Which SIS report?

A precise analogy is provided by the fate of Sir Guy Powles' two reports. The most important information he reported is likely to be found in the secret report that went to the Prime Minister. No one but Muldoon, Sir Guy and presumably the SIS can therefore know how representative the present Bill is of Sir Guy's recommendations. It is probable that there is further information Sir Guy never got a look at — if they had anything really incriminating, why should they take the risk? The possibility remains that Muldoon, as Minister in charge, has access to information Sir Guy never learned. For there are always hierarchies of secrecy, always one more negative area where fewer people have access and even the myth of a public inquiry can't solve that one. So Sir Guy's report, the public one, can be seen as a public reassurance that due processes are being observed while the real shit hides back behind several screens.

Rowling's way through this particular Chinese Puzzle, was to promise that the Leader of the Opposition would also receive a copy of the secret report, thereby making a political use of it difficult, though not impossible. When Muldoon, subsequently Prime Minister, got the report he simply sneered at Rowling, called him a total innocent and announced that the report was for his eyes only.

It is the nature of the Bill as a strategy to allow the SIS to extend its activities under legal sanction, that upsets Michael Minogue. He calls the Bill 'piece-meal' which, by design, it is. It attempts no definitions not subject to interpretation by the SIS itself. It nowhere requires any limit on the sovereign actions of the SIS and the process of supervision the Bill proposes takes no effective account of the secret mode of operation of the SIS. They don't have to tell anybody what they are doing, not even the Prime Minister. They couldn't operate at all if this weren't so.