Bit by bit, the Department of Home Affairs is slowly being uncreated. In the weekend reshuffle, the prime minister casually revealed that, in addition to Clare O’Neil and Andrew Giles making way for Tony Burke, ASIO was being moved back to the Attorney-General’s Department — from where it was removed, along with the Australian Federal Police, in late 2017. Labor moved the AFP back to the Attorney-General’s Department when it was elected; now Anthony Albanese has completed the job he should have done in 2022.
Home Affairs was always a security bureaucrat fantasy, the idea of a super-department of anything remotely connected to safety, a public service homage to the cliché that Big is Beautiful.
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