat was likely in places where westerners gather to do activities that are considered unsavoury? Is that taken into account?

Mr Lewincamp—Yes, I think it is, and we did publish on a number of occasions threats to westerners in areas such as the nightclub districts of Jakarta and of the major cities in Indonesia. There has been a range of specific intelligence about threats of extremist groups against them. Most of those threats have been of the nature of attacks against individuals in those circumstances rather than a large-scale or mass casualty attack. It has consisted of reports of radical Indonesians prepared to march through the streets and just attack any westerners they see, and there have been examples of that. The reporting has been more of that nature rather than a decision to undertake a mass attack against those types of localities.

Mr Bonighton—And, of course, not by groups like JI.

Mr Lewincamp—Yes, there are a range of groups within Indonesia who have thus far not conducted mass casualty attacks who have expressed an intent to attack Western decadence in the way that you mention.

Senator JACINTA COLLINS—Is there a history of attack on Western women as individuals?

Mr Lewincamp—Not to my knowledge.

ACTING CHAIR—Thank you for your evidence today.



Proceedings suspended from 10.05 a.m. to 10.36 a.m.



SMITH, Mr Richard Campbell, Former Australian Ambassador to the Republic of Indonesia

ACTING CHAIR—Welcome to our hearing this morning. Do you have an opening statement to begin with before we turn to questions from members of the committee?

Mr Richard Smith—I would like to make a couple of points. The program for today that was circulated indicated that I was ambassador in Indonesia from January 2001 to February 2002. I was in fact there until 31 October 2002. The second and more substantive point I want to make is that that was an interesting and hectic time for Indonesia and for those of us in Indonesia. It was still very much the post-Suharto period. There was a lot of political uncertainty and, at particular points, political turmoil. Accompanying that, there was also a remarkable degree of violence across the country, ranging from the Acehnese separatist movement through to the communal strife in Kalimantan and the inter-religious strife in the Malukus. There was also a lot of political violence in Jakarta. In that environment, the welfare of Australians was very much at the forefront of my mind, and indeed that of all of my colleagues, in the embassy.

I know that you have talked a lot about the tourists who came to Indonesia, and we certainly gave them a lot of attention, but we were also very preoccupied with the Australian community in Indonesia, which numbered then, and probably still does, in the area of 10,000 to 12,000 people. There were probably about 3,500 to 4,000 in Jakarta, a similar number in Bali and the rest spread across the archipelago, but with pockets in particular areas. We felt at times that they were vulnerable and we did put a lot of effort into keeping in touch with them, and that was the purpose of our embassy bulletins.

We had means of contacting them directly through faxes and emails. We could draft up a bulletin or a warning and press a button and, within a couple of hours, all of those who were registered with us could be reached. But we also had wardens whom we contacted and they could go out and talk to groups of Australians. While the tourists and visitors were, as it were, the subject of the travel advisories, the travel advisories were also provided for the Australian community in Indonesia, but we did endeavour to reach them through our own bulletins as well. I want to stress the importance of that group—the Australian diaspora I think is a very sizable one throughout the world, but particularly in South-East Asia, and it is a particularly important part of our set of interests in Indonesia. We were very much preoccupied with their interests in this period.

Senator JOHNSTON—When things are ‘hot’, which you have just indicated Jakarta must have been during your time there, how often would you send material back to Australia on the current status of events in Jakarta?

Mr Richard Smith—We would report frequently during something like the lead-up to the displacement of President Wahid by Megawati. We would have been sending cabled reports every second day or perhaps every day. They would not have been of great length; they were just updates. If it was an issue such as Aceh, we would report less frequently, but periodically. On an issue like the Christian-Muslim conflict in the Moluccas, there would just be periodic updates.



Senator JOHNSTON—Do you read and speak Indonesian?

Mr Richard Smith—I speak very little of it. I can recognise words but, no, I am not a speaker.

Senator JOHNSTON—Were you taking in the daily flavour and themes of the news media? What is the news media like in Jakarta? I have not lived there. Is it comprehensive? Do you get a decent flavour of the changing political circumstances?

Mr Richard Smith—You do. The Jakarta Post is the English language paper, which is not too bad. The Indonesian language papers, particularly post-Suharto, are very open and would represent every shade of political opinion and opinions about the directions of the country. Being often Jakarta based and owned by a Jakarta elite, they represent standpoints that perhaps do not speak for the whole of the country outside of Jakarta, but in conveying the current political themes they are not too bad. There are some very good commentators at the moment. I would say that apart from news reporting there is some thoughtful commentary.

Senator JOHNSTON—Having digested that as best you can, were you aware that you were having any impact on the DFAT travel advisories for Indonesia?

Mr Richard Smith—When we did our reporting on political developments or on issues relating to, say, Aceh or the Moluccas, we would very often include a paragraph at the end about the impact on Australians. It might be along the lines of, ‘The situation has not fundamentally changed with regard to the welfare of Australians,’ or, ‘This is a situation you might like to address when you are next updating the travel advisory.’

Senator JOHNSTON—Were you in the loop when the travel advisories were being constructed and composed?

Mr Richard Smith—Yes, we were, and similarly when we were composing embassy bulletins. They would go back and forth a bit on the emails.

Senator JOHNSTON—Is it the case that you would correct travel advisory matters that you saw were inappropriate, too vague or not the same as your appreciation of events on the ground?

Mr Richard Smith—I am not sure if that is the word, but we would certainly contest—

Senator JOHNSTON—You would suggest different words.

Mr Richard Smith—Yes, we would.

Senator JOHNSTON—What was your view of the travel advisory just prior to Bali? Were you there then?

Mr Richard Smith—Yes. This is the advisory of about 20 September. It led off by referring to the risk of terrorism. I thought that was prudent and right for the time.

Senator JOHNSTON—Just refresh my memory: how long were you in Indonesia?



Mr Richard Smith—I was there from January 2001 to the end of October 2002. That was about 20 months.

Senator JOHNSTON—How big is the post in Jakarta?

Mr Richard Smith—In my time the embassy had, I think, 65 Australians from a very wide range of government agencies—DFAT, of course, Immigration, Defence, Austrade, the Federal Police and so on.

Senator JOHNSTON—I am aware that in Western Australia we have a number of mining companies that are up in Indonesia and have very substantial capital commitments.

Mr Richard Smith—Yes.

Senator JOHNSTON—And a lot of Australian troops. I say troops in a generic sense—geologists, mining engineers, drillers, you name it.


Senator JOHNSTON—When you are gathering information to send back, how many people would you involve in your internal post discussions as to the current flavour of events—approximately, not exactly?

Mr Richard Smith—Six or eight at a time. Obviously there is me; usually my deputy; the consul-general; the senior consular officer; the defence staff; the liaison staff; sometimes Immigration, because they were about the country at different times; and the Federal Police, because they would be hearing things from the police or they might be able to make an inquiry for us about a particular area. A wide range of us would sit in a little group and talk over the situation.

Senator JOHNSTON—In terms of the work priorities of the post, would it be possible to rate the position on the ladder, if we can say this, of the perception of current political events and reporting back to DFAT? How important is that job? I know you probably have visas and a whole host of other things that you do—little jobs from time to time, with various expats and their little problems or big problems. Where does this issue sit in terms of the work priority?

Mr Richard Smith—It is an overarching issue in the sense that it sets the context for everything else that we are doing. If it came down to the writing of particular reports then at any one time that might not be the major priority—the main priority might be a big consular issue, a trade issue or something—but when it comes to an understanding of the political and economic situation that is a sort of overarching priority that the other priorities derive from.

Senator JOHNSTON—With the benefit of hindsight, would you have included any different personnel or any different resources in the post, to enhance that capability any further?

Mr Richard Smith—No, generally I think not. The addition of the Federal Police to the post a few years ago—before my time—was a significant step, and the appointment of an ASIO



officer there last year was important as well. There had been visits frequently before, but it was good to be able to include that person around the table.

Senator JOHNSTON—Thank you. I have no further questions.

Senator BRANDIS—I have one or two questions. The committee heard some evidence—I must confess that I cannot remember the name of the witness—that Australian tourists travelling to Bali tend to regard Bali as a destination, as it were, apart from Indonesia. I know this is a generalisation, but the suggestion was that the attitude of the Australian tourist had been that Bali was almost a different country. Going to Bali was not regarded as going to Indonesia. From your experiences at the embassy—I do not know how much you had to do with tourists—what do you say about that?

Mr Richard Smith—I think that is so for a number of Australian tourists. I would occasionally meet Australians when I was back here and say, ‘Have you been to Indonesia?’ ‘No, I haven’t.’ ‘Oh, really, I thought you might have been to Bali.’ ‘Oh, yeah, I’ve been to Bali.’ That is not uncommon. There is a certain charm to it really. It is reflected in things like people showing up at airports to go to Bali and not bringing a passport—that sort of thing—which occasionally used to happen.

Senator BRANDIS—From the perspective of having been the ambassador you may not feel able to comment on this, but do you have an impression of the extent to which, prior to the events of 12 October, it was common for Australian tourists to consult or even be aware of the practice of travel advisories?

Mr Richard Smith—It is a little hard for me to say; I think DFAT is better placed to answer that. I served outside of Australia for seven years consecutively. My sense was that generally tourists probably did not do it as much as we would have liked; businesspeople making visits probably did it more. I think the Australian community resident in Indonesia was pretty much aware of the advisories and the status of our advice, but the general tourist was probably not as aware of them as we would have liked.

Senator BRANDIS—What are the visa arrangements for travelling to Indonesia? Do you require a visa to travel from Australia to Indonesia?

Mr Richard Smith—You can get a visa upon arrival.

Senator BRANDIS—So when an Australian travels from Australia to Bali, on arrival would they have an Indonesian visa stamped in their passport?


Senator BRANDIS—So at least by the time they arrived they would be aware that the country they were going to be in when they were in Bali was Indonesia?




Senator BRANDIS—The reason that is on my mind is that Senator Johnston asked you some questions about that last travel advisory of 20 September. I am not sure how familiar you are with it, but it makes specific mention of Bali. Were you aware of that?


Senator BRANDIS—So for anyone reading that travel advisory, if they did not already know that Bali was part of Indonesia, it would have been perfectly plain to them that the travel advisory for Indonesia was intended to cover Bali, and Bali was specifically made mention of.


ACTING CHAIR—I want to gain a better understanding of how the embassy in Jakarta works. You mentioned that there are 65 Australians based in the Jakarta office. I want to understand how many staff there may be in Bali itself. I understand you have a consul general there—is that right?

Mr Richard Smith—There is a consul general there with two Australian based staff. There is a consul general and a vice consul, and then a handful of Indonesian staff or locally employed staff, one or two of whom may have been Australians resident locally.

ACTING CHAIR—So approximately 10 staff—is that right?

Mr Richard Smith—Yes: you would have to check that with DFAT, but that would be about right—there may be 12 all up.

ACTING CHAIR—You mentioned also that at any one time there are between 10,000 and 12,000 Australians in the whole of the Indonesian archipelago.

Mr Richard Smith—Residents—long- or short-term residents, separate from tourists.

ACTING CHAIR—You spoke about registering with the embassy. That is open to both residents and tourists?

Mr Richard Smith—It is open to tourists—not many register. I think I am right in saying that. I do not know whether they do post-Bali. Even the residents did not all register. If you had 50 per cent registration, that was high, and if there was some sort of crisis the number of registrations would spike, then people would leave the country and not tell you they had left and the proportion would subside again.

ACTING CHAIR—So when you speak of 10,000 to 12,000 Australians resident, they would not all be registered with the embassy?

Mr Richard Smith—No, and that is an extrapolation. We would say that maybe 4,000 to 4,500 are registered and, on our experience, that translates to 10,000 to 12,000 all up. We also had a means of crosschecking this. We would check with the major mining companies, for instance, and ask, ‘How many Australians do you have here?’ They might say, ‘We have 40,’ and we would say, ‘That is interesting, only 15 are registered, so that fits with our pattern.’



ACTING CHAIR—There has been some discussion in the committee and even today about the approximate numbers who may be present in Bali at any given time. I think you said to the committee a moment ago that there are between 3,000 and 4,000?

Mr Richard Smith—There are between 3,000 and 4,000 Australians who are more or less permanently resident in Bali. Quite a lot of Australians move backwards and forwards, spending several months here and several months in Bali. I think that number is between 3,000 and 4,000; DFAT could tell you how many are currently registered there.

ACTING CHAIR—And the number of Australian tourists?

Mr Richard Smith—Well that is interesting, because I noticed from reading the transcripts of your earlier hearings that it was suggested that there might be between 40,000 and 50,000 Australian tourists at any one time. I think that figure is rather high. I think the number of Australian tourists in Bali at any one time is more likely to be in the area of 10,000—at a busy time—rather than 40,000. Let me stress that DFAT is better placed to judge that, but that would be my guesstimate, judging from my experience there. I think, in the good times, something like 280,000 Australians went to Bali each year, for an average of five days each, something like that.

ACTING CHAIR—It is still an awful lot, on any assessment.

Mr Richard Smith—It is a lot, yes. And if you went to particular parts of Bali, you could have got the impression that most of the people were Australian.

ACTING CHAIR—You mentioned the embassy bulletins.


ACTING CHAIR—I understand that they are the bulletins that are issued from the post itself.


ACTING CHAIR—By DFAT?

Mr Richard Smith—Yes, by the consul or by me.

ACTING CHAIR—Senator Johnston was asking some questions to this effect, but I wanted to know whether or not there was any involvement in or contribution to the preparation of those embassy bulletins for the whole of Indonesia from the Bali staff?

Mr Richard Smith—We would be in touch with the Bali people fairly constantly. We would consult them if we were changing a reference to Bali. Otherwise we would just deal with them in the normal day-to-day way and kept in touch with each other.

ACTING CHAIR—You mentioned that an ASIO officer came on board in the Jakarta embassy. Did you say when that was?



Mr Richard Smith—He arrived there for language training some time toward the end of my time, and I cannot remember whether he actually took up duty there before I left or not.

ACTING CHAIR—You left, you said, on 31 October 2002?

Mr Richard Smith—That is correct, yes.

ACTING CHAIR—So the ASIO officer must have arrived in September?

Mr Richard Smith—He probably arrived in August or something. I am not sure. I was to leave of course on 14 October, and it became 31 October for good reasons.

ACTING CHAIR—What was the reason for that ASIO officer coming on board?

Mr Richard Smith—I think Mr Richardson can speak to that, but it was just the evolution of our arrangements and relationships with the Indonesian authorities.

ACTING CHAIR—So it is fair to say then that the ASIO officer was still finding his feet, shall we say, at the relevant time?


ACTING CHAIR—I wondered whether or not any of the staff at the post—either in Jakarta or Bali—had any in-house discussions about the risks of violence or bombings in tourist nightspots in particular?

Mr Richard Smith—There had been some history in Bali, of course, going back to 1998 after the election of President Wahid. At that time, as you might recall, there was violence in Bali. Megawati’s supporters went on a sort of rampage and did a lot of damage in Bali, burning government offices and so on. At that stage there was a lot of concern about Australians, and I think we advised against travel. That in a sense was a baseline from which we worked in subsequent reviews of Bali. The sorts of concerns we had about Australians in nightclubs and bars and things, in Jakarta especially, were related to the possibility of harassment and intimidation and sweeping by groups like Laskar Jihad and Front Pembela Islam—or FPI. We generally felt that those sorts of threats probably did not apply as much in Bali as in other parts of Indonesia.

ACTING CHAIR—Did you have any specific discussions with our consul general in Bali in relation to possible violence against Australians or Australian interests in tourist spots?

Mr Richard Smith—Around the issue of the prospects of harassment and so on: yes, we did, at different times. I think our view was a common one: the kind of intimidatory behaviour that was happening or that it was feared might happen in other parts of Indonesia was less likely in Bali.

ACTING CHAIR—So you really had no specific concerns at all about any sort of JI type activity that might threaten the interests of Australians?



Mr Richard Smith—We certainly had been given no evidence to suggest that.

ACTING CHAIR—Did you and your staff at the post have access to ASIO’s threat assessments?


ACTING CHAIR—What use of them, if any, did you make?

Mr Richard Smith—They helped inform our judgments about what we should be saying to Australians. The point about the ASIO threat assessments, of course, is that, from the end of September 2001, they rated the threat as high. When they placed the threat at that level, they were reflecting concerns about the possibility of demonstrations or political harassment of Australians following on from what had happened in Australia after 11 September. But over the following year the reason for maintaining the assessment at high evolved and became increasingly the concern about terrorism.

From my point of view, understanding that the threat was high was fine and helpful, but you had to know how to translate that headline assessment into practical advice for Australians living on the ground. They had their families, their jobs and their livelihoods there. They had their kids in school there. Simply to say that the threat level was high was not necessarily sufficient in itself. You wanted to be able to say where, when and how the threat might manifest itself. Of course, none of us could really say that. That was what we were always struggling to judge.

ACTING CHAIR—I am just trying to understand the process of developing these DFAT travel advisories. Was the bulk of the work—and the wording and the like and trying to specify the detail as you have just described—done by staff in the Jakarta embassy?

Mr Richard Smith—The work on the travel advisories was done in Canberra, and the embassy bulletins were done in Jakarta, and we would exchange them.

ACTING CHAIR—So the embassy bulletins were the advisories that were prepared on the ground, so to speak, in Jakarta?

Mr Richard Smith—Yes, and they were more directed at the Australian community, as I said.

ACTING CHAIR—And they were then distributed to the 5000-odd people that were registered at the time?

Mr Richard Smith—Yes, to those who were on our lists—on our system.

ACTING CHAIR—How else were these embassy bulletins made public or publicised? You mention that very few Australian tourists would register with the embassy. How widely available are these? Do you have to actually go into the embassy in Jakarta?

Mr Richard Smith—I think they were on the web sites. I would have to ask DFAT that.

ACTING CHAIR—On the DFAT web site?



Mr Richard Smith—Yes, I think so, but you would have to ask them.

ACTING CHAIR—I would have thought the embassy bulletins would be available at the Bali consulate.

Mr Richard Smith—Yes. They are on the desk there and so on at the consulate—sure.

ACTING CHAIR—But no attempts were made to distribute them to hotels and places where Australians were likely to be staying? Is that not something which is done?

Mr Richard Smith—I cannot recall that. I can check it for you, but I cannot recall whether we routinely posted them out to hotels. We certainly were in touch with hotel managers often enough to know about the flows of Australian tourists and what their moods and so on were.

ACTING CHAIR—I realise that there are a number of releases of these travel advisories and embassy bulletins and it is hard to generalise, but how different—or nuanced, perhaps we would say—was the embassy bulletin compared to the general travel advisory that was issued by DFAT?

Mr Richard Smith—They were generally attempting to focus more on the perspectives of people living in Indonesia or visiting frequently—the sorts of people who come up for a week or a month or so; the sorts of visitors who know the country reasonably well—and they were often trying to provide some detail relating to particular parts of the country. I recall that, at one time, for instance, we had a specific reference to potential problems for bus travellers in central Sulawesi. That was because we knew there were some Australians in that area who travelled by bus. So we sought to address those sorts of details and nuances. The Australian community, as well as being recipients of our advice, were also sources of advice to us about what they felt was happening locally and what sorts of pressures they felt they were under.

ACTING CHAIR—I am sorry to have to do this to you, Mr Smith, but the division bells are ringing. I did have a couple more questions. I wonder if you could wait for us to return. Hopefully it will not be much later than a quarter past 11.

Mr Richard Smith—Okay.

Proceedings suspended from 11.05 a.m. to 11.16 a.m.

ACTING CHAIR—I apologise for the interruption to proceedings; hopefully it will not happen again in the next 10 minutes or so. What sort of conduct did you or members of your staff in the embassy have with tourist organisations or airlines such as Qantas in relation to the travel advisories that were being prepared?

Mr Richard Smith—Certainly we were in very close touch with Qantas, but we would not have had much direct contact with tourist organisations in Australia. Sometimes they would ring and seek advice from the embassy and we would refer them to the advisories. The sorts of groups we had more contact with were, say, school groups or university student groups who were coming to Indonesia for three weeks or sometimes three months for periods of study. Those



sorts of groups would often contact us or, in some cases, we would learn of them and contact them and set up some arrangement to keep in touch.

ACTING CHAIR—Did you provide them with embassy bulletins?

Mr Richard Smith—We would in those cases, yes. And if they were going to areas, such as Solo or Yogyakarta, where there were occasional concerns about the activities of militant groups we would find a way of keeping in touch with them by phone.

ACTING CHAIR—This may be a question better asked of DFAT but I wondered if you were aware of whether there have been any changes since you left in the way that embassy bulletins are distributed.

Mr Richard Smith—No, I could not say that. My last working day in the embassy was 11 October and I do not quite know what has been done since then. I am sorry, that is not quite true—my last working day was some time in the following week.

ACTING CHAIR—Again this may be a question you may not be able to answer but I wondered if you got any sense during the period that you were in Indonesia about the sharing of intelligence between Australian and Indonesian intelligence organisations and what level that was at.

Mr Richard Smith—I could not comment on the sharing of it or the level of it but I know that there was plenty of contact. Our role was often setting up the meetings or making the arrangements for visitors, and we certainly did that quite frequently.

ACTING CHAIR—As there are no further questions, thank you, Mr Smith, for your attendance here today and for your evidence.



[11.20 a.m.]

ASHTON, Mr Graham Leonard, General Manager Counter-Terrorism, Australian Federal Police

WARDLAW, Dr Grant, General Manager Intelligence, Australian Federal Police

ACTING CHAIR—Welcome. Thank you for your appearance here today. The committee invites you to make a brief opening statement, if you wish, before we proceed to questions.

Dr Wardlaw—We really want to emphasise, to start with, that the Australian Federal Police is a law enforcement agency. To the extent that we have an intelligence function, it focuses on supporting our criminal investigative responsibilities. So, although we have very close and growing relations with the Australian intelligence community, we are not part of it per se. I think it is important to maintain that distinction. Our intelligence arrangements are largely coordinated through the Transnational Crime Coordination Centre, the TCCC, that we established in December 2002. That facility has been established to be the central point for the receipt, analysis and dissemination of intelligence throughout the AFP. The counter-terrorism intelligence capacity of the AFP forms part of the TCCC.

The TCCC also interfaces with the AFP’s international liaison officer network so that we have a smooth flow of intelligence and information from law enforcement intelligence organisations globally into and out of the AFP. I emphasise that, although it was opened on 11 December 2002, planning for opening the TCCC had been under way prior to the Bali bombing. Although it was not a response to Bali, it certainly was given greater salience and the model came to fruition after Bali.

ACTING CHAIR—Thank you. Mr Ashton, are there any further comments you wish to make?

Mr Ashton—No, I have no additional comments to make as far as an opening statement is concerned.

Senator JACINTA COLLINS—I note that you say in your written submission that during the period 11 September through until 12 October 2002, the AFP activity expanded to include responsibilities for law enforcement with regard to counter-terrorism. Can you expand a bit more on what the role was prior to that time and exactly what that expansion involved? Was there very limited work to do with counter-terrorism prior to that time?

Mr Ashton—Our only involvement prior to September 11 in respect of counter-terrorism activity was when it related to specific information that may have posed a threat to Australian dignitaries or internationally protected persons. The close personal protection role has sat with the AFP for some years. Any threat information relating to those particular individuals were matters the AFP concerned itself with. We were not involved in the investigation of activity of general terrorism threats prior to that time. ASIO was the agency which had the sole responsibility for that area, from an AFP perspective, prior to September 11.



Senator JACINTA COLLINS—In relation to your more limited role prior to that time in respect of personal protection, were there any operations with regard to Bali during that period?

Mr Ashton—No.

Senator JACINTA COLLINS—Indonesia?

Mr Ashton—No, none that I am aware of.

Senator JACINTA COLLINS—So whilst there were some limited reports of concerns about counter-terrorism at the time, prior to the Bali incident, in terms of AFP involvement, because there were no personal protection issues, there was in fact no intelligence you would have been coming across. Is that correct?

Mr Ashton—We were not acting on or aware of any intelligence relating to terrorist activity relating to Bali or Indonesia prior to 12 October 2002. I am not sure if Grant is aware of any.

Dr Wardlaw—No.

Senator JACINTA COLLINS—Because you had no personal protection issues?

Mr Ashton—Generally speaking, if there was activity relating to specific criminal acts which might have related to terrorism, that is something we could have addressed. But we certainly were not aware of any specific intelligence relating to criminal acts being planned or perpetrated against Australians in respect of Indonesia or Bali, prior to 12 October.

Senator JACINTA COLLINS—So there were no personal protection issues in relation to any visits of dignitaries?

Mr Ashton—Not that I am aware of.

Senator JACINTA COLLINS—I would be surprised if, for instance, during the period that the ambassador just described there were no visits of ministers or senior dignitaries with respect to which some assessment was done.

Mr Ashton—What normally happens is that if a dignitary who is the subject of close personal protection is going to Indonesia, generally an advance is done. A police officer will travel to the Jakarta post and will have a briefing with the intelligence community based at the post, at which the threats and issues will be discussed.

Senator JACINTA COLLINS—Which agencies would be involved in those briefings?

Mr Ashton—To my knowledge that would be whichever intelligence community is based at the post. If there is an ASIS presence, there would be an ASIS officer, and, if there was an ASIO presence at the post, they would be included as well. Usually the senior DFAT officers at the post would be present as well.



Senator JACINTA COLLINS—Were other AFP operations apart from personal protection occurring in Indonesia at that time?

Mr Ashton—Do you mean operations not related to counter-terrorism?

Senator JACINTA COLLINS—Yes.

Mr Ashton—Yes. We have a liaison office in Jakarta and they were handling a whole range of various criminal investigation exchanges with Indonesia prior to 12 October.

Senator JACINTA COLLINS—Was there any information gained during those operations pertaining to counter-terrorism?

Mr Ashton—No. To my knowledge, there was none whatsoever.

Senator JACINTA COLLINS—If that were the case, what were the processes at that stage for feeding that through to the relevant agencies?

Mr Ashton—That information would initially be exchanged with the intelligence agencies at the post. If that information was received in Jakarta it would immediately go across to the intelligence agencies at the post and would come back to Canberra via those dual means.

Senator JACINTA COLLINS—After you moved beyond personal protection and expanded into law enforcement, how did AFP activities change as a consequence of that shift?

Mr Ashton—I think that September 11 marked a significant changing point for us. As you previously described, in the situation in which we began to assist in the immediate aftermath of September 11, the FBI made various requests for information and assistance in the immediate response to September 11, and that caused us to significantly increase our level of engagement with the Australian intelligence community. That continued to ramp up and, indeed, after 12 October our level of interaction took on another dimension again. We have been consistently building on that in both a formal meeting sense and in the informal sense of information exchange almost consistently since September 11.

Senator JACINTA COLLINS—Apart from an increasing level of engagement with intelligence organisations and information sharing, what other activities is the AFP now engaged in with respect to counter-terrorism, aside from the previous role of doing assessments for personal protection?

Mr Ashton—The AFP role increased to investigating intelligence that ASIO may have relating to the possible commission of criminal offences by people that may be of interest to ASIO in respect of its terrorism charter. Indeed, we are reaching the stage today where we conduct a number of operations in collaboration with the information that ASIO provides.

Senator JACINTA COLLINS—In investigating intelligence, which agencies would you be making your information available to?



Mr Ashton—Without exception, all agencies that are part of the Australian intelligence community receive the intelligence that we generate from our inquiries. My colleague Grant is on the intelligence side and is best placed to explain how that occurs.

Dr Wardlaw—We have a number of arrangements in place to facilitate the timely exchange of intelligence in both directions. A number of senior AFP representatives are on coordinating committees with the intelligence community, at which high level information is exchanged and the system is further refined to increase our ability to exchange information in a timely manner. We have arrangements in place so that any threat-related information that the AFP generates from its inquiries is immediately transmitted to ASIO so that it feeds into the ASIO threat assessment process. And we will have two AFP secondees to the national threat assessment centre that ASIO will be establishing in the new year. With respect to the wider intelligence community, the Australian intelligence community, we provide our assessments and intelligence reports to ASIS for dissemination throughout the intelligence community, but if it is threat related it goes directly to ASIO.

Senator JACINTA COLLINS—What is the extent of cooperation between the AFP and your Indonesian equivalent?

Dr Wardlaw—In the intelligence field?

Senator JACINTA COLLINS—We can go a bit more broadly, but let us start off with intelligence.

Dr Wardlaw—I think I would probably ask Mr Ashton to talk about the wider CT role, as he is primarily responsible for that. But certainly we have established very close relationships with the Indonesian National Police, based largely on the work that has been done over the last 10 years on issues such as drugs and people smuggling, which has enabled us to get a working knowledge of each other’s working methods and systems and to build personal relationships.

Senator JACINTA COLLINS—They still do not have legislation on people smuggling in Indonesia, do they?

Mr Ashton—I am not sure of that.

Senator JACINTA COLLINS—I raise that because I am also thinking through the jurisdictional issues. If you are talking about an enforcement role in relation to counter-terrorism, that would be my next question also: what sort of jurisdictional issues are you facing in Indonesia? But keep going on the point you were on first.

Dr Wardlaw—Generally, on the counter-terrorism area, Mr Ashton is the expert to talk about the levels of exchange.

Mr Ashton—Certainly operationally with counter-terrorism, we have been working with the Indonesian National Police operationally since 12 October 2002. That has continued. The means by which we provide that investigative work is that it is us providing assistance to the INP in the discharge of their functions in respect of counter-terrorism. Obviously, they have a legislated mandate to deal with counter-terrorism in Indonesia. We provide support to that, which takes a



number of forms. But we maintain the focus that we are only there to assist them as long as they are inviting us to assist them.

Senator JACINTA COLLINS—And then, going back to my earlier point, there still is no legislative mandate in relation to people-smuggling, is there?

Mr Ashton—In relation to people-smuggling?

Senator JACINTA COLLINS—Yes.

Mr Ashton—I am not aware if there is a legislative mandate in relation to people-smuggling. We can seek that information for you if you like. I do not know whether there is or is not.

Senator JOHNSTON—With Indonesia, what is the invitation level like in terms of participating and assisting on counter-terrorism? Do you often get an invitation? Is it a rare invitation? Obviously we cannot go in there unilaterally on our own in breach of the sovereignty of Indonesia, but are they supportive of the imperatives of men on the ground looking at the development and evolution of these sorts of groups?

Mr Ashton—It has been something that has progressed incrementally since Bali. We have been able to provide different levels of assistance. That has proved to be quite successful for the INP in that they have seen that that has value added. Since 12 October we have not had a period when we have not been providing assistance of one sort or another.

Senator JOHNSTON—Would you say that the assistance is greatly beneficial to them, given what we provide? I want to be a bit sensitive about what we imply there, but I take it that there is a fairly significant pipeline of expertise, technology and forensic knowledge flowing to the on-ground forces of Indonesia.

Mr Ashton—I think we need to recognise that they have a high level of expertise in their own right and that particularly in some areas such as forensics their officers have attended the best colleges in Europe and the United Kingdom and have received training levels equal to our own. On occasions we are in a position where we can provide some better equipment and enable the calibration of equipment and analysis of material much more promptly. But I think they regard the assistance we provide as being value adding and important within the CT context.

Senator JACINTA COLLINS—Further to that point, could you give us a bit more detail on what sort of equipment Australia has been able to provide to the INP?

Mr Ashton—Certainly it has been in the area of forensic assistance in response to the Bali bombing and also the Marriott bombing where we have been able to attend and bring our equipment with us. The INP forensic officers have been using that equipment as well as the Australian officers, and that has been of benefit.

Senator JOHNSTON—Analysis—would that be a broad generalisation?

Mr Ashton—Yes.



Senator JACINTA COLLINS—In relation to people-smuggling, it has been a question of whether equipment such as tracking devices and other facilities were made available to the Indonesians. This has not been a case of Australia providing Indonesia with equipment but, rather, joint utilisation of Australian equipment.

Mr Ashton—That is right.

Senator JOHNSTON—The suggestion is that we might better anticipate the development of these groups through intelligence by having more men on the ground. Do you think the correlation between more men on the ground and a better appreciation is a legitimate correlation?

Mr Ashton—No, I do not think so.

Senator JOHNSTON—Why do you say that?

Mr Ashton—As long as the assistance is targeted and very much in line with what they want, I think that is where the greatest benefit would lie. If we were to suggest to Indonesia that we send more people to do this and more people to do that, I think (a) it may not be a sufficiently well-targeted use of resources and (b) they may not want it, and that may tend to complicate the better assistance that we are providing. Similarly, having a person in an advisory role in a particular area to offer advice and be a conduit back to Australia to allow for assistance to arrive may be a far more beneficial effort than providing 20 or 30 numbers on the ground with their sleeves rolled up. That is not to say that on occasion that might not be the best way to go, but I think the most efficient model is one where we can best target in response to their needs and requests.

Senator JOHNSTON—Can you tell us the number of AFP personnel on the ground in Indonesia prior to Bali and then after Bali—say, as a rough comparison, a year either side.

Mr Ashton—Through 2002 we had our three liaison officers based in Jakarta who handled all the law enforcement liaison more generally. They would be complemented from time to time with investigators who might travel to Jakarta for investigation into A, B or C, but it would be no more than a couple here and couple there coming up for a week and going back.

Senator JOHNSTON—So less than a dozen?

Mr Ashton—Yes.

Senator JOHNSTON—Would that be greater or less than what was there, say, prior to the detonation in Bali?

Mr Ashton—That is prior to. Post 12 October, in the immediate aftermath of the bombing our presence in Indonesia increased to around 140 Australian law enforcement related officers. That scaled down through the investigation of the Bali bombings and then our ongoing work with them. It has now scaled down to a figure which I guess is comparable in number to what was there before 12 October but they are there on a more consistent basis, rather than going up for a week and coming back.



Senator JOHNSTON—That is good. I have no further questions.

ACTING CHAIR—In relation to the DFAT travel advisories that we are focusing our attention on, I wondered whether or not AFP personnel, whether in Canberra or in Jakarta, had any sort of involvement in or contribution to the preparation of the travel advisories.

Mr Ashton—Our contribution to travel advisories—Grant may have more knowledge of this than I, being on the intelligence side—is that we recognise that, from our perspective, that is ASIO’s primary responsibility. We must make sure that we feed any information we get relating to threats as quickly as possible to ASIO, who have the established DFAT relationship in relation to advisories and the development of threat assessments. Does that accord with your understanding, Grant?

Dr Wardlaw—Yes. Our role is as a provider of any relevant information to ASIO and then, at the other end, out of the DFAT advisories, as a client. We, as the AFP, have no role in actually constructing the advisories themselves.

ACTING CHAIR—I understand that.

Senator JOHNSTON—Do you monitor the DFAT advisories?

Dr Wardlaw—We do for those people who are deployed overseas.

Senator JOHNSTON—Has there ever been an occasion when you have had to correct a DFAT advisory or you have cross-referenced one with your people on the ground and there have been issues arising?

Dr Wardlaw—Not to my knowledge.

ACTING CHAIR—When you say you monitor the travel advisories, that is in relation to your personnel.

Dr Wardlaw—Yes.

ACTING CHAIR—Not for Australians as such.

Dr Wardlaw—No.

ACTING CHAIR—I understand that it is ASIO who makes the assessment as to the threat and that you guys feed information into that. We heard that an ASIO officer joined the Jakarta post sometime in about September or thereabouts of that year. Was there any working together of AFP officers who were present in the Jakarta Embassy and this ASIO person? Was there any one-to-one contact discussion about issues on the ground as opposed to information just being fed in from Canberra so to speak?

Mr Ashton—I am not sure of the exact date when that ASIO officer started in Jakarta. But being a member of the intelligence community based at post, I know they meet both formally at least weekly and had informal meetings in between. I am certain that there would be joint



discussions taking place. I do not know exactly what that discussion might have been prior to the bombings, but after the bombings, when I established a forward command post for the police response to the bombings, ASIO placed an officer in that forward command post as soon as 14 October. They commenced in the forward command post to allow for exchange of intelligence both ways.

ACTING CHAIR—My concern is to try to establish both pre the Bali bombing and post the bombing just how much involvement AFP officers have in making some sort of assessment of the risks of the threats to Australians on the ground in Indonesia and how much of that is fed to ASIO—whether it is to Canberra or to the person who is now in Jakarta.

Mr Ashton—The core issue of the AFP’s role in respect of counter-terrorism is quite narrow in the broader sense. We have responsibility to investigate terrorism matters where it is a possibility that offences against the Criminal Code might have been committed. Our intelligence work is really focused on supporting that activity. If it is information or intelligence regarding an Australian that is not relating to one of our investigations, we really see that as being outside our area and in the ASIO area. We rely on the intelligence community to provide us with intelligence that fits into our priorities for investigations. Therefore we are not well enough equipped—because our intelligence area is focused on our operations—to be the best agency to handle the threat assessment and gauge and analyse threat information. That expertise sits with ASIO.

Senator JOHNSTON—Are you satisfied with the existing functional relationships between the AFP and intelligence agencies? What do you observe of the relationship between those agencies?

Mr Ashton—I guess Grant will have a view on that as well. From where I sit, it seems to be functioning fairly well. We meet all the time and exchange information all the time. I would have daily contact with ASIO, and most days I would meet with them personally to discuss our ongoing operations. And so do the people that sit beneath us in the structure.

Senator JOHNSTON—What would be the duration of the average meeting between you and an ASIO officer?

Mr Ashton—It would be a number of hours per week. It obviously varies depending on what is being discussed, but I would meet with my counterpart face to face probably three or four times a week, and then there are countless telephone calls in between.

Senator BRANDIS—What do you say to the suggestion that was made last night that the existing structures and the functional relationships between the agencies at the moment might allow for the possibility of there being gaps in the intelligence gathering or the intelligence assessment function?

Mr Ashton—It is difficult for me to have a perspective on that. I am not sufficiently across the interrelationships between other members of the intelligence community.

Senator BRANDIS—Just limiting it to the point of intersection between the AFP and other agencies. Are you satisfied there are no gaps?



Mr Ashton—I am satisfied that the structures in place are sufficient to prevent gaps occurring, yes.

Dr Wardlaw—In addition, there are a number of mechanisms, particularly in the threat area. A weekly meeting at a senior level looks at all of the threat assessments that are being worked on by ASIO and specifically is aimed at asking all agencies if they have anything else to contribute on those that they have not already contributed. There is a range of mechanisms to make sure that all relevant information is getting into what is being worked on and other meetings about collection priorities and so forth which are taking a broader view and trying to ensure that there are no gaps emerging. Those issues are actively discussed on a regular basis.

Senator BRANDIS—Some people say—and I can kind of understand why—that intelligence agencies are notoriously protective of their own intelligence and reluctant to share that intelligence with other agencies. Do you think that, as a generalisation, that observation is right? Are you satisfied from your point of view that the extent of intelligence sharing and intelligence pooling is optimal?

Dr Wardlaw—It is certainly true that there are limitations on the extent to which agencies can freely share even with each other. There are some good operational reasons on occasion for why immediate sharing is not possible generally, but I think the procedures have now been worked out so that even that information is shared with those who need to know.

Senator BRANDIS—Who makes that judgment? The agency in possession of the intelligence, presumably?

Dr Wardlaw—Yes.

Senator BRANDIS—Are there guidelines on that that go into the circumstances in which the intelligence is communicated to another agency? How is that decision made?

Dr Wardlaw—Each agency has its own internal guidelines.

Senator BRANDIS—Are those guidelines themselves known by the other agencies or is that not known?

Dr Wardlaw—They are not known to the AFP anyway. But I think we have sufficient discussion on a regular enough basis to have a reasonable idea of the fact that we are getting relevant information. The increased flow in the last 12 months or so is testament to the fact that we are all sharing.

Senator BRANDIS—I am at pains to stress that no witness has said this about Bali or, indeed, any other specific occasion, so what I am putting to you is only a hypothetical. But it would be bad, wouldn’t it, if one agency had a piece of intelligence—let us call it fact A—which it assessed in isolation as not indicating a significant threat, and another agency was possessed of another piece of information—let us call it fact B—which in isolation it assessed as not suggesting a significant threat, and neither the first nor the second agency shared those facts with one another, but then something happened and, ex post facto, the agencies said to each other,



‘Well, if we’d known the fact you knew that would have put the fact we knew in a different light.’ Presumably the structures have got to avoid that happening.

Dr Wardlaw—Yes, Senator, and that is why we are progressively moving to having outposted officers in each other’s agencies who have access to the host agency’s databases so they are able to view the host agency’s information with their sending agency’s mind-set, if you like. So, for example, an ASIO secondee with the appropriate access is able to look at AFP information from an ASIO perspective, whereas we might look at it and say, ‘That is not of relevance to ASIO,’ because we do not understand the full ramifications from a security point of view. We are increasingly moving to mechanisms to ensure that degree of visibility of each other’s information.

Senator BRANDIS—So, without in any way being critical of what happened in relation to Bali or any other specific occasion, would you say that one of the recommendations this committee could usefully make is to encourage the agencies to share intelligence to an optimal degree?

Dr Wardlaw—Yes, absolutely. I do not think anyone could object to that. But I think we have moved very greatly in the direction of full sharing, with appropriate caveats, already.

Senator JOHNSTON—How much do you perceive that there is a criminal element—and I use the term ‘criminal element’ as we understand it domestically, here onshore in Australia—within these Islamic terrorist groups? I suppose we are talking of hook-ups to criminal organisations in funding and all that sort of stuff, as opposed to the traditional perception of the Islamic line, the Islamic religious based terrorist type of activity. Is there an element in there that is purely just in it for what it can get out of the process?

Dr Wardlaw—It depends on which part of the world you are looking at. In our region—

Senator JOHNSTON—Yes, I am primarily talking about our region. That is our focus.

Dr Wardlaw—In our region I think that, primarily, the criminal aspects of terrorism are merely facilitative. They are really about criminal activities that are necessary to finance, to set up and to carry out the terrorist activity. That is certainly the terrorism that is of major concern to Australian interests.

Senator JOHNSTON—So they are motivated not by personal return, wealth and other criminal motivations; they are motivated by the prejudice and other motivations that we see behind Bin Laden et cetera.

Dr Wardlaw—I think the terrorist organisations themselves are. There would be people that they use who are basically criminals, and they use them because they have the skills or the access to services that are required for creating false identifications, for example. Those individuals probably have sympathies but they are mainly in it for criminal ends. But the organisations themselves are certainly primarily terrorist in nature.

Senator JOHNSTON—Do you think there is a very significant part of what we understand as a terrorist group that is contracting out, if I can use that quaint vernacular? Is there a big group of



people out there that are being retained and employed to do things with their criminal expertise that these organisations want? Is it a common part of terrorism or is it just for the odd or rare job such as the stealing of the truck to load up full of explosives?

Dr Wardlaw—I think it has become a fairly common part of a terrorist organisation.

Senator JOHNSTON—So that is an aspect that the AFP would be, can I suggest, more comfortable in pursuing, as opposed to the intelligence agencies that are going to the genesis of these organisations and looking at how they evolve and what have you. Your focus is on all the peripheral, naked criminal activities?

Dr Wardlaw—Yes.

ACTING CHAIR—As there are no further questions, thank you for your evidence here today.

Proceedings suspended from 11.55 a.m. to 12.55 p.m.



KEMISH, Mr Ian, First Assistant Secretary, Public Diplomacy, Consular and Passports Division, Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade

PATERSON, Mr William, First Assistant Secretary, South and South-East Asia Division, Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade

ROACH, Mr Jeff, Director, Consular Information Section, Consular Branch, Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade

SMITH, Mr Rod, Assistant Secretary, Consular Branch, Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade

ACTING CHAIR—Good afternoon and welcome. Thank you for attending. We are aware of the fact that our meeting has been interrupted a number of times. It could well be interrupted again today. As you can see, the Senate is sitting and there have been a few divisions in the last hour or so, so there could well be another division. If that is the case, unfortunately we will have to leave for a short time and then return. However, we are hoping that will not happen. Do you have an opening statement that you would like to make to the committee before we turn to questions?

Mr Kemish—We are at your disposal again. There are two issues that I would like to address with some brief opening comments. I choose to do this because, in the intervening time since our last appearance before the committee, a number of issues have arisen from the testimony of others and there are two particular points that I would like to address very squarely.

ACTING CHAIR—Please do.

Mr Kemish—The first of those issues is that we note the concerns from a small number of witnesses during the appearances in Adelaide about them simply not being aware of our clear advice about the risk of terrorism in Indonesia. Our hearts go out to the witnesses in question. We think it is obvious from our work since Bali that we take very seriously our obligation to promote the travel advisory service publicly. This is an ongoing focus for us and we need to remember that it is a new field of work internationally. This field of work really only dates back to 1997. However, I am also obliged to note that since well before the Bali attacks all Australians travelling overseas have been provided with a booklet with every Australian passport which contains very prominent recommendations that Australians check developments at their destinations by reading our country specific advisories. Even in the year prior to Bali—

Senator BRANDIS—I do not want to interrupt your flow but do you have the text of that in front of you, because it might be useful for you to read it out?

Mr Kemish—I do have in front of me the copy of Hints for Australian travellers which was made available to all Australians travelling overseas at the time. This is the edition of the time; there has been one iteration of it since. We took a range of measures with that particular publication to try to get the message across more prominently. We included on the back of it, so



that people could see it without even opening it, a very clear message which says, among other things:

We strongly recommend you consult our other information services, including our country-specific travel advice, which

can be accessed through our web site ...

It names the web site. It then suggests alternatives, including telephoning certain numbers. Those are the numbers of our 24-hour consular centre.

Senator BRANDIS—So everybody who travelled prior to the Bali event got a copy of the document you are holding in your hands.

Mr Kemish—Yes.

Senator BRANDIS—Apart from what might be inside it, on the back cover there were the words you have just read.

Mr Kemish—That is correct. We chose to put it on the back cover because we were trying to put these issues in front of people as prominently as we could. Of course, the content of the booklet itself also gives very great prominence to the same point. The booklet contains top 10 hints, which are on the first substantial page in the document. The hints begin with a very important issue to us, which is a very strong recommendation to take out travel insurance, but the very next issue is:

Read up on where you’re going. Also check developments at your destination by reading country-specific travel advices

available from—

and we give the web site. The content of the booklet—and I am very happy to table it, if that is your wish—gives quite a lot of prominence to travel advice. It is something we were quite conscientiously working on.

ACTING CHAIR—I would like to clarify that. Did you say that is issued with the passport?

Mr Kemish—With every Australian passport, and it continues to be.

ACTING CHAIR—So if you are not updating your passport then you are not going to receive an update copy of that?

Mr Kemish—That is not right, Senator. This is one way that we ensure that all Australian travellers—at least at that important point of the issue of the passport—receive the advice. It has very much been on the record of this inquiry that there is a range of other means we use to promote our advisories.

ACTING CHAIR—That book is not issued with the ticket by the travel agency.

Mr Kemish—The booklet was then made available to travel agents along with a range of additional brochures. Each one of them promoted the travel advisory service.



Senator BRANDIS—Was it made available to travel agents free of charge?

Mr Kemish—Yes, it is free of charge. In addition to that—let us take Qantas as a good example—Qantas for many years, certainly throughout my period of having oversight of consular service, has with its international ticket stubs had a clear and prominent advice that Australians travelling overseas should consult our travel advice. There is a range of other means. But returning to the period in question and focusing your interest on that particular period—let us say the period July to October 2002—it really does also have to be said that our heightened advisories and bulletins which warned about possible bombings, including in tourist locations in Indonesia, received very considerable media coverage in the period July to September 2002.

I do derive a sense of irony from looking at more recent media coverage that quite often a particular newspaper will forget that during the period July to October 2002 it actually gave quite considerable prominence to our heightened travel advisories. The Australian newspaper, the Sydney Morning Herald, a range of Australian newspapers, gave particular focus to our series of upgrades focusing on South-East Asia and Indonesia in particular in September of 2002. I want to be clear about our thinking on this. We take no satisfaction from any of that in circumstances involving the loss of fellow citizens, and we are committed to an ongoing program to promote understanding and access to our advisories, but we do need to put those facts on the record. The government is committed to the protection of Australians overseas but, with respect, I suggest the consideration of these weighty matters by a Senate inquiry also needs to take into account the reality that government can only go so far in encouraging individuals to inform themselves about our advice. Our advice is advice; it is not the directive of a centralised government.

The other issue is that there have been suggestions in some exchanges that my department, the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, in managing this important responsibility might be influenced by bilateral or commercial considerations. I have to address this head on. I speak personally and as an official of the department, and as someone who has been intimately involved in all aspects of this field for four years now and has had 16 years in the department. I can tell you very clearly that this suggestion is absolutely without foundation. I note it emerges from time to time in discussion with people outside the organisation. It certainly does not describe the department I have worked for in the last 16 years. Never once in the many thousands of advisory issues that I have been associated with have I seen bilateral or commercial considerations intrude into the advisory process. From the top down, I have seen ministers and officials rebut unequivocally suggestions and requests from other governments to soften our travel advice. As Australians ourselves, we follow a fundamental principle in this business, and that is that the safety of Australians always comes first. As I said, there were two issues that I really felt I had an obligation to address, and I have done that now. Thank you.

ACTING CHAIR—Thank you. If no other officers want to make any comments, we will turn to questions.

Senator BRANDIS—Mr Kemish, before I begin, I understand that you and Mr Roach were both awarded honours within the Order of Australia—in what was called the Bali honours list—for your work in dealing with the aftermath of the tragedy. I think that all senators would wish to congratulate you and, through you, the other awardees within your department on those awards and on the outstanding work that was done in the aftermath of that terrible event.



I have a couple of things that I would like to ask you about. You mentioned the media coverage of the travel advisories in relation to Indonesia in the period from July 2002 until immediately prior to the Bali bombing. Does the department have a media monitoring service or has it assembled some data on that media coverage that you could furnish the committee with?

Mr Kemish—I am very happy to take that question on notice and I can also quickly provide some evidence orally.

Senator BRANDIS—You could do both. For our purposes, it would be useful to have a look at the extensiveness of the media coverage of those travel advisories because, as you know, this has been a bit of an issue before us.

Mr Kemish—We do have a media monitoring service. At the time, our service generated clippings of relevant articles. The service does not pretend to be universal; it provides to ministers and officials samples of the media coverage on any given day. I do have at hand the relevant samples from some of the period that you are talking about. I have in front of me an article from page 1 of the Australian from the first week of September which talks about threats against the US and Australia in the region. It talks about Canberra upgrading travel warnings for East Timor and Indonesia and it talks about urging Australians in Indonesia to take extra care.

Senator BRANDIS—What is the date of that article?

Mr Kemish—11 September 2002. There is a similar article from the Age, on the same date. An article in the Herald Sun of Melbourne on the same date, entitled ‘Warning to travellers’, said:

As the United States closed its missions in Jakarta and Surabaya, the department—

that is, our department—

warned Australians travelling in the region to be on heightened security alert.

… … …

DFAT advised all travellers in South-East Asia to be aware of potential terrorist activity.

That was from page 2 of the Herald Sun in Melbourne.

Senator BRANDIS—What was the date of that?

Mr Kemish—Again, it was 11 September 2002. There was a particular upgrade on that date. On 12 September 2002 the West Australian noted:

The Department of Foreign Affairs also upgraded travel warnings for the region and called on Australians to defer all

non-essential travel to East Timor.

That is a sample, but we can certainly try and provide a bit more detail.



Senator BRANDIS—Could you please take that on notice and give us a comprehensive brief of the media reports? By the way, how is this conveyed to the media? Does DFAT put out a press release or does it simply provide the actual travel advisory on a fax stream to media outlets? By what method was this fed into the media at that time?

Mr Kemish—At the time, the primary means by which this was fed into the media was through our subscription service.

Senator BRANDIS—I am sorry; I am not quite sure what you mean.

Mr Kemish—An email subscription service. I can explain that a little more. It is important, for the record, to note that, between September 2001 and October 2002, we introduced very significant improvements to the way we disseminated this product. We have done even more since then, but we did some very considerable work prior to October 2002.

Senator BRANDIS—I would like you to go through it point by point. Could you tell us what each of those steps were in that year up to October 2002 to improve the dissemination of this advice? When you have finished doing that I would like you to summarise for us, if you have not already done that in the first exercise, each of the modes or methods by which these travel advisories were brought to the attention of the public.

ACTING CHAIR—May I suggest that perhaps that question be taken on notice?

Senator BRANDIS—No. I would like Mr Kemish to say it, if it is possible to do so within about 15 minutes or so.

Mr Kemish—I will try to be as succinct as I can.

Senator BRANDIS—I just want a summary. If you want to elaborate in writing later, that would be good, but this is probably the best opportunity for you to set out the chapter and verse of this now.

Mr Kemish—I will just go back to the very eve of September 11, 2001. At that stage, we were receiving about 30,000 hits on the travel advisory section of the DFAT web site every week. That was the figure pre September 11, 2001. The web site is one important way people access our travel advice. The hits obviously went through the roof post September 11, 2001, and the figure settled back to double that average in the period between September 2001 and October 2002. On average across the year that is of particular interest to this committee we were receiving about 60,000 hits on the travel advice section of the DFAT web site every week.

Between September 2001 and October 2002, we also established an email subscription service—which is what I was referring to earlier—which, certainly by mid-2002, had 4,000 subscribers. Many of those were in the media. Finally, to answer that part of your earlier question, we had a range of media subscribers to our service. All the service involves is that every time we change a travel advice the new travel advice is fired out by email to everybody who is on that subscription service. Most news organisations in Australia were on that subscription service prior to October 2002. That subscription service, as I said, had 4,000 subscribers across the country.



Senator BRANDIS—Would they mainly have been travel agents?

Mr Kemish—No. It was divided pretty evenly between media, travel agents, companies and individuals. There was a very considerable number of individual Australians who were subscribing to our service.

Senator JOHNSTON—Is it free?

Mr Kemish—It is free, yes. We did a range of other things between September 2001 and October 2002. We were particularly mindful that not all Australians have access to the web. We sought to promote the service through a telephone system which only involves the cost of a local call.

Senator BRANDIS—Where was that advertised?

Mr Kemish—Among other things it was advertised in the publication that goes with every Australian passport. We established a fax back service, which continues to have some moderate use. In addition to that we did a range of things to improve our methodology in travel advice. We formalised certain of our methodologies, including rearranging the format of our travel advisories to focus on safety and security. We also began to develop much greater clarity about the difference between our travel advisory levels. This has been an ongoing project.

Senator BRANDIS—Before you go on to that point, can I draw you out on the last point you made when you said you restructured the travel advisories to focus on safety and security. Prior to that was there more emphasis on other issues like health or travel insurance or other, as it were, day-to-day matters, rather than safety and security?

Mr Kemish—I think that is a fair description. The issues of safety and security certainly became much more prominent, and more prominently presented through the format of advisories in the period in question.

Senator BRANDIS—A bundle of travel advisories for Indonesia have been tabled before this committee, and I noticed in the first that there is a kind of headline bold-type short summary of the gravamen of the travel advice and then the first detailed item is safety and security. You are telling us that the highlighting, as a matter of first priority or first attention to the reader, of safety and security was something that was initiated by the department after September 11, 2001?

Mr Kemish—Yes, it was. It was agreed to and welcomed by the foreign minister at the time. Prior to the period in question, travel advisories were simply running sheets that were not broken down into subheadings. We thought it very important to bring the subheadings out and to make safety and security the most prominent of those.

Senator BRANDIS—Indeed, what I would call the bolded headline summary at the top of the travel advisory seems to concentrate, in the ones I have looked at, exclusively on issues of safety and security. Was that part of the redesign of the structure of these?



Mr Kemish—Yes, it was, and to be fair it also reflected the very serious environment in which we were working between the September 11 attacks and the Bali tragedy. I think it is sometimes hard for the media and some in the public to recall how much attention was given by all of us in Australia, including officials in the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, to issues of international safety and security in the period in question. The Bali tragedy has put it all in perspective, I suppose, but we certainly did precisely what you are describing, to give those issues prominence.

I guess the final thing I would say on our work in this area in the period in question is that we also instituted more formal procedures, whereby all our travel advisories were reviewed and reissued every three months—a new basic requirement in this period, We identified clearly four inputs that had to be checked prior to reissue of travel advisories. For the record, they are: the input of our embassies, consulates and high commissions overseas; our consular experience—that is, our experience within the consular area of the trouble that Australians can find themselves in overseas; threat assessments provided by ASIO which, as we know, is our key input in trying to make assessments about the impact of intelligence on travel advisories; and, fourth, the crosschecking we do against what our consular partner governments are doing—and we mean by that, in the normal course of events, the United Kingdom, Canada, the United States and New Zealand.

Mr Roach—To add one point to Mr Kemish’s answer, the further way that we promoted and disseminated travel advisories was effectively through getting our media liaison service within the department to aggressively market significant changes to particular travel advisories when they happened. For example, the travel advice upgrades three weeks before the Bali attack, which Mr Kemish has referred to, were very aggressively pushed by our media liaison service in their hourly contact with their journalistic colleagues. That is reflected in the very prominent placement of those stories in the papers of 11 September.

Senator BRANDIS—I see. So you are telling us that when the papers ran these stories, like the page 1 story in the Australian on 10 September 2002, it was not merely a matter of the news editor picking up the press release over the email. Officers within your department had proactively got on the phone to relevant journalists and said: ‘We’re sending you this email and it’s a good story. It’s a big story. We want you to give it a run.’ Is that what it amounts to?

Mr Roach—Yes.

Mr Kemish—That is common practice. When there are circumstances when we want to give even more prominence to a particular upgrade, we will make it the subject of a media release. That is something that, post Bali, we are doing even more of, but we certainly were taking the active approach to the media that you described prior to Bali.

Senator BRANDIS—My sense of the media is that getting on the telephone and talking to the journalist is probably the most effective way of drawing it to their attention, rather than merely issuing a document, whether it be a press release or whatever it might be.

Senator STOTT DESPOJA—I understand the so-called aggressive marketing to journalists and the media, but there is one other component—and I apologise if I am pre-empting either a question from Senator Brandis or your answer. The component—and I do not know if it is



missing or that it is just that I have not heard much about it—is that of the travel agents. Is there comparable marketing, if you like, to ensure that travel agents either have been or are, post Bali, marketed to in this way—that they are not simply provided with additional updated information but there is that relationship being developed?

Mr Kemish—If you are talking about post the Bali tragedy, this has been an extraordinary area of focus for us, and I think Jeff Roach can help me in detailing what we have been doing. Broadly it involves a very major campaign of education and cooperation with the travel industry. Very early on post Bali it involved the active involvement of the Australian Federation of Travel Agents to fire out our travel advisories to more than 4,000 travel agents across the country. It also involves a formal agreement through a charter by the travel industry to help us promote our travel advisories. Mr Roach can detail more on that in a moment, but I do need to say that there was already, prior to Bali, a significant effort being made to reach out to travel agents across the country. This included very regular presentations by departmental officers—by officers of the Consular Branch—to training courses run by AFTA, the Federation of Travel Agents. It also included the aggressive mailing out of a range of publications, not only the one we have mentioned but a range of brochures on a range of different issues. The outreach was considerable prior to Bali. As conscientious officers we have found additional ways of pushing through this area after the tragedy, but the record does need to show it was an area of considerable attention prior to the tragedy as well.

Senator STOTT DESPOJA—Was there some form of measurement of that outreach other than simply knowing how broad-ranging the dissemination of those travel warnings or advice and information was to travel agents? Was there some method of assessment as to how well that information was relayed? For instance, did you get feedback from travel agents saying, ‘Yes, we make sure that we give that information every time we issue a ticket,’ or what have you? I am curious, because, as you would know from the evidence in Adelaide in particular, travel agents were identified in a couple of circumstances as not referring or advising their clients.

Senator BRANDIS—Senator Stott Despoja, that was the very question that I was going to ask, so thank you.

Mr Kemish—This is an area where we have become more systematic over time. There has been a real ongoing progression in our efforts to derive information about the impact of our work. I suppose we have become particularly systematic in the course of our smart traveller campaign, post-Bali, in seeking to get a very clear sense of the understanding and appreciation of travel advisories. We have here somewhere some statistics on how well understood our travel advisories were at the very start of that smart traveller campaign—that is, before we could measure its impact. We are looking to do some more work to assess the impact of that campaign very soon. It is a possibility that Mr Smith has left with the relevant statistics, in which case I will be very happy to table them. But what I can say is that, in looking at the pre-smart traveller statistics, I was gratified by the level of importance, the level of priority, given to travel advisories by travel agents. Many of them understood that they share in a responsibility to help to promote the service. I am sure that in the course of these discussions we will be able to provide a little bit more meat to that broad assertion.



Senator BRANDIS—Was there a kind of monitoring or an auditing—I am talking about pre-Bali—of travel agencies to better inform the department of the extent to which the agencies were observing the department’s recommendation about conveying this to the travelling public?

Mr Kemish—We are very much in the process of introducing procedures to do that, in the course of our smart traveller efforts and in the course of developing our cooperative work with the travel industry, following the signing of the charter earlier this year. The AFTA membership, which takes in thousands of travel agents across the country, has as a whole embraced the charter. We therefore have a very considerable number of agencies that have signed up to that charter. That carries with it a commitment to a range of ongoing programs, which I think Mr Roach might help me to describe.

Mr Roach—Yes, certainly. The charter was something that was negotiated with AFTA, but also with other participants in the travel industry. The primary focus of it goes, effectively, in two directions. The first is that travel agents who sign to become partners of this charter agree to promote the department’s safe travel messages and, most particularly out of that, travel advisories. For example, they alert their customers to the fact that there is a travel advice service, they include information in ticketing and other promotional activities and they make sure that this is done at the pre-sale point of time. Where the department hold significant security concerns about a particular location which prompt us to recommend that Australians, for example, defer non-essential travel or all travel, then we ask our partners to specifically pass across a copy of that travel advice to their customer before any finalisation of bookings is made so that individuals are making informed decisions about their travel.

Senator STOTT DESPOJA—That is a request, though, isn’t it? It is a self-regulating environment and it is a request that, before they finalise that travel, they pass over that advice. However, they do not have to. I am not sure how you can fix that.

Mr Roach—It is a voluntary charter. That is very much because the clear sentiment that we got from the travel industry—and Mr Hatton’s testimony of last week will have reinforced it—is that a voluntary approach from the travel industry was going to be the most effective way of producing the end result that we want. That is more Australians being aware and having their attention drawn to travel advice. In terms of any monitoring about whether that is going on, no, there is not. But the very strong feedback that I have had through extensive dealings with the travel industry over the last three months has been that they accept this in a very enthusiastic and positive way. Travel agents are aware of the concerns of the community. For travel agents to be able to show to their customer and client base that they are concerned for their welfare is seen effectively as a selling point for them. They are wanting to embrace this for their own promotional and presentational purposes.

Mr Kemish—There are a couple of things to add to that. As I mentioned, we do have a conscious program underlying the smart traveller campaign, which involves market survey work, and, through professional organisations, we are as part of that campaign seeking, over certain intervals, to measure the impact on the broader public but also on travel agents. The other thing that I would emphasise is that this is very much an ongoing area of work. We have taken the step of introducing the charter. We have had a very pleasing response to that from the travel agents. There are next steps to be undertaken. They include a conscious and deliberate education and training program involving officials from this department. They also include developing—



and this will involve the cooperation of the travel industry—approaches that give us even better performance information on how the travel industry is managing this responsibility with us.

Senator BRANDIS—Madam Acting Chair, I was going to move to another topic, but I will pause if others have any more questions about the travel agents.

ACTING CHAIR—I may have one or two, if we are going to do it topic by topic. That may be the best way of dealing with it. When did the smart traveller campaign come into effect—did you say?

Mr Roach—The campaign was launched by the Minister for Foreign Affairs on 7 September this year. That campaign is underpinned by funding of $9.7 million. The campaign will run over the next three years. A lot of the activity is very much focused on the first year of the campaign, in which we will be seeking to build awareness of the travel advice service to make sure that this resonates in the community. The objective over the second and third years will be to maintain that awareness. As Mr Kemish has mentioned, this campaign is going to be the subject of regular pieces of market research to look at the responsiveness of the community to the campaign as it unfolds. The campaign may be nuanced as we get those results. But the initial findings are extremely positive. As to the web site access, which Mr Kemish has spoken about, there were figures of 10,000 to 30,000 hits per week on the web site as of 12 to 18 months ago. We are running at an average of about 170,000 hits per week. That is up 70 per cent since the launch of the campaign. Of course, all these initiatives are self-reinforcing—the charter, the campaign and a lot of other public information activities which support this.

Mr Kemish—It might be of interest to you to know how the number of subscribers is travelling at this stage.

Mr Roach—Yes. That email subscription service has over 28,000 subscribers, so that has more than doubled.

ACTING CHAIR—I think you said it was 4,000 before Bali. Wasn’t that it?

Mr Kemish—It was 4,000 before Bali, that is right.

ACTING CHAIR—You mentioned the charter and said that a lot of travel agents had signed up to it. I think you said that AFTA had done so on behalf of travel agents—is that correct? I am just trying to work out how many travel agents AFTA umbrellas, so to speak.

Mr Roach—AFTA has a membership of around 2½ thousand travel agents. AFTA, as the peak organisation, has become a member of the charter. More significantly, at the annual conference of AFTA in July of this year, the organisation and its 2½ thousand members agreed that becoming a partner to the charter would become a precondition of accreditation to AFTA. Companies, of course, are accredited to AFTA on an annual basis, and that might occur at any point during the year. As they come to the point when they need to do the accreditation they are joining to become members of our charter, so those numbers will grow larger and larger as each month goes by. The response from within the AFTA conference was very positively disposed towards the charter, and we know from briefings we have been doing around state capitals that



there is a good response and take-up both among AFTA members and also beyond that organisation.

ACTING CHAIR—So how many travel agents do you think are still not covered by the charter?

Mr Roach—We probably have 25 per cent of travel agents who are currently partners. Do not forget this is a relatively new initiative. On a week by week basis, we are seeing more and more come in.

Mr Kemish—But the AFTA membership alone should deliver certainly in excess of 70 per cent of the travel industry, on its own.

Senator BRANDIS—Can I turn to another topic. The committee has heard evidence from Mr Deegan, who was, very sadly, bereaved by the Bali bombing. I think it is fair to say that Mr Deegan has been quite critical of the department. Other than from Mr Deegan, did the department receive complaints from the families of any other victims criticising in any respect the way in which it had handled this, either prior or subsequent to the event?

Mr Kemish—No. There was a question or two in the very early stages in response to media coverage from perhaps one other family that we are aware of, but it did not come to us as criticism. Indeed, as I mentioned at our last appearance in front of this inquiry, I have had contact with a very considerable proportion of these families on a personal basis. It is a strange thing to say, but the resounding message I have had from them on this subject, to the extent that they raise it—and not many of them do—is a message of support for us, as officials. It is not something we seek, but that has been the consistent message. I read to the committee, at my last appearance, a letter from Mr Daniel Lysaght, who lost his son in the tragedy. I have to say that that letter is typical of the feedback I have received from the families. A word about Mr Deegan: certainly Senator Stott Despoja knows that I have had professional contact with Mr Deegan. We have had some very good and perfectly constructive discussions about these issues. As is the case with all of the other victims’ families, our heart goes out to him.

Senator BRANDIS—Of course. I want to touch on some evidence that was given last night by Mr White and Mr Borgu from the Australian Strategic Policy Institute. I do not suppose by any chance you happened to be watching that evidence on the webcast last night, Mr Kemish?

Mr Kemish—I have to admit that I was at a concert for my daughter.

Senator BRANDIS—So you have not happened to see the Hansard of it this morning, so you do not know what Mr White and Mr Borgu said?

Mr Kemish—I think we are broadly familiar with the approach, but if you would like to—

Senator BRANDIS—I will try to summarise it and hope that I do it justice. I will ask Mr Holmes, the secretary of the committee, to give me a bit of guidance, to make sure that I put it fairly. As I understood their evidence, one thing that was suggested to us last evening was that one of the steps the department could perhaps take in an—I think the word that was used was—imaginative way would be to use the travel advisory system as a method of leverage in relation



to other governments. The example that was given was that, if the Australian government were not satisfied about the way in which potential terrorist threats were being handled by the Indonesian government domestically, one thing the Australian government could do by way of leverage was in effect to threaten the Indonesian government that, unless steps were taken to satisfy or address the Australian government’s concerns, future travel advisories would be expressed in more severe terms; the rationale being that the Indonesian government would not want that to happen because of the commercial consequences, I guess, and therefore might be persuaded by that method of leverage to oblige the Australian government and meet Australia’s concerns. I hope that is a fair paraphrase of what was said. What do you think of that idea?

Mr Kemish—I have to say that I do not like it. There is a particular point to be made here. There is a clean focus, in the travel advisory series, on the safety of Australians. We have to be left as a government to make our own proper judgments bearing that consideration in mind only. It sounds very much like entering into a negotiation with another government about the advice we provide to Australians travelling overseas. I appreciate that the spirit behind the point was to try to conjure up a way of adding to the leverage that the Australian government might have in encouraging another government to address serious concerns. But I think the downside of such an approach is very significant: it detracts from the core principle that I have just identified, that we have to be on our own to make these judgments. We say to other governments and to the Australian people that we do not use travel advisories to deliver political messages; this is not a politicised service in any way, in domestic terms or in international terms. I think the government and the department have a very proud record in finding a whole range of ways to encourage governments, particularly in our regional neighbourhood, to address these very serious issues. Indeed, the record of a range of agencies, including particularly the Australian Federal Police, in this area over the last year is extraordinarily proud. With respect, I think that we and other governments will continue to maintain a position that this advisory service needs to have one clean focus, and that is the safety of Australians.

Senator BRANDIS—If those additional agenda or imperatives were to influence the wording of travel advisories, would that risk corrupting or adulterating the travel advisory by causing it to serve a collateral purpose that is unrelated to its primary function?

Mr Kemish—That is a better way of saying what I was trying to say. I agree absolutely.

Senator BRANDIS—Thank you.

Senator JOHNSTON—Going back to some of the issues that arose in the evidence that we have taken, the DIO have provided us with a number of assessments they made at various times back in 2002. By way of example, on 5 August 2002 they said:

... remnants of the regional extremist organisation, Jemaah Islamiyah (JI), continue to possess the capability and intent to

undertake future attacks...

The DIO said that they pose a greater threat to foreigners in Indonesia. On 17 September 2002 they said:

... the remnants of JI contain all the necessary ingredients to plan and conduct terrorist attacks in South-East Asia.



On 26 September 2002 they commented:

... if timing and location come together a large number of casualties could result.

They are embodied in very broad commentaries—I have just plucked those out, I might say—and there are quite extensive paragraphs of assessments of South-East Asia generally and the region, and of JI and other groups et cetera. You draw on a number of sources, as I understand it. What weight do you give direct comments about organisations?

Mr Kemish—We give the greatest weight, as you know, to the formal threat assessments provided by ASIO. They have the formal responsibility for making these assessments.

Senator JOHNSTON—These were DIO assessments.

Mr Kemish—Yes, I understand that. I said that to preface my next comment: in my observation—and you have just confirmed it—DIO’s assessments were in fact very similar to those provided by ASIO. In turn, our travel advisories gave considerable prominence to the threats dealt with in certainly the ASIO formal assessments but, as it happens, the DIO assessments as well. The dates you mentioned were from August 2002—is that right?

Senator JOHNSTON—That is right: 5 August, 17 September and 26 September.

Mr Kemish—As we have said to the committee a number of times, during that period we had an advisory which, in the first sentence, underlined the risk of terrorism. It went on to underline that that risk applied in tourist locations across Indonesia. Looking back and conscientiously assessing our advisories against those inputs, we feel that at that time we met the benchmark that we set for ourselves now. The benchmark is that, in the event of receiving a formal assessment that there is a significant risk of terrorism, no matter what organisation, we do two things with our travel advice: we include in the travel advice a clear warning about the risk of terrorism—and looking at our advisories for the period in question, we met that criteria —and we urge Australians to exercise a high degree of caution or personal security awareness—and we did that as well. Of course, had we known in August 2002 that there was a particular specific threat in Bali, we would have done everything we could beyond that, but we did not know.

Senator JOHNSTON—Now that we are all a lot older and wiser, these travel advisories have taken on a whole new dimension. I think that, for most people who have a radio or a television, it would be extremely difficult not to understand that the department gives people advice as to the security status of where they are going. Do you conduct any active benchmarking as to the understanding of tourists as to what the travel advisories mean? You word them very simply. With great respect to the witnesses there, in South Australia we had a great deal of surprise, I suspect, amongst some of the members of the committee that, when the words were spoken to the witnesses, very many of them still did not come to terms with what the advisory actually meant. I not sure whether that says something about the level of comprehension. The point is that a lot of young Australian travellers these days are not good at reading and understanding even the slightest hint of legalese. We have come to the surprising knowledge that a lot of people do not know that Bali is in Indonesia! All of us here are probably very educated people, and it takes us away from people who are not so educated. Remember that Bali is a very cheap destination for Australians—particularly young Australians, and they are not sophisticated in



their capacity to comprehend things. I would like to know what you do to try to measure whether what you say to them actually registers.

Mr Kemish—I am now in a position to give you a bit of feedback on the process we have had as part of the smart traveller campaign to assess the appreciation for and understanding of our travel advisory service. It needs to be remembered that the results I am giving you are based on our first exercise in measuring the impact prior to that campaign. On the particular question you raise, we received some useful feedback about the content and style of our advisories. The summary of that feedback exercise—that market survey exercise—was that Australians appreciate the tone of our travel advice. They perceive it as informative and serious. They also regard it as easy to follow. They regard the bold headings that we have spoken about as effective. They regard the advisories as succinct and brief. We have received some constructive suggestions about providing more information about relativities in risk, and we are looking at that. But the overwhelming sense of that initial feedback is that it is pretty clear. Certainly, I know that within the department for the last four years we have been conscientiously trying to make the language simpler to try to ensure that it is targeting a wide cross-section of the Australian public. It is something that we are certainly onto.

Senator JOHNSTON—There is a distinction, I think, between the types of tourists that go to Bali and the types of tourists that go to Europe—a huge distinction of socioeconomic circumstances and so on. There is an age differential. I think the average age would potentially be half that of those going to Europe. Are you cognisant of these differences?

Mr Kemish—I think it is certainly true that there are a lot of first-time travellers travelling to Bali. There are also a lot of first-time travellers travelling to Europe. I do appreciate your point. In the end though the balance of opinion appears to be that we certainly should not be seeking to dumb down the advisories to the point where we rob them of the detail and the content that they contain. There is a balance to be struck.

Senator JOHNSTON—All I am suggesting is: are you benchmarking the line that you draw in terms of simplicity, digestibility—

Mr Kemish—Through this market survey work I have described. As I say, we have had one go at it and the intention within the next couple of months is, as a means of assessing the impact of the smart traveller campaign, to ask a range of further questions including about the content and style of the advisories. It is something that we are very interested in.

Mr Roach—I have a couple of quick comments, Senator. Firstly, we have actually developed an explanatory note which sits very prominently on our web site. It is designed to help first-time readers of our travel advice to understand a little bit of the content—how we have got to the outcome in the travel advice, what the sources of the information are, and what the information means. That is something which has been designed as well for the travel industry so that agents can be passing this across to their clients and using it to explain the travel advices under the charter. Secondly, as for the comments we have received internationally about our travel advice, whilst we continue to strive to further improve our product, nevertheless I think it would be fair to say that Australia’s travel advisories are regarded as international best practice.

Senator BRANDIS—By whom?



Mr Roach—By our consular partners and from comments in conferences overseas. Travel advice nowadays is something which does attract a lot of international debate. The United Kingdom restructured their travel advisories on the basis of the Australian model. The Canadian service has gone through a restructure which, again, has drawn lessons from the way we now structure our advisories, which Mr Kemish spoke about. Within international forums with NGOs and business members often Australia’s travel advice is held up as being straightforward, simple, not too short and not too long.

Mr Kemish—That is absolutely right. At the same time, I have had the same input from my counterparts, the heads of the consular services in the UK and the US. It is absolutely right. I suppose it is true to say that we are never content about this. We are always trying to find ways of improving it and making things clearer. We are again looking very closely at that within the department now. It is an area of work that needs constant application of effort.

Senator BRANDIS—There are three criteria against which this can be judged. Firstly, there is whether the information—in other words, the content—is accurate and if there is a circumstance warranting a warning, the warning is neither understated nor overstated; you just get it right. Secondly, there is the choice of language so that it conveys the substance of what you want to convey to the target audience you are seeking to convey the message to. Thirdly—and we have dealt with this at great length—there is the reach, that is, the extensiveness of the dissemination. If the information is right, the language is appropriate, and the dissemination is as widespread as it is reasonable to expect in the circumstances, I am at a bit of a loss to see what else you can do.

I just wanted to invite your comment on a point that Senator Johnston was making about the target audience. The sorts of people who are going to be going to Bali are going to be people in their late teens and early 20s—I would have thought that would be the principal demographic. Even if they had received, read and understood a travel advisory saying, ‘You’ve got to take enhanced care for your safety and avoid areas where foreigners gather,’ if these people, particularly in that age group, are going to a resort city for a holiday, notwithstanding that they have received, read and understood your travel advisory, you are not going to stop them going to a nightclub. That is what they are going there for.

Mr Kemish—You asked me earlier about family feedback from victims and survivors. You remind me to make an additional point, and that is that many of these young people have said to me that it would not have made much difference anyway. Their point is that they would have read, absorbed and understood the point and proceeded in any case.

Senator BRANDIS—And that is not a reckless thing for them to do.

Mr Kemish—No. It is also a point that Jason McCartney is on the public record as having made in relation to those issues. As a human being I understand why people say these things.

Senator BRANDIS—They are not going to sit in their hotel room and watch TV if they are going for a holiday in Bali.

Mr Kemish—In the end there are, as I mentioned in my opening remarks, very interesting and difficult issues at play here that have to do with the place of individual responsibility within our social framework. My view is that as a department and as a government we have to work



very hard to put out the best possible advice at the disposal of as many Australians as we can, and that is what we are committed to.

Senator JOHNSTON—You raise another point, and I will be very brief on this. Individual responsibility I think is not abroad with young people in Australia today as it might be. It is a fact of life that we look after people from a government situation top-down very comprehensively by and large. My friends on the other side of the political fence might disagree with me. Have you thought about going into schools and talking to the students—high schools I think is the best way—to discuss travelling from a perspective of personal responsibility? From what I saw in South Australia and from what I know at Kingsley, there is a capacity particularly for young kids to say, ‘The government should have told me more.’ There is an element of that there that concerns me a bit about this.

Mr Kemish—As a department we have made some initial forays into the area of curriculum development for schools. Our efforts in that regard have not been exclusively focused on the travel advisory service; it has been about a range of aspects of our work, seeking to educate about the work of the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade. In that initial work, which, as I recall, related to the state of New South Wales, we gave very considerable focus to the consular role and within that particularly our travel advisory service. It is an interesting area. It is yet another potential way of promoting understanding. All of these things have to be considered within resource limits and they have to be thought through very carefully. But there are many different ways that we might promote the ideas.

Senator JOHNSTON—Just take this schoolies week phenomenon. Kids go everywhere in Australia with free spirits and with innocence, and that is what they grow up with. We have to teach them that when they go overseas that is not the case, and I think the personal responsibility aspect is very difficult to get across. To some extent we as government and as departments have some sort of responsibility to get out there and teach them about these things. I am not suggesting there is anything that would have affected the events in Bali. But, in terms of the way they receive the travel advisory, the South Australian experience I thought was quite interesting. They just were not switching on, I do not think.

Mr Kemish—I have no comment about the particular individuals in question. The only other thing I can say is that as a consular service and as a department we are also trying to use the means that we have at our disposal currently to try and make clear publicly what we can and cannot do as a service—what the limits are of a consular service. That is a very prominent issue when you look at the travel advisory section of the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade. We try to make it very clear what the limits are and what the personal responsibilities need to be in travel overseas.

Mr Roach—We have been investing quite some energy in the last four weeks with STA Travel. These are located primarily in most of the universities around Australia and in a lot of the inner-city areas where young people live. We have been holding briefing sessions for all of the STA branch managers from 100 stores across Australia as part of this outreach activity. That is trying to target the young group of travellers who we know have been making plans over the last four weeks for summer vacations and overseas travel, so we moved very quickly to do that. The other thing is that, with the concerns in the community about travel overseas, a couple of companies have set themselves up to run two-day courses for people on how to travel safely and



well overseas. We have been in contact with them and they are members of our charter. We have been helping them with some curriculum development, again promoting travel advice to people who sign up for their courses.

Senator JOHNSTON—Yes, getting them to sign up and go to the courses or to understand why they need to is the issue, I think.

ACTING CHAIR—I have just a few questions on that point. Senator Johnston referred to our hearings in Adelaide, and no doubt you have had a chance to read the transcript. I am sure you would agree that, certainly for us, it was quite a harrowing experience.

Mr Kemish—Yes, I am sure.

ACTING CHAIR—It was quite disturbing. You mentioned Jason McCartney having put on the public record that, even had he known about this information, he still would have gone along to the nightclub and the like. But I can tell you, and I am sure that you would have read it in the transcript, that a number of other witnesses that we had before us made it quite clear that they had no information whatsoever about travel advisories and that it was not made available to them. Their view quite clearly was that, if they had received any information whatsoever, there is no way in the world they would have gone anywhere near Bali. I wonder how you would respond to that and, now that you have implemented measures—apart from the smart traveller program—how that would change.

Mr Kemish—Those are serious questions. I imagine it was harrowing for you. We do have very considerable experience in the consular service of dealing with Australians in grief, and it is a very difficult thing to do personally. I would say a few things about that. The first is that, as Australians, in looking back we will never be satisfied with any approach other than one which involved knowing about the specific threat and telling every Australian about it. We did not know about the threat. There was some generic threat information available and that is all this committee has ever really heard about. We did our best at the time to promote it through the travel advisory service. Beyond that, we gave every Australian passport holder a document which said: look at our travel advice. Beyond that, airline tickets said, ‘Look at our travel advice.’ QBE, who are a significant provider of travel insurance, provided a document with each of its travel insurance policies, which said, ‘Look at the DFAT travel advice.’ The newspapers were saying at the time, ‘Look at the DFAT travel advice.’ I say what I am saying carefully because these fellow Australians have experienced considerable loss and, as I said before, we will never be satisfied with any approach other than one which helps to save people’s lives. Unfortunately, we did not have the information that enabled us to do that.

Senator BRANDIS—I hear your observations. Let me read to you—and I am sure you have read this many times—the relevant portions of the most recent iteration of the Indonesia travel advice before the bombing, dated 13 September 2002. I will read at length so that I am not taking anything out of context, and then I will ask a question. It says:

In view of the ongoing risk of terrorist activity in the region, Australians in Indonesia should maintain a high level of

personal security awareness. Australians should avoid travel to west Timor (outside of Kupang), Maluku and North

Maluku, and Aceh. Australians in Papua (Irian Jaya) and North Sulawesi should exercise caution and seek current

information from the Australian Embassy prior to travel. The recent attack on foreigners in the Freeport Mine area



underlines the need for Australians in Papua to monitor developments that might affect their safety. Australians in Poso,

the middle of Central Sulawesi, should avoid inter-provincial and inter-city bus travel and exercise caution following

recent attacks on passenger buses. Tourist services elsewhere in Indonesia are operating normally, including Bali.

Under the subheading ‘Safety and Security’ it says:

Australians in Indonesia should monitor carefully developments that might affect their safety. Demonstrations occur from

time to time, particularly in Jakarta. Australians should avoid large public gathering and be alert to their surroundings.

Bombs have been exploded periodically in Jakarta and elsewhere in the past, including areas frequented by tourists.

Further explosions may be attempted. In view of the ongoing risk of terrorist activity, Australians should maintain a high

level of personal security awareness at all times.

My question to you, Mr Kemish, is: do you believe that that statement was an accurate representation of what you understood to be the security position in Indonesia prior to the Bali bombing?

Mr Kemish—Absolutely.

Senator BRANDIS—You would not change it? We operate with the benefit of hindsight; we know the terrible thing that happened. But if we did not have that hindsight and if we could go back in a time machine to 11 October 2002, would you change any of that?

Mr Kemish—That is a very hard question to answer, because of course I now know that a bomb went off in Bali on 12 October 2002, and I cannot shake that thought from my mind.

Senator BRANDIS—I understand that. But was that the best rendering of the understanding we had at the time?

Mr Kemish—Yes, it was. I have an additional comment on the particular comments about particular regions. That advice reflected our knowledge of developments and threats. A lot of the threats had to do with civil unrest, demonstrations and robberies. A lot of the references you read had to do with those. The reference to tourism services operating normally elsewhere in Indonesia, including in Bali, also referred to civil unrest. If we try to put ourselves back in the time in question, it was a time when there was very considerable civil unrest in certain parts of Indonesia, particularly in Java. As I have said to the committee before, in that context the question we were being asked by many thousands of Australians over the phone was: ‘We can see that. But are tourist services operating normally in Bali?’ The answer to that question was yes. That in no way detracted from the core advice, which is contained in the first sentence of that advisory you just read and which applied clearly to the entire country.

ACTING CHAIR—Just on the question about there being no differentiation between the different parts of Indonesia, ASIO’s threat was of course high in the whole of the archipelago. Why is it that DFAT then took the opportunity in its travel advisories to divide up the various areas and to make slightly different assessments of various areas?

Mr Kemish—For exactly the reason I just explained. Terrorism is one thing, but the issue that we were all conscious of, we all knew about and each of us—the US, the UK and Canada—were



wrestling with, and had been for some time, was a very significant, actual threat on an almost daily basis in certain parts of the country. It was not a terrorist threat. The threats to a number of the regions that Senator Brandis has just read out did not reflect terrorism. They reflected the threat of demonstration, the threat of robbery, the threat of ambush and the threat of banditry. When we read the advisory now in November 2003 we read it through the prism of knowledge of a terrorist action. If you put yourself in the situation of September 2002, you would know that there were a range of very real threats that were affecting Australians daily, and we were talking about them in the advisory.

ACTING CHAIR—You are referring to threats to personal safety not associated with terrorism?

Mr Kemish—Often. Of course there are clear references to the threat of terrorism as well, but that reference is not subdivided.

ACTING CHAIR—My understanding is that the threat assessment of ‘high’, made by ASIO on 28 September 2002, related to not just the risk of personal safety to individuals but also terrorism activities.

Mr Kemish—Absolutely. The ASIO assessment deals with the risk of terrorism. It is important to remember that these travel advisories are not only about terrorism.

ACTING CHAIR—Of course.

Mr Kemish—My point—and I will try to make it as clearly as I can—about the travel advisory before October 2002 and now is that it deals with not only that specific type of threat but also a range of other risks that are present in the international environment, which we see Australians experience on a daily basis and which we seek to warn them about. Terrorism is one of them. The focus of this committee naturally inclines us to a discussion about one important aspect of all this—that is, terrorism. But that advisory, like all our advisories then and now, deals with a whole range of issues. ASIO’s assessments are indeed about terrorism and they are one important input.

ACTING CHAIR—ASIO upgraded its threat assessment to ‘high’ on 28 September 2001. As I understand it, the DFAT travel advisory was updated on 8 October 2001.

Mr Kemish—No, Senator; it was updated on 26 September 2001, two days before the upgrade of the ASIO threat assessment. It was upgraded on the basis of our knowledge of ASIO’s work on its threat assessment and on the basis of precisely the same inputs which led ASIO to upgrade its assessments. We were two days ahead of ASIO in our upgrade.

Senator BRANDIS—Although the language is different, you do not see an inconsistency between the substance of the two—that is, the ASIO assessment and your assessment?

Mr Kemish—Absolutely not. The upgrade on 26 September meets the criteria that we set for ourselves now and which the Director-General of ASIO has endorsed subsequent to Bali. The upgrade on 26 September meets criterion 1that the travel advice contain a prominent and clear



warning about the risk of terrorism and encouragement that Australians exercise a high degree of caution and security awareness.

As I look back—as I have done, as you can imagine—at the correlation between ASIO threat assessments and DFAT travel advisories, I have to say that it is misleading to look for an ASIO threat assessment on a particular date and then look at the next DFAT travel advisory upgrade. In fact we were on many occasions moving in tandem with ASIO, and it sometimes meant that the date of publication of our advisory predated the date of publication of the ASIO threat assessment.

Senator BRANDIS—There is a bit of a risk in being too literalistic about this. Different agencies develop different forms of words, almost a different house style, so they will tend to adopt different language. It does not, it seems to me, follow from that that the adoption of different language means there is an inconsistency in the substance of what is being said. Do you agree?

Mr Kemish—In this component of our travel advisories, our responsibility is to ‘operationalise’, if you like, the assessments provided by ASIO; in other words, to provide clear, simple advice about the risk. We talk about the threat of explosions and bombings. That is our way of talking about the risk. We talk about further explosions perhaps being attempted and we encourage Australians to exercise a high degree of caution and personal security awareness. That is what you can practically do with a broad assessment of threat provided by an organisation like ASIO.

Senator BRANDIS—The difference is this, though: the audience to whom ASIO is communicating is a sophisticated, professional audience. This is very much insiders communicating with one another in the professional jargon of insiders. What you are doing is unpacking that advice and recasting it in language which is designed to be, in a sense, as simple as possible so it can be as broadly comprehended as possible by a non-expert audience.

Mr Kemish—To the best of our ability, yes.

ACTING CHAIR—I was looking at the travel advisory that was current at the time of the bombing—that is, the one dated 20 September 2002. The key sentence in this I think was:

In view of the ongoing risk of terrorist activity in the region, Australians in Indonesia should maintain a high level of

personal security awareness.

As I recall, we read that out to a number of the witnesses in Adelaide and asked them how they would have seen that as affecting them. I think it is fair to say that their responses, although I do not have them in front of me, certainly did not suggest that they saw that as suggesting that they should not gather in places such as nightclubs and the like.

Mr Kemish—Absolutely not, and that is because we did not know to warn people to that effect.

ACTING CHAIR—I understand that. The question that I am coming to is: how are ordinary Australians to interpret ‘a high level of personal security awareness’? I contrast that with some



of the other travel advisories that I have looked at. For example, the United States one I think said, ‘Be alert to your own security’, while the Malaysian one said, ‘Exercise extreme caution.’ How is the average traveller to understand the nuances that obviously exist in the language that you use? Obviously, people are having difficulties.

Mr Kemish—There are a couple of issues here. I do need to remind you that, at the time, prior to this bombing, we were working to translate—‘unpack’, to use Senator Brandis’s words—a broad threat assessment that had no specifics attached to it. It was a broad threat assessment which applied, to our knowledge, to a region of the world—not to a place within it, but to a region of the world. There was nothing more specific than that to our knowledge.

When you consider that that was what we knew, this language—that is, urging people to be aware that there was a threat of terrorist activity in the region and to maintain a high level of personal security at all times—was what we could do with it. I am hard-pressed to think of what else you could do with that information. You could, I suppose, tell people not to go to South-East Asia. If we were to do that, in a situation where we understood there to be a broad level of threat present, we might as well be telling Australians not to travel at all. You talk about the people in Adelaide. Again, these are people who know—as we all do—that a bomb went off at a nightclub in Kuta on 12 October 2002. They lost their loved ones there. They are looking at this language and talking to you about these advisories through that prism.

ACTING CHAIR—So, from what you are telling us, you have no difficulty with the fact that ASIO obviously makes its assessment across the whole of the country, assessing it at ‘high’. However, your view is or was, pre 12 October and now, that there is still this need to differentiate between regions and to make statements such as: ‘Bali is calm and tourist services are operating normally.’

Mr Kemish—‘Bali is calm’?

ACTING CHAIR—Yes, I am reading from one of the travel advisories.

Mr Kemish—You might be reading from the travel advisory of another government, but I do not think you are reading from an Australian travel advisory.

ACTING CHAIR—The one on 20 September says—and I am sorry if I misled you—‘Tourist services elsewhere in Indonesia are operating normally, including Bali.’

Mr Kemish—That is correct.

ACTING CHAIR—‘Operating normally’ suggests to me a certain degree of calmness.

Mr Kemish—Tourist services were operating normally elsewhere in Indonesia, including in Bali. It is important to keep repeating the precise language. This was not something that was specific to Bali; it was a response to a question we were being asked. If you read that sentence at the very bottom of the relevant section—and bear in mind that the first sentence of the relevant paragraph applies to all Australians in all of Indonesia—then it is a different picture altogether. The first sentence is: ‘In view of the ongoing risk of terrorist activity in the region, Australians in Indonesia should maintain a high level of personal security awareness.’ The subdivisions that



follow apply, quite frankly, to threats other than terrorism. The last sentence is us providing information in response to a question we were being asked in the context of very visible and obvious civil unrest in other parts of Indonesia.

ACTING CHAIR—While the secretariat looks for the quote that I read to you, I will just go back to the nuances in language that I referred to. Perhaps you can explain to me—because I have some difficulty—how an average traveller, even I, would interpret the differences between something that says ‘maintain a high level of security awareness’ as against ‘exercise extreme caution’ as against ‘a high degree of caution’? Am I just not to go to the place? How does one interpret these differences?

Mr Kemish—I think that is a good question for us all to ask ourselves. What advice do you give people when you are broadly conscious of a broad threat? Do you advise them not to go to particular types of locations because you have an uncanny feeling that they might be at risk, and thereby risk having them congregate in another location, which becomes the target of a terrorist attack?

None of us, whether that means the Australian consular service or the British, American or Canadian, have yet found a better way of giving people practical advice about what to do in a situation when the threat is non-specific. If the threat is specific then we can encourage Australians to avoid specific locations. But in the absence of that we cannot. In relation to the reference to Bali being ‘calm’, I think you will find that the British government spoke on a number of occasions about Bali being calm. I do not know if you have found an Australian reference to the same thing. What time frame was it?

ACTING CHAIR—The Australian embassy bulletins, during the period September 2001 to 12 October 2002.

Mr Kemish—That is what I thought.

ACTING CHAIR—I will quote it for you, just for clarification. The Australian embassy bulletin stated:

Bali is calm and tourist services are operating normally. Australian tourists in Bali and Lombok should observe the same

prudence as tourists in other parts of the country …

Mr Kemish—That is right.

ACTING CHAIR—I am not sure that ‘prudence’ suggests that people should be concerned about terrorism.

Mr Kemish—Are you suggesting that we had some kind of assessment from any agency in 2001 that there was a threat of terrorism at the time? I would remind you that the overall assessment rating was upgraded at the end of September 2001. I would also remind you of the context of the time. The context of the time was that the twin towers had been attacked on 11 September 2001. This was a major event and it led to a great deal of tension in Indonesia. There was unrest on the streets of Jakarta. The embassy in Jakarta was the subject of considerable demonstration and protest. There were riots throughout Java. That was the focus of everybody’s



attention at that time. In that context, more than a year before the tragic events of October 2002, the focus of all of us—the public and every government—was on civil unrest and riots on the streets of Java. The situation in Bali was calm. That was a fact. That continued to be a fact.

Mr Roach—That statement in the Jakarta embassy bulletin needs to be read in the context of the opening three paragraphs of that embassy bulletin, which reiterate the risk of terrorist activities in the region and the possibility of further bombs being exploded in tourist areas. This applied across the archipelago, faithfully reflecting the ASIO assessment you have referred to, which was across Indonesia.

ACTING CHAIR—We were asking earlier today about the distribution of embassy bulletins. I think I asked how widely they are distributed, apart from just on email and the like. I asked whether they are distributed to hotels and pinned up in foyers, reception areas and the like so that, in the event that travellers did not receive the travel advisory by email or did not have the chance to check the web site, it would somehow come to their attention once they were in Bali.

Mr Kemish—The bulletin is very much focused on Australians resident in a particular country who are registered with us, rather than short-term travellers. It is an additional way of getting our travel advisories out to those people. I know that at the time the embassy in Jakarta had what we in Canberra regarded as a best practice system for disseminating their advice. It involved emails to registered Australians as well as a system of letters and fax streams. As I recall, at the time they reached 4,800 to 5,000 Australians registered with the embassy. The messages were further relayed and disseminated in Indonesia through a warden network. These are Australian people who volunteer to help pass on the message to those who may not be registered with us. As for our practice of passing them to hotels, we certainly do that. We have also been lifting considerably the subscription rate—the number of points we send this out to—in Indonesia since Bali. From recollection, the figure is now about 6,300 Australians registered in the country, who receive our bulletins regularly.

ACTING CHAIR—So the embassy bulletin is not really designed for tourists; it is designed for residents.

Mr Kemish—Yes.

ACTING CHAIR—So there has been no change in the practice, post Bali?

Mr Kemish—Do you mean as to the practice of the Australian Embassy in Jakarta?

ACTING CHAIR—Yes, and distribution of embassy bulletins.

Mr Kemish—I think that what we have done across the network reflects the additional work that we have done in disseminating the message within Australia, and there have been similar efforts made by each of our embassies. I cannot speak for each of them in detail. I do know that the embassy in Jakarta has lifted very considerably the number of Australians that they send the advice out to. We have done it many times because we have upgraded the advisory many times since then. Each time that advisory is updated it goes out automatically to all 6,300 Australians known to us, and then there is another quantum that I cannot account for precisely through the warden network I described of people passing it on by word of mouth. Of course, Australians in



Indonesia access very actively the web site of the Australian Embassy in Jakarta and indeed the central web site here in Canberra.

ACTING CHAIR—I have not visited Bali. Is the consulate in Bali readily found by tourists if they do wish to visit their consulate? Was it a place that tourists frequented prior to the Bali incident? I am just wondering about the knowledge of Australian travellers about their consulate.

Mr Kemish—Yes, within the limits that you would expect from what is a very transient population. People visit because often they are going to a resort. To my personal knowledge, the consulate general is easily found in Denpasar. It sees quite a lot of Australians. It is one of our busiest consulate posts. Australians are arrested, fall off motorcycles and are injured in other ways pretty regularly in Bali, and our consulate general has a proud record of helping those people.

Senator STOTT DESPOJA—I will begin my questioning by picking up Senator Kirk’s point particularly in relation to the embassy bulletin of 3 October. Given a lack of evidence that related to any specific threat in Bali, is it not then appropriate for us to look at the broader evidence or information that may be available to DFAT that might have actually led to, or could have led to, the implication that Bali could be under a terrorist threat?

I ask all of this in the knowledge that we do all approach this from the so-called prism to which you referred. But, if we look at the evidence contained in that bulletin and the bulletin of 26 September from the American embassy, which indicated that westerners were potential targets and gave warnings related to bars and clubs, could that actually lead to the implication that Bali was a terrorist threat?

Mr Kemish—I understand the question; it is a good question. It is something I need to be very clear about. The bulletins in question, the US embassy bulletin and the Australian embassy bulletin about a week later, were pretty much identical. I think we more specifically related it to a religious holiday, but that was the intention behind the US bulletin as well. Those bulletins actually reflected quite a different concern. On one level you can talk about how it might be seen now; but the concern underpinning both bulletins was about so-called ‘sweeping’ in Java. It was a concern about harassment of westerners around the time of that particular religious holiday. It was a concern that the embassies in question chose to pass on to their registered Australians, thinking particularly about the Australians in Java—indicating that they needed to be careful around those kinds of locations because of those sweeping activities. What has happened a bit after Bali is that people have looked at those words ‘bars and restaurants’ and thought: ‘The bomb went off in a bar,’ and have somehow sought to derive some significance from that. That is the reality of it.

Senator STOTT DESPOJA—I understand when you say that you warn us that it is hard. I appreciate that, but I just want to get a sense of whether that broader evidence, if available, to DFAT could lead to a particular conclusion. So thank you for that answer. Another point that Senator Kirk was pursuing was the notion of the travel advisories saying ‘operating normally’, including Bali. At the Adelaide hearings a number of witnesses did indicate, as you would know from the Hansard, that they were not aware of the travel advisories. I am very wary of entering into the debate about generational or other distinctions in terms of what makes a savvy traveller. I know that I have met some of the most savvy travellers, maybe young and from a range of



backgrounds. That issue was made very clear; a number of people indicated that they had not been aware.

Then we get to the second point that Senator Johnston has made very clear: the difference between awareness and comprehension. I will leave that out. But, when we did show some of the witnesses the travel advisories, it was that particular sentence that suggested that Bali was singled out; by the specific reference to Bali there was an indication that Bali was safe. Do you accept, in retrospect, that it could have led to that interpretation: that people could make that assessment based on how that travel advisory was worded?

Mr Kemish—I am afraid I come back to my earlier point that it is almost impossible to discuss that now in the knowledge that a bomb went off in Bali. In that knowledge, when you look at it you can see how people come to conclusions like that. I can only say that it is very difficult, with respect to the witnesses involved, to get the truth about how people really would have perceived that line prior to the Bali disaster.

Mr Roach—It also raises an interesting philosophical point in that that line is in the travel advice because of the tens of thousands of calls we were getting from Australians asking that question.

Senator STOTT DESPOJA—That is an interesting point. You mean the question specifically about Bali and security in Bali.

Mr Roach—About the tourist services. As Mr Kemish said, this has to be seen in the context of the civil unrest that there was following the election of President Abdurrahman Wahid. Should we not try to answer the questions that Australians are putting to us because of a concern that 12 months or 24 months down the track—we are forensically pulling apart this sentence. We put it in because we were being asked that question and we were seeking to communicate to Australians about something that they were interested in.

Senator STOTT DESPOJA—That is a good point. Speaking of forensically examining it in retrospect, as we are doing, perhaps this relates to the issue of comprehension and how savvy our Adelaide witnesses were. Mr Marshall was one of the first to point out that in the advice that followed the Bali bombing, and that would have been the 13 October advice, which, as you know, begins with the very obvious and necessary reference to Bali but then on page 2 replicates that paragraph: ‘Tourist services elsewhere in Indonesia are operating normally, including Bali. Further information on developments within Indonesia may be obtained from the Australian Embassy in Jakarta.’ Could you elaborate on why that is in that particular—

Mr Kemish—Only because this committee received a draft of the document rather than the document that was issued. I have noticed that in the collection. I can rectify that.

Senator STOTT DESPOJA—That is fine. It would be good to have that on notice, because understandably it did take people somewhat by surprise.

Mr Kemish—The advisory was reissued at 5 a.m., I think it was, on 13 October. Certainly the web site version, the version that people saw, did not contain that reference. We can correct the record by making sure you get the right copy.



Senator STOTT DESPOJA—Thank you for that. As I say, when shown the travel advisories, at least one and I think other witnesses were on top of that point. You have answered my questions on travel agents. Clearly you have put on record today and previously in your evidence some of the changes that have been being made and improvements that are made to the dissemination of those travel advisories. Have any of the victims of Bali been consulted? I am not suggesting it is appropriate or inappropriate, but I am wondering if they are part of those consultations in relation to how to make them work better.

Mr Kemish—Absolutely. We are very open to that and at the same time being very careful about it for the sake of the people involved. I have personally written to each of the families about the inquiry, trying to keep them informed about the processes of are in play here because I think it is a responsibility we have to them. We also have engaged one family member, somebody who lost her husband, to come to Canberra and be part of our regular consular training program for our relatively inexperienced officers who are travelling overseas. I have personally talked to her at some length about travel advisory and other consular operational issues. There has been very good, constructive discussion with her and a range of others about our follow-up work in dealing with the families after the disaster. We are very deliberate about trying to capture the lessons of all our experiences in the consular field. It is a regular part of our work. On broadening that out into a more structured thing with all the families, let me put it this way: it is a matter that we take very careful advice from trained counsellors about.

Senator STOTT DESPOJA—I appreciate that there are difficulties with that but I am curious as to whether there is any involvement. Clearly there is.

Mr Kemish—There is, and there is a strong willingness on our part to engage.

Senator STOTT DESPOJA—Is the letter to which you referred about the Senate inquiry informing—

Mr Kemish—I made sure that I alerted the families to this inquiry at an early stage. When I have been at gatherings with families at certain times and in Bali, I have taken the opportunity to talk a bit about it. Interestingly, the issue does not tend to come to me. In the vast majority, these families seem to be understandably much more focused on recovery and the immediate issues associated with the loss of their loved ones. Often when the matter is raised, they profess little interest in it. I do not speak for all of them but that is a very common experience.

Senator STOTT DESPOJA—There was one person who spoke to me at the inquiry last time who suggested that there had not been sufficient information provided to the victims—not by DFAT, I might add, but by the committee—to inform people not so much that the committee was under way but that there was an opportunity to provide input into that committee. I am not suggesting that that is a reflection on DFAT, by the way; I am just suggesting that it was something that was very hard for us to do anyway. That was just a criticism that is noted.

Mr Kemish—I should add that, in writing to and talking to families, our capture in DFAT only extends to the families of the dead. As a department we were very heavily involved in the evacuation of the injured, but there is no agency that has capture of all those people.



Senator Stott Despoja—We have addressed some of those issues in a different forum. I am happy to leave my questions there.

ACTING CHAIR—I had one final set of questions in relation to the meeting that ONA held with the Minister for Foreign Affairs, Mr Downer, on 18 and 19 June. I believe that Mr Paterson was present. I thought we could take the opportunity to ask a few questions about that.

Mr Kemish—Mr Paterson was at that meeting and I am sure he can help you with any questions you might have. For my part, I can field any questions that relate to the broader departmental follow-up to these issues. I can certainly talk to issues around the meeting, but I know Mr Paterson is very willing to answer any questions about the meeting.

ACTING CHAIR—The focus is obviously on the comments that were made towards the end of the briefing session when Mr Downer was said to have asked a question about possible targets. Bali, Riau and Singapore were assessed to be attractive targets for Jemaah Islamiah, which was identified at the time as the primary terrorist threat. I understand that notes were taken by a DFAT officer at the meeting. Was that you, Mr Paterson?

Mr Paterson—That is correct.

ACTING CHAIR—The notes indicate that Mr Downer asked whether consular advice should be changed. Your notes said that ONA responded that there was no specific intelligence. From that, I take it that the conclusion was formed—correct me if I am wrong—that there was no need to make any changes to the travel advisories. Perhaps you can elaborate a bit more for us.

Mr Paterson—You are correct to say that the Minister for Foreign Affairs asked ONA whether evidence existed to warrant any change to the travel advice. According to my notes—it is some time ago now, of course—and according to my recollection, ONA responded that that there was no specific intelligence. The relevant people who prepare the travel advices were not present at that meeting so there was no further follow-on from that.

ACTING CHAIR—What is your role in DFAT?

Mr Paterson—At that time I was the First Assistant Secretary of the department’s International Security Division. Within that division I had some responsibility in relation to terrorism in South-East Asia or terrorism more generally. I was at that meeting in that capacity. In effect, when there are meetings of this kind between ONA and the minister, a DFAT officer normally sits in simply to follow up any issues that need following up and to convey back to the department the general sense of ONA’s advice. That is in fact what I did.

ACTING CHAIR—Could you elaborate on what you did when you left the meeting? You said that you communicated it to others.

Mr Paterson—My recollection is that it was quite late that evening and other officers had gone home. But the following morning I spoke to a series of officers in the South and South-East Asia division of the department and gave them a briefing on what had occurred the night before.



ACTING CHAIR—In that briefing did you mention to them that the targets of Bali, Riau and Singapore were identified?

Senator BRANDIS—I am loath to interrupt you as the acting chairman but, with respect, I do not think that it puts the evidence fairly to the witness to say that the targets of Bali, Riau and Singapore were identified, because that is not what the evidence was at all.

ACTING CHAIR—I am reading from the ONA brief.

Senator BRANDIS—Mr Paterson has prepared a note, which he has verified before us, as to what was said.

Mr Kemish—It is important to note here from the department’s perspective that we have a situation where the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade has a record; ONA has a recollection. We have very carefully examined our records of both the conversation and follow-up meetings surrounding this event and can speak about those issues. It may not necessarily be in quite the terms you have suggested.

ACTING CHAIR—Perhaps it would be helpful if you could provide us with a copy of those notes, and there would be no reason for us to be in any kind of confusion. Do you have them here today? Could they be tabled?

Mr Paterson—Yes, I do. I have to tell you that a very large part of that briefing involved highly classified information and obviously I cannot release that. In any event, that is not the case with the relevant part.

Senator BRANDIS—So you are able to table for us your note of the relevant portion of the conversation?

Mr Paterson—Yes, I am prepared to do that. This note is an abbreviation in my handwriting. If it were helpful to Hansard, I would be happy to provide any clarification which they need. It may not be immediately clear from the nature of what I have written down in abbreviated form what precisely was meant, but I would be happy to take you through it if need be.

Senator BRANDIS—Can we do that now?

Mr Paterson—It would not take me long to read it out.

Senator BRANDIS—Before you do, Mr Paterson, can I ask you this: presumably, you have refreshed your memory of the conversation by having referred to the note.

Mr Paterson—Yes.

Senator BRANDIS—Do you independently of the note have some recollection of the conversation?

Mr Paterson—In general terms, yes. But of course it is some time ago.



Senator BRANDIS—Of course. Are you able to tell us that you are satisfied that the note, albeit in summary form, is an accurate rendering of the conversation?

Mr Paterson—Absolutely, but with one very minor exception—the word ‘Riau’ does not appear in my notes. On reflection, I am inclined to think that that was just because my notes were in an abbreviated form and that the pace of the conversation was simply so fast that I did not record that. That is not to suggest that the word ‘Riau’ was not said; it just does not appear in my notes. My notes speak of Bali and Singapore but not Riau.

Senator BRANDIS—On the basis of that—that being the state of your knowledge and your recollection of the conversation—and with reference to your note, can you tell us what was said?

Mr Paterson—Mr Downer asked the ONA analysts present if they could speak to him about what were the objectives of Jemaah Islamiah in South-East Asia. An analyst replied that it was to destabilise local governments to allow Islam to gain more hardline adherents. Mr Downer followed that up with a question about what targets they had. The ONA analyst said that they had principally Indonesian Christian targets; that Indonesia was a frontier of Islam on the defensive within the global jihad; that the terrorism was as much internationally inspired as it was locally sourced and Indonesian inspired, if you like; and that local rather than Western targets were most likely. There was then some reference to bin Laden’s public utterances in which he mentioned Australia in the context of East Timor, to the effect that Christians were stealing the lands of Islam. I cannot precisely recall the context as to how that came up.

The conversation went on, with the ONA analyst pointing out that Western targets such as in Singapore were also possible. Expanding on that, the ONA analyst said that the possibility of attacks on US or Australian aircraft in Indonesia could not be ruled out, or Bali or Singapore. And, as I have said to you, I think Riau was probably in there, but it does not appear in my notes. At that point, Mr Downer, in a general way to those present, in effect said, ‘Well, I wonder whether that means we should be changing the consular advice,’ to which the ONA analyst replied that there was no specific intelligence to warrant that.

Senator BRANDIS—Dealing with the suggestion of possible targets, was it your understanding of what was being said that Bali, Singapore and Riau—or localities in those places—were being identified as targets in respect of which there was information about potential terrorist activity, or was it your understanding that those places were being referred to in an illustrative way as being the sorts of places in the region that terrorists might attack if they were to mount a terrorist operation?

Mr Paterson—It was clear to me that it was absolutely in the latter context.

Senator BRANDIS—If terrorists were going to attack localities in Australia, what sorts of places do you think they might attack?

Mr Paterson—I think that is hypothetical—

Senator BRANDIS—Yes, it is.



Mr Paterson—but the Australian media has singled out places like airports, the Opera House and the Sydney Harbour Bridge. It is common parlance in the media.

Senator BRANDIS—Was the observation that you have just made in response to my last question of the same character as the observation in relation to Bali, Riau and Singapore recorded in this note?

Mr Paterson—I think that would be a fair characterisation of it. In the case of Singapore, of course, there had been earlier intelligence relating to possible action against the Australian, US and UK embassies. That was a slightly different case but that is certainly the gist of the discussion.

Senator BRANDIS—You know what I am getting at, don’t you? It has been suggested by some that this note records the conveying to Mr Downer of intelligence about Bali, Singapore and Riau. What do you say about that?

Mr Paterson—No. I am absolutely adamant on this point. It was clearly just illustrative examples given by ONA analysts. They were precise about the fact that there was no specific intelligence information relating to a particular threat in any particular place in Indonesia—or Singapore, for that matter.


ACTING CHAIR—I have a couple more questions in relation to this. Over what period of time did this conversation take place? I see that you have about 10 lines of writing. Was it a two-minute conversation, or did this take place over an hour?

Mr Paterson—My recollection is that it was something like an hour.

ACTING CHAIR—These notes that you took were over a period of an hour?

Mr Paterson—Yes, the whole conversation—

ACTING CHAIR—The entire conversation.

Mr Paterson—which we had with Mr Downer, yes.

Senator BRANDIS—What about the bit of the conversation you have just taken us through—how long did that take?

Mr Paterson—Not very long, indeed—probably no longer, really, than my reading it out to you, I suspect.

ACTING CHAIR—So, at the conclusion of it, when Mr Downer asked whether or not consular advice should be changed, ONA mentioned, as you said, that there was nothing specific, and that was the end of the conversation? There was no further follow-up?

Mr Paterson—No, the conversation moved on from there, but to unrelated topics.



ACTING CHAIR—That was my question: that was the end of that issue?


ACTING CHAIR—I suppose you would not question ONA’s advice as to whether or not there was anything specific, but did it occur to you that it might be a matter that you would take back to DFAT and consider whether or not there should be greater consideration given to whether any consular advice should be changed?

Mr Paterson—I did take it back. I briefed the South and South-East Asia division the following morning in some detail about the nature of the discussion.

Mr Kemish—If you are interested in the follow-up to that, I can take the story from there.

ACTING CHAIR—Yes, I would be interested to know. Please continue.

Mr Kemish—It is important to remember that the South and South-East Asia division is an important source of input into the travel advisory process and is one of the points within the department we always go to for input. They were taking very conscientiously their obligations to provide input into the travel advisory service and other briefings that the South and South-East Asia division provided. The department, and particularly the South and South-East Asia division, took several steps in June 2002 to clarify ONA’s assessments to do with terrorist groups and their presence in South-East Asia and, in particular, the reference that Mr Paterson has just read to you.

Prior to that meeting, on 7 June, at the invitation of the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, ONA analysts briefed DFAT on their assessments of terrorism in the region. This led in turn to the meeting with Mr Downer on 18 and 19 June. Mr Paterson, as he has already mentioned, debriefed officials of the South and South-East Asia division on the meeting with Mr Downer almost immediately after that meeting took place. As a result of these contacts and of the debrief from Mr Paterson, on 28 June 2002, officers of the department emailed to ONA several questions going to ONA’s assessment of the terrorism threat in South-East Asia and Indonesia in particular.

ACTING CHAIR—Could you provide us with copies of those emails?

Mr Kemish—I can provide you with copies of the relevant questions, for similar reasons.

ACTING CHAIR—And the answers?

Mr Kemish—Indeed, I am happy just to read it into Hansard and provide you with a copy. I need to say, though, that the purpose of this was to provide guidance to ONA, as a customer of their product, on issues of interest to DFAT, including particularly consular implications. We expected that these would be taken into account in subsequent watch reports provided by ONA.

One question we put to ONA among a range of others was: what evidence or theory is behind the idea that terrorists might target Western interests in Bali? We never received a response to this or any other of our questions. We were not particularly expecting a direct response. As I



said, the idea was to provide some guidance on the issues of interest to us as a client. No reference to Bali was included in ONA’s 17 subsequent watch reports—that is, 17 between that question and the tragedy in Bali. That includes the ONA watch report issued immediately after 28 June 2002. The lack of response to our specific questions and the lack of references to Bali in subsequent watch reports led DFAT to conclude, consistent with Mr Paterson’s recollection of the conversation, that ONA had no evidence to support its idea about Bali and that this idea was speculative rather than an assessment of hard evidence.

ACTING CHAIR—You said that you received no response to the emails. Is that correct?

Mr Kemish—That is correct.

ACTING CHAIR—Did you follow it up?

Mr Kemish—The purpose of the email was not to elicit a direct response but to provide input for ONA analysts to take into account in framing subsequent watch reports. In a way, you can see the subsequent watch reports as the response. As I said, the lack of reference to it led us to the conclusion—and I think this is consistent with ONA’s testimony, that of Mr Paterson—that there was no hard evidence to support the particular reference to Bali. It was, as Mr Paterson has said, an illustrative example.

ACTING CHAIR—Yes, I understand. There is a difference between having some specific evidence in relation to a particular event, which of course is never going to occur, and having identified Bali—that is, a Western target where Australians gather in large numbers—as a possible place that Australians’ lives could be in danger. I would have thought that would still be, especially in your role as the body that issues travel advisories to the public, something you would follow up just to make sure. You said you received no response but you looked at the 17 watches that followed from ONA. Surely your role as—

Mr Kemish—I am sorry, Senator; there is a lot of ongoing dialogue between the two organisations.

ACTING CHAIR—There is? I am sorry; you did not mention that, so I assumed—

Mr Kemish—Officials of the two organisations talk all the time. What I am referring to is what is clearly on the written record. I refute absolutely any suggestion that the department was being anything other than very conscientious in following up on every little reference that was made in this broad area. Your focus is on a particular brief reference in a long-running conversation. To repeat, the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade invited ONA officials to talk about its assessment. It received, at its own request, a briefing on ONA views. Mr Paterson conscientiously passed back to the right people a debrief of a broad conversation with Mr Downer which did, yes, contain that brief reference. This was a matter of ongoing contact. We provided stimulus to ONA, and the question I asked was one of a number. The subsequent 17 watch reports did not deal with the issue. We also need to be clear that ONA stands alongside ASIO, which is our primary source of assessment. Our focus then was and our focus now still has to remain relying on those formal assessments in framing the travel advice.



ACTING CHAIR—Was the ASIO threat assessment at all times assessed at high throughout the whole of the archipelago?

Mr Kemish—Yes, absolutely. And the travel advisories operationalised that assessment according to the formula that Mr Richardson has re-endorsed subsequent to Bali.

ACTING CHAIR—For the public record, this tabled document has been made public.

Mr Kemish—Okay.

ACTING CHAIR—I want to ask about this other reference, which is something I had not been aware of before. Mr Paterson’s handwriting says, ‘US or Australian aircraft in Indonesia/Bali/Singapore,’ and ‘Bali’ is underlined.

Senator STOTT DESPOJA—I want to know why you underlined it.

ACTING CHAIR—Why did you underline Bali? That is one question but, perhaps even more interesting: what is this reference to US or Australian aircraft in Indonesia?

Mr Paterson—Let me deal with the Bali question first. Before there was any inquiry here, I simply went back over my notes after the events of 12 October, and I think I underlined it at that time. It was not underlined during the meeting. I did not envisage, at that time, that that element of my notes would be tabled in this committee. As to the reference to US or Australian aircraft in Indonesia, I think that is simply a general reference. In terrorist operations, there is a long history of hijacking of aircraft, and indeed of course in the World Trade Centre bombings aircraft were used in effect as a weapon. It is neither any more nor any less than that I think. In contemporary history, aircraft quite often have been used by hijackers—and most recently in the World Trade Centre—in a bombing capacity.

ACTING CHAIR—Indeed.

Senator BRANDIS—On that line that Senator Kirk has drawn to your attention, is the first expression ‘e.g.’?

Mr Paterson—Yes, that is correct: ‘for example’.


Mr Kemish—I think it also needs to be said that the threat to aviation interests in Indonesia was the subject of close consultation between ASIO and Qantas. This was something which was the proper subject of treatment by the government in other areas.

ACTING CHAIR—Indeed, but I was just wondering what follow-up there was on that. As you say, there was hijacking of aircraft and flying aircraft into twin towers—all things which were very topical at the time—but I note that you have mentioned not only US aircraft but also Australian aircraft in Indonesia. We all know that the majority of Australian aircraft with large numbers of Australian tourists are flying into Denpasar, so I am very interested to know more about this and what steps you took to consider upgrading the consular advice.



Mr Paterson—The steps I took were to brief relevant people in the department the following day. But I would add that these were illustrative examples. There were established arrangements in place, as Mr Kemish has said, as between ASIO and Qantas. These are longstanding arrangements—they have been going on for many years—to discuss possible threats to aviation worldwide. Frankly, I do not think we should read too much into this. As my notes indicate, and as Senator Brandis has pointed out, these were illustrative examples; they were not based on specific pieces of intelligence or any other information.

ACTING CHAIR—I understand there was nothing specific, but it was specific enough for you to write down that as an example.

Mr Paterson—I wrote that down because they were the examples given by the ONA analysts.

Senator BRANDIS—They were the types of targets there might be.

Mr Paterson—By way of example, the ONA analysts were simply trying to describe what the scope might be—the targets, the places where this could occur—but they were not being specific and nor was this based on specific pieces of information.

ACTING CHAIR—Nevertheless, you did pass this information on to DFAT officers the following day.

Mr Paterson—Yes, I certainly gave them a full account of this discussion.

Senator BRANDIS—You gave them a full debrief on the whole meeting with the minister, did you?


Senator BRANDIS—Is that standard procedure?

Mr Paterson—That is standard procedure, yes.

ACTING CHAIR—Is that a verbal briefing or a written briefing?

Mr Paterson—I gave them an oral briefing, but if appropriately cleared officers had wished to have access to my notes they most certainly could have.

Senator STOTT DESPOJA—I guess this relates to the question that I asked you earlier concerning the difference between the specific evidence and taking into account broader evidence that could lead—and I admit we are doing this in retrospect—to the conclusion that Bali was a potential target. I used the examples earlier of the 3 October embassy briefing and the 26 September American embassy briefing, which related to bars and clubs and westerners being targets et cetera. I guess this adds another dimension in terms of the evidence that DFAT would take into account in order to draw conclusions or provide travel advisories. But from what you have said to us, Mr Paterson and Mr Kemish, you were given no reason by ONA to believe that Bali was a specific target, and there were a number of emails after the 18 June meeting that were



either not answered or made no reference to the specific issue. The question in relation to Bali was not answered.

Mr Kemish—There was one email that included, among others, a question about that designed to flush out anything further that might be said about it. As I say, we came to a conclusion that there was nothing specific behind it, but that it was an illustrative example. As for other contact, I recall that, through that period, I and a range of officers of the Consular Branch, of which I was then head, had contact with ONA officials on a range of issues. It was certainly not something which was so burning in their minds that they wanted to bring it to us in contact. They knew from contact with us what we did, that we oversaw the travel advisory service—

ACTING CHAIR—But by the same token you did not follow it up with them. You did not bring it up with them to get clarification on those—

Mr Kemish—Yes, we did. I have said we did. I am sorry; the Consular Branch was not aware of this discussion, but that is fine in the sense that the South-East Asia division is one of the inputs into the travel advisory service and they were following up assiduously. I suppose I go back to something I said in the first of my three opening statements before this committee: were we to seek to provide consular advice, public advice, on the basis of the ideas and speculation, unsupported by hard evidence, that we could gather together at any given time from all possible sources, the process would simply be unmanageable. The threat is as big as our imaginations will allow it to be. In the end we do have to rely on our knowledge of specific threat. It is really the only thing we can translate in our public advice.

Senator STOTT DESPOJA—Would we be able to have a copy of the email in which you specify—

Mr Kemish—I have not brought an abbreviated copy but I will certainly provide it to the committee.

Senator STOTT DESPOJA—That is fine. Please take it on notice, thank you.

ACTING CHAIR—Thank you very much, gentlemen, for your evidence before the committee this afternoon. I am sure you will provide us with whatever information we require in addition.

Committee adjourned at 3.25 p.m.

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