Source — AITW Ep078 — New DFAT Secretary; Exchange Hack and Pegasus; APEC; Return to Afghanistan?¶

Episode Metadata¶

Field	Value
Episode number	78
Title	Ep. 78: New DFAT Secretary; Exchange hack and Pegasus; APEC; return to Afghanistan?
Publication date	2021-07-24
Recording date	Friday, 23 July 2021
Guests	None (Allan and Darren only)
Allan present	Yes
Format	Two-host; four topics: Kathryn Campbell as new DFAT Secretary; Microsoft Exchange hack and NSO Pegasus spyware; APEC informal leaders' retreat; Australia's reconsidering of Kabul embassy closure

Summary¶

Recorded in mid-Delta-variant lockdown period; Darren has just returned from a rare family holiday in Europe (Italy, Dolomites). Four substantial topics. The DFAT Secretary discussion is the centrepiece: Darren builds a four-part taxonomy of the role and Allan validates and extends it from institutional experience, producing one of the clearest statements in the corpus of what Allan understands the foreign service to actually require of its leadership. The cyber discussion yields Allan's sharpest formulation of legitimate vs illegitimate espionage, including citation of the Australian Signals Directorate's own public motto. The APEC segment contains a significant first-person fragment placing Allan inside the policy thinking of APEC's formation in the early 1990s. The Afghanistan section is a quiet vindication episode: Allan had argued against the Kabul embassy closure; within weeks, the reversal was already under discussion.

New biographical fragment: Allan places himself inside the "we" of APEC's early 1990s formation — "we thought" — consistent with his Ep015 claim to have been present for major 1990s Australian foreign policy moments.

Key Quotations¶

"A brilliant taxonomy" — DFAT Secretary role¶

"Well, look, I genuinely thought there was a brilliant taxonomy, Darren. Of course, the answer is all of the above. But I think you capture in that model the key functions very well. I guess I just add the additional point that although three of your skills — that is administrator, conciliatory, and strategist — would apply to any Secretary's position in the APS, the fourth skill set, the chief diplomat, is unique to DFAT. Every Secretary is expected to have a good grasp of her agency's business, of course. But the formal hierarchies of diplomatic practice lay on the head of any country's foreign service an expectation that they will be speaking with an authority only one step removed from the minister when talking to their counterparts from other foreign services."

— [00:10:32.140 --> 00:11:34.540]

Allan's response to Darren's four-part model (Administrator, Conciliatory, Strategist, Diplomat) is unusually warm — he ratifies the framework rather than dismantling it. The addition he makes is the key one: the chief diplomat role is categorically different from anything in the rest of the APS, because diplomatic protocol invests the Secretary with quasi-ministerial authority in formal bilateral and multilateral settings. This is institutional knowledge that no academic taxonomy would naturally surface.

"The government is sending a signal" — Campbell appointment decoded¶

"In this case, I think it's clear that Kathryn Campbell and Marise Payne work together and that they have mutual regard and that the PM is comfortable in working with her too. It's also pretty clear that the government is sending a signal that it wants something different from DFAT than it's been getting. No one's said it, at least in public, what that might be. But you don't make an appointment to any organization this far out of the usual range of expectations unless you want radical change. Coalition governments tend to put more weight on the public service as implementers of government decisions than as sources of policy ideas."

— [00:12:38.540 --> 00:15:35.740]

The decode is characteristically structural: the appointment communicates a preference before any policy is announced. "You don't make an appointment this far out of the usual range unless you want radical change" — the form of the decision carries meaning. Allan goes back to Darren's model: the government wants the administrator and not the strategist. He does not endorse or criticise this preference; he reads it.

The DFAT resource bombshell¶

"For many years now, the Lowy Institute has been monitoring the way in which the instruments of Australian foreign policy have been deprived of resources to do the things that statecraft requires of us in the world, despite the agreed challenges that we face. Diplomatic, trade, aid budgets have all been falling. And real expenditure on the department in 2024 is expected to be less than it was in 2014. I noticed too, and I think I've noted it before, but the increase in the size of the Australian Defence Force announced by the government in the 2020 defence update was bigger than the entire Australian Diplomatic Service."

— [00:20:29.500 --> 00:21:57.320]

Two striking data points delivered without raised voice: a decade of real-terms decline in DFAT expenditure, and the ADF expansion exceeding the whole diplomatic service in scale. Allan invokes the Lowy Institute's monitoring role — his ongoing connection to that research agenda, post-ONA. The citation is not rhetorical; it points to a documented record. "Despite the agreed challenges that we face" — the structural contradiction between stated foreign policy ambition and resourcing is Allan's consistent critique of successive governments.

"Walk and chew gum" — culture vs strategy¶

"I'm a walk and chew gum guy myself. I think Dave Sharma wants DFAT to be a stronger player in the Australian and international debate, and I do too. And I think it's great that we've got a parliamentarian making that case. But it's also important that Australia's overseas representatives are representative of Australia."

— [00:20:22.140 --> 00:20:22.140]

Context: responding to MP and former ambassador Dave Sharma's argument that DFAT should "drop the inward focus on cultural change and workplace norms." Allan refuses the trade-off. Both objectives are achievable simultaneously. The "walk and chew gum" formulation is characteristic: a colloquial dismissal of a false either/or.

"Good espionage" vs "bad espionage" — the ASD motto¶

"All espionage is interference in the internal affairs of another country. And it almost always involves knowingly breaking or encouraging the breaking of the laws of another state. But we draw, I think, a de facto distinction between 'good' espionage, which is the silent extraction from an adversary of information useful for government policy, and 'bad' espionage, which is sloppy and leaves messes behind it, and above all, if it's undertaken for purposes other than those of national security. So we say that stealing for commercial purposes is wrong, as opposed to stealing commercial secrets, e.g. military plans, for national security reasons, I guess. And there's plenty of international law and agreement behind us in that... And as you say, it's widely done. I mean, the Australian Signals Directorate proclaims that in its public motto: reveal their secrets, protect our own."

— [00:26:07.180 --> 00:27:24.820]

The framework is the clearest statement of espionage ethics in the corpus. "De facto distinction" — Allan doesn't claim this is a formal legal category, but an operational norm that developed states implicitly accept. The ASD motto citation is characteristic: he reaches for primary-source authority, in this case the publicly proclaimed mission of Australia's own signals intelligence agency. The purpose criterion (national security vs commercial gain) is the ethical hinge.

APEC formation — "we thought"¶

"Australia was intimately engaged in [APEC's] formation at a time when a principal objective of Australian statecraft was to stop a split emerging down the middle of the Pacific Ocean between the economies of the United States on the one side and first Japan and then China on the other, all those sort of concerns, which seem so naive now, about a yen block growing in the world. Now, one way of doing this, we thought, was to bind them in the same trade and economic institutions. And so APEC had both an economic rationale and a geopolitical purpose for us."

— [00:41:53.270 --> 00:44:19.300]

"We thought" — not "Australia thought" or "policymakers thought," but "we." Allan places himself inside the reasoning of APEC's formation (1989, with the first meeting in Canberra; the early 1990s summit structure that followed). This is consistent with his Ep015 claim to have been present for major 1990s foreign policy moments and his confirmed role in Keating's office by 1994. Whether he was involved in the 1989 DFAT process or the 1993–94 elaboration is not clear from this passage alone. "Which seem so naive now" — the deadpan on his own earlier strategic reasoning.

Afghanistan reversal — "I can't remember seeing this quite as quickly"¶

"We talked about this only recently and made the point that the Australian pullout seemed precipitous. I can't remember seeing discussion of a reversal on an international decision come quite as quickly as this before. Now, we should acknowledge that the minister expressed from the beginning Australia's expectation that this measure would be temporary and we'd resume a permanent presence in Kabul once circumstances permit. But so fast — it's not as though we didn't have a pretty good idea when the announcement was made in late May of the likely trend in Taliban activity."

— [00:46:35.020 --> 00:49:58.400]

Allan had argued against the closure in the episode where it was announced. He does not say "I told you so" — he documents the reversal dryly, with the note that the original information environment did not justify optimism. The "I can't remember seeing this quite as quickly" formulation is a historical claim backed by decades of watching Australian foreign policy decisions: this reversal is unusual in kind, not just in speed.

On the form of the Afghanistan leak¶

"I thought the form of the leaking was peculiar. The sort of nonchalant references to stationing Australian intelligence officers with the CIA in Kabul was pretty bizarre. I mean, if you're going to do that, I don't think a chatty conversation with a journalist is the best way of announcing it to the world."

— [00:46:35.020 --> 00:49:58.400]

Operational sensibility: the content of what was leaked is secondary to the mode of leaking. Announcing the placement of intelligence officers in a hostile environment through an ABC scoop is procedurally wrong regardless of the decision's merits. This is the intelligence-professional voice again — process matters, not just outcome.

Biographical Fragments¶

Evidence type: New (significant)

"We thought" on APEC formation — Allan places himself inside the policy reasoning of APEC's formation (1989 Canberra meeting; early 1990s elaboration). Whether his personal involvement was in the 1989 DFAT process or the later summit structure is not yet confirmed. This is the strongest direct claim to personal involvement in the APEC story and should be cross-checked against later episodes. (Ep078)

Evidence type: Reinforcing

Lowy Institute connection — Allan invokes "the Lowy Institute has been monitoring" DFAT resourcing — citing Lowy as an ongoing institutional reference, consistent with his founding Executive Director role (2003–~2008). He still speaks of Lowy's research as "ours" in a loose sense. (Ep078)
DFAT culture and diversity — Allan affirms Frances Adamson's work on women in senior positions and Indigenous Australians in the foreign service as "abundantly necessary." This is consistent with his known institutional values but is the first direct statement on DFAT diversity in the processed corpus. (Ep078)

Style and Method Evidence¶

Taxonomy validation: unusually, Allan ratifies rather than deconstructs Darren's model — a sign that the framework was genuinely good. His addition (the uniqueness of the chief diplomat role) completes rather than corrects it.
Structural reading of appointments: the Campbell appointment communicates a policy preference through its form, before any policy is stated. Allan reads appointments as signals.
"Walk and chew gum": refusal of false trade-offs; both/and rather than either/or.
ASD motto as primary source: public institutional statements cited as the clearest expression of a nation's actual doctrine.
"We thought": personal placement inside historical policy reasoning, delivered without fanfare.
Process critique on Afghanistan leak: the how of a decision matters, not just the what.

Reading, Listening and Watching¶

Allan — Fiona Hill interviewed by Gideon Rachman (FT podcast)

"Mainly because we are underdone, I think, in talking about Russia on this podcast, I thought I would recommend an interview with one of the tiny handful of people who came out of the Trump administration with their reputation enhanced. And that's Fiona Hill, the British-born specialist — anyone who heard her strong Northern English accent on news reports at the time will remember her. She was the Senior Director for European and Russian Affairs on the NSC and she's now at Brookings. Anyway, in an excellent podcast hosted by Gideon Rachman, the Chief Foreign Correspondent of the Financial Times, she offers really sound advice on how to deal with Putin and why you shouldn't do it like Trump."

— [00:51:28.480 --> 00:52:15.180]

The Gideon Rachman podcast on the FT is Allan's go-to for European and strategic affairs — Rachman has been cited before. Fiona Hill is chosen for two reasons: substantive expertise on Russia (Brookings, NSC), and the character endorsement ("reputation enhanced" from the Trump administration — a very selective category). Allan acknowledges the Russia gap in the podcast's coverage — self-aware about the corpus.

Open Questions¶

Was Allan personally involved in the 1989 APEC formation process (Hawke government, DFAT), or in the early 1990s elaboration under Keating? His confirmed Keating's-office role dates to June 1994; the APEC leaders' summit structure was established at Seattle in 1993. The "we thought" may refer to his Keating-era involvement or to an earlier DFAT role in the Hawke period. Cross-check against Ep025 (David Gruen, G20 Sherpa) and later episodes for further APEC references.
Does Allan return to the Kathryn Campbell appointment in later episodes? Campbell's tenure became controversial (she was later stood down in relation to the Robodebt Royal Commission). Does the corpus capture any of that?
The IISS cyber capabilities report (released late June 2021) rated Australia as second-tier, largely due to the Five Eyes relationship. Does Allan follow up on the sovereign cyber capability argument in later episodes, particularly post-AUKUS?
Allan notes that recognising Juan Guaidó as Venezuelan president in 2019 "at the behest of the Trump administration" may have changed Australia's long-standing practice of recognising states, not governments. Does this doctrine question resurface around Taliban recognition in later episodes?