ASIO says espionage cost Australia $12.5 billion last year. But that figure relies on assumptions, speculative scenarios and opaque data that raise serious questions about credibility.

Mike Burgess’s claim that espionage cost Australia $12.5 billion in 2023-24 are, to quote Paddy Gourley as “woolly as Shaun the Sheep” - the figures are so rubbery they could bounce.

This eye-watering sum, delivered with characteristic flourish in his 26th annual Hawke lecture, comes courtesy of a report commissioned by ASIO itself from the Australian Institute of Criminology. It’s a neat arrangement: ASIO commissions the research, provides the data, and then trumpets the results as a vindication of its billion-dollar budget.

One might call it a “return on investment”, as Burgess himself suggested in a nonsensical flourish that wouldn’t survive five minutes in Cabinet’s Expenditure Review Committee.

The problem is that the methodology underpinning this $12.5 billion claim is so riddled with uncertainties, assumptions and outright speculation that treating it as reliable borders on the fanciful. The AIC researchers themselves acknowledge as much, if one reads beyond the executive summary.

The report’s ‘Challenges_’_ section admits espionage is “a highly secretive and covert activity” and “espionage that has been disrupted represents a small fraction” of the total threat. Yet they assume this small, unrepresentative fraction reflects regular espionage activity.

More troubling is the attribution problem. The report........

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