Jake Blight said he will prioritise hearing from people affected by Australia’s security and surveillance laws rather than the intelligence agencies who wield them when he begins his oversight role on Monday.
“I’ve actually prioritised meetings with civil society and non-government groups in my first week, rather than intelligence agencies,” the incoming independent national security legislation monitor told Guardian Australia on Friday.
Blight takes on the role, which reviews espionage, foreign interference, sabotage and secrecy offences legislation, with more than 20 years’ experience in the realm of national security law under his belt. He spent 10 years as the deputy inspector general of intelligence and security and was most recently as an associate professor in national security law at ANU.
“Thinking about the secrecy provisions, there’s a lot of groups – including media groups – that are affected by those, and I’m really interested to hear from those groups,” he said.
“And in due course, I’ll hear from the government agencies as well.
“I’ve got a pretty good idea of how these agencies operate already – and, frankly, I doubt anything they can say is going to surprise me,” he said.
Blight is the fifth INSLM and the first full-time monitor after a four-year $8.8m funding boost in May’s budget, which allowed the office to expand from four to eight staff.
In welcoming him to the role, the attorney general, Mark Dreyfus, said the reviews Blight undertakes will require extensive work analysing legislation, holding roundtables and working out how laws have been operating in practice.
“It’s an area of detailed, complex and interactive laws … the INSLM role … is to do that detailed review work, to look at how these laws are really operating after they’ve been enforced for a while and assess whether they’re really effective and necessary and proportionate.”
In a paper published in his role as an academic just before he became the new INSLM, Blight argued that Asio’s powers to intercept telecommunications had been in place since the 1960s but the volume and nature of data extracted now is much higher given technological advancements. He argued there should be a statutory requirement to consider privacy and proportionality when issuing Asio with a warrant.
He told Guardian Australia that he stood by his views in that paper, but it would not be in the remit of his work as INSLM.
“I have a list of things that parliament has referred me … And then there is scope for the prime minister, the attorney general or the parliamentary committee to refer matters, so interception actually isn’t in my core … list of jobs to do.”
Asked whether he thought security agencies would make the case to him that they need powers to circumvent the growing use of end-to-end encryption for communications, which is making their jobs harder. Blight said he was sure the agencies would raise it, but they would need to prove it.
“I can require agencies to provide the information … Like the inspector general of intelligence and security, [my powers] give me access to their classified information if I need it for my reviews,” he said.
“Having said that, I fully expect them to cooperate without needing to be compelled, and I see law reform as an inherently public process, and laws should be able to be justified and explained by public information.
“So I will be pushing the agencies to provide me unclassified [information] and things that I can publish explaining their case.”
Blight replaces Grant Donaldson, whose report into the national security information act – commenced following several prosecutions including that of Bernard Collery – was tabled in parliament on Friday week. Donald’s final report recommends repealing key parts of the act that require closed court hearings and to expand judicial discretion in certain ways.
