Pressed on the ABC about royal commissioner Virginia Bell's interim finding that counter-terrorism's share of National Intelligence Community funding fell sharply between 2020 and 2025 - the years preceding the Bondi Beach attack - Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke offered a clean division of responsibility.

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"The government makes a decision as to how much total funding the national security agencies should get. And they, quite properly as independent agencies, make decisions on risk assessment ... In terms of resources, they are made by independent agencies."

Government, on his account, sets the envelope. Agencies fill it.

What Burke could have added - but did not - is that ministers are party to setting the priorities those agencies execute against, are advised by the Office of National Intelligence on how resources are being reprioritised across missions, receive an annual horizon-scan from the director-general of national intelligence to the national security committee of cabinet and sign off on capability programs that partially fill the envelope.

If the National Intelligence Community's counter-terrorism investment fell between 2020 and the Bondi attack - and according to the royal commission, it did - it fell inside a system ministers were party to directing. The simplicity of Burke's claim describes a system Australia does not have.

Government jointly sets the priorities its intelligence agencies serve. The Office of National Intelligence Act 2018 designates ONI the body that advises the Prime Minister, "from a whole-of-national intelligence community perspective, on national intelligence priorities, requirements and capabilities". The 2024 Independent Intelligence Review, commissioned by Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, states it plainly: "governments make decisions on resourcing [...] and agree intelligence priorities". Policymakers themselves told the reviewers of "the importance of the intelligence community working to objectives and priorities set by government".

The priority shift Bell's report identifies was not a quiet bureaucratic drift. ASIO Director-General Mike Burgess told his 2023 Annual Threat Assessment that "espionage and foreign interference is now our principal security concern. Countering threats to our way of life is soaking up more and more of our resources."

Agencies execute against priorities ministers have agreed; they do not........

© Canberra Times