Amid worsening strategic surprise and security fragility, Australia’s national resilience responses are just as important as its defence capabilities. While the original strategic logic for the Department of Home Affairs—the idea of peace, order and good government—remains relevant, implementation and understanding of this rationale needs to evolve. Consistent with the department’s own 2024 Independent Capability Review, the Home Affairs we need now and into the future is not the same as the Home Affairs created in 2017. Australia’s success in the years ahead requires Home Affairs being empowered and resourced to deepen its collaborative model and redefine its role as the driver of national resilience.

The second-term Albanese government has correctly returned the Australian Federal Police, Australian Security Intelligence Organisation, Australian Criminal Intelligence Commission and Australian Transaction Reports and Analysis Centre to the Home Affairs portfolio—but not to the department. These operational agencies retain independence and direct lines of ministerial engagement.

Among other benefits, this shifts Home Affairs’ emphasis as policy sponsor from one of strict coordination to one of broader collaboration and integration. Collaboration and integration are now the watchwords. They extend beyond state and territory engagement to encompass industry, academia and community groups, as well as economic actors that underpin national prosperity and security as much as international partners.

This evolution reflects a deeper recognition that ‘national security’ and ‘national safety’ cannot be meaningfully achieved through top-down policy mandates alone. Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke has rightfully framed national safety as a parallel priority to, not a derivative of, national security.

The strategic context demands no less. In his 2025 Annual Threat Assessment, Director-General of Security Mike Burgess highlighted that Australia faced a ‘more dynamic, diverse and degraded’ threat environment characterised by grey-zone conflict, economic coercion, climate-induced disruption and globalised criminal networks. Traditional conceptions of national security have been stretched to the point where international vulnerabilities now carry sharpened domestic consequences.

Home Affairs finds itself expected to respond to these pressures across a wide spectrum: countering terrorism and violent extremism; countering foreign interference; cybersecurity; immigration and border integrity; disaster response; and social cohesion. Added to this is the growing need for it to safeguard Australia’s economic independence by ensuring that vital supply chains, infrastructure and sectors remain secure from foreign interference and hostile manoeuvres.

The result is a department at risk of becoming overwhelmed by its own breadth—especially if expected to be singularly responsible.

Other democracies have struggled with similar institutional dilemmas over the proper role of a department like Home Affairs. The answer lies not in doing more but in doing the right things and doing them well: working in partnership with operational agencies and domestic and international policy peers. This means regarding Home Affairs as an enabler and systems architect.

This would give us a Home Affairs that integrated productivity and economic security considerations alongside national security. National security and national safety are no longer just about guns and gates; they’re about data, energy, minerals, finance, supply chains, trusted technology and workforce continuity. They’re about recognising immigration settings deliver national benefit while protecting against coercion and exploitation. And they’re about understanding social cohesion isn’t a feel-good policy; it’s a fundamental prerequisite for protecting democratic institutions and preventing exploitation of community divisions.

In this regard, Australia’s federal system matters; Canberra cannot go it alone. State and territory governments are central to the success of disaster response coordination, critical infrastructure protection, and programs aimed at countering violent extremism. Local governments, often ignored in strategic planning, are key to community engagement and resilience-building. Engagement with the private sector cannot be transactional. Instead, as we have seen with Home Affairs’ approach to cyber and infrastructure security, it needs to be strategic and sustained. Australia’s largest companies are now also frontline actors in economic security, particularly in sectors such as energy, finance, logistics, and advanced manufacturing.

This logic would see Home Affairs re-centre its focus. It would lead on:

—Strategic leadership coordination of national resilience policy across international, federal, and state lines;

—Immigration and border protection with a view to economic, social and security outcomes;

—Enabling intelligence-informed policy development across civil and commercial domains;

—Counterterrorism policy;

—Counter foreign interference policy;

—Critical infrastructure policy;

—Cybersecurity policy and digital infrastructure resilience;

—Economic security and safeguarding of critical domestic supply chains; and

—Whole-of-government policy approaches to serious and organised crime.

And it would support but not lead on:

—Law enforcement operations;

—Community cohesion programming;

—Emergency response logistics and management; and

—Defence-related strategic planning.

Just as national security now needs to be a truly national endeavour—no longer the exclusive domain of police and intelligence services—national safety requires recasting Home Affairs from a coordinator of last resort to a collaborator of first choice. This would build trust, share decision-making and embed security thinking in the economic and social fabric of the nation. This means the future of Home Affairs should be measured not by how many functions it controls, but by how effectively it drives resilience and economic security across a complex national ecosystem.