Implementing Australia's Comprehensive Review of the Legal Framework of the National Intelligence Community: A need for future review, reform and improvement of implementation and enactment processes?

This article analyses and critiques the process of implementation in Australia of the Comprehensive Review of the Legal Framework of the National Intelligence Community (the Review). It first outlines important background issues, examines the distinctive review and enactment processes applicable to Australian national security laws, and then identifies relevant context for matters influencing and informing review of the Review's recommendations, alongside their legislative implementation. Key aspects canvassed include the distinctive methodological characteristics of the Review, contemporary practicalities of progressing the Review's implementation from Coalition to Labor governments, the impact of establishing an Office of National Intelligence, as well as recurrent features and signature characteristics affecting implementation of the Review. Upon reflection, it was highly desirable that an improved review and legislative process be in place from the inception of implementing the Review recommendations, but this did not occur.

The article then examines and assesses selected aspects of the legislative response to the Review's recommendations up until the present. Implementation has been a variegated experience, but one open to improvements. The concluding observations suggest three major sets of reforms for Review and post-Review implementation to more closely align review, legislative process and implemented legislation with core aspects of participatory liberal democracy and the democratic accountability of the National Intelligence Community, informed and framed by contemporary Australian and international democracy-related developments.