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Source — AITW Ep036 — Ex-ASIO Head Duncan Lewis (Part 2): Foreign Interference and National Security Policymaking in Australia

Episode Metadata

Field Value
Episode number 36
Title Ep. 36: Ex-ASIO head Duncan Lewis (Part 2): foreign interference and national security policymaking in Australia
Publication date 2019-12-20
Guests Duncan Lewis (former Director-General, ASIO)
Allan present Yes — hosts solo in studio; Darren calls in
Format Part 2 of two-part interview. Covers foreign interference, espionage legislation, securitisation of policy, national security coordination structure, and qualities of political leadership

Summary

Continuation of the Lewis interview. Topics: ASIO's growing foreign interference mandate (China and Russia); the Foreign Influence Transparency Scheme; the difficulty of distinguishing influence from interference; vetting of parliamentary candidates (Allan's question); securitisation of public policy; national security coordination structure (the PM as "Minister for National Security"; gaps in the central coordinating mechanism); and Lewis's closing reflections on political leadership qualities. Allan's questions in this episode are among the sharpest in the two-part series — the Macedonia/Greece example; the vetting question; the structure question; the leadership qualities close. No reading segment.

Key Quotations

Allan's Greece/Macedonia example — testing the interference boundary

"But it sounded, from what you were saying, that if you were, say, an Australian of Greek heritage, who believed that it was absolutely impermissible for any state that wasn't Greece to describe itself as Macedonia, that you would be doing the bidding of a foreign country. But you would also, in a democracy, be entirely entitled to hold that view. So how does the line get drawn?"

— [00:21:48.220 --> 00:22:17.580]

A precise analytical counter-example. Lewis has been explaining the Foreign Influence Transparency Scheme — that advocacy for foreign entities should be transparent. Allan tests the boundary with an example where sincere personal political conviction and foreign state interest coincide without any covert arrangement. Lewis pushes back ("I'm not sure that's a good enough example") — he argues the mere holding of a political view isn't at issue; the clandestine nature of the advocacy is. The exchange is dialectical rather than adversarial — Allan is genuinely testing the legal/analytical line, not scoring a point.

"As my high school teachers used to say, illustrate with examples if you can"

"I want to ask from what you've observed at such close quarters, what you see as the most important qualities of political leadership and as my high school teachers used to say, illustrate with examples if you can."

— [00:42:30.650 --> 00:42:31.810]

A passing self-reference. Allan mentions high school teachers — consistent with Victorian secondary education before Melbourne University (~1966–1969). The phrase is deployed as a light rhetorical device to invite Lewis to move from abstraction to evidence; but the autobiographical trace is worth noting: he remembers a specific teacher's instruction, years later, as a formulation worth repeating.

Lewis confirms Rudd government context — going to Melbourne with PM Rudd

"I remember going with Prime Minister Rudd down to Melbourne in the immediate aftermath of the Melbourne fires. And again, people were saying, what's the nexus between this? But it was very useful for Prime Minister to have his National Security Advisor there because I could at very short notice request and marshal military resources..."

— [00:33:26.950 --> 00:35:45.820]

Lewis's reference to "Prime Minister Rudd" while describing his NSA work corroborates the Rudd-era placement established in Ep035. The Melbourne fires (Black Saturday, February 2009) are the specific event. Allan was ONA DG during this period — the NSC work they shared on Afghanistan (Ep035) was also in this window. The Rudd government's national security architecture is the institutional context for both Lewis and Allan's roles.

Allan's closing question — leadership qualities at a low ebb

"You've sat in the National Security Committee of Cabinet for 14 years with a short break, you've served Prime Ministers and Ministers of different political persuasions and different personality types and so on. I'm not going to ask you to personalise this so soon after your retirement, but at a time when there's near universal agreement that global political leadership is at a low ebb, I want to ask from what you've observed at such close quarters, what you see as the most important qualities of political leadership."

— [00:41:47.470 --> 00:42:30.650]

Allan's closing question is always worth examining — he uses it to elevate from operational to philosophical. The framing here is characteristic: "I'm not going to ask you to personalise this so soon after your retirement" — an explicit protection of Lewis while opening up the structural question. "Near universal agreement that global political leadership is at a low ebb" is a rare consensus claim from someone who habitually resists consensus framing; it signals the question is genuinely important to him.

Lewis on PM as "Minister for National Security"

"The Prime Minister is the Minister for National Security. It's not written down anywhere, but the Minister for National Security is the Prime Minister and it is only the Prime Minister that can easily and fully marshal all the sinews that are required from time to time for security responses."

— [00:36:26.250 --> 00:40:54.850]

Lewis articulates the principle Allan has endorsed throughout the corpus — including in Ep019 ("the Prime Minister alone can speak authoritatively for the government as a whole") and Ep029 (on the PM as chief diplomat). The structural consistency across practitioners from different institutional backgrounds (Lewis from ADF/PM&C/ASIO; Allan from DFAT/PM&C/ONA) is analytically significant: the PM-as-security-principal view is a genuine elite consensus, not one person's opinion.

Biographical Fragments

Evidence type: Corroborating

  1. High school teachers — "as my high school teachers used to say, illustrate with examples if you can." Consistent with Victorian secondary education before Melbourne University, approximately early-to-mid 1960s. Not a new confirmation but a casual autobiographical trace. (Ep036)

  2. Rudd government context corroborated — Lewis's specific reference to "Prime Minister Rudd" and Black Saturday (February 2009) while describing NSA-era work reinforces the Ep035 conclusion that Allan's ONA DG appointment was in the Rudd era. Their shared NSC work on Afghanistan and the Melbourne fires both fall in the 2007–2010 window. (Ep036)

Style and Method Evidence

  • Closing question as philosophical elevation: The pattern holds — Allan reserves the closing question for the largest structural or philosophical issue. Here: political leadership qualities "at a low ebb." Not a gossip question, not a career retrospective — a diagnostic question about systems and character.
  • Protective framing of difficult questions: "I'm not going to ask you to personalise this so soon after your retirement" — Allan's standard courtesy when inviting frank reflection from a recent retiree. It signals he has thought about what the other person can and can't say.
  • Counter-example as analytical tool: The Greece/Macedonia example is a genuine probe of the legislation's conceptual boundary, not a rhetorical gotcha. Allan uses thought experiments to test the limits of arguments throughout the corpus.
  • "I think it's a discussion for now, Duncan": When Lewis flags a topic as "probably a discussion for another day," Allan immediately says the opposite — "I can do it now if we've got the time. That's going to be my next question, actually." He is not constrained by the guest's instinct to defer; he pursues the substantive question.

Reading, Listening and Watching

No reading/watching/listening segment in this episode (Part 2 of 2).

Open Questions

  1. Lewis says "former Prime Minister Keating was talking about this, you know, in the grip of the intelligence community" — referring to concerns about intelligence community influence over government. Allan doesn't react to this mention of his former boss. Is there a later episode where Allan addresses Keating's view on the intelligence/security apparatus?
  2. Lewis endorses the PM&C central coordinating function and regrets its partial dismantlement. Allan's Ep019 endorsement of the same model ("I haven't seen a better way of doing it") is now reinforced by Lewis from the ASIO/NSA perspective. Does Allan develop this coordination argument further?
  3. The question of a "public service college" — Lewis raises this in his valedictory remarks. Allan does not engage with it here, but as someone who has straddled government, think tanks, and academia, does he address it elsewhere in the corpus?