ABSTRACT
The Australian Security Intelligence Organization (ASIO) is often perceived as a new and unusual institution in the field of Australian public administration and to have been established as a direct result of the tensions of the Cold War. Although it is an institution that departs from the usual norms of governmental administration in that it is a totally secret body, its expenditures are not subject to normal auditing arrangements, its various addresses are not revealed, and to disclose publicly the name of any of its employees (other than its Director-General) is to attract a heavy fine or prison sentence, it is not a wholly new-style institution. Indeed, its roots are to be found in the years of the First World War. Certainly it developed out of the early Cold War years, but the Chifley government, which established it in 1949, never expressly intended that it would be such a secret and clandestine arm of the government’s administration. This chapter explores how ASIO has evolved from the various intelligencecollecting organizations that developed during and after the First World War, and how the targets that provide the administrative rationale for its intelligence-collecting and functional activities have likewise evolved in a tandem-like arrangement.
