Complaints rocket over slow pace of assessments

as posted here ... Complaints rocket over slow pace of assessments

THE nation's domestic spy agency has received a surge of complaints about the time it is taking to complete security assessments.

The acting Inspector-General of Intelligence and Security, Vivienne Thom, told a Senate estimates hearing last night that it had received 850 complaints about the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation's security assessment process this financial year to April 30.

This is more than five times the 157 complaints it received in the entire 2008-09 financial year and more than four times the 193 it received the previous year.

Dr Thom said all but eight of the complaints received this financial year related to the timeliness of the assessments.

''There has been a large increase,'' she said.

Dr Thom said the rise was not entirely attributable to an increase in asylum seeker arrivals, but said 205 of the complaints were from people being held at the Christmas Island immigration detention centre.

''We believe there's been a substantial increase because of the increase in activity, the increase in the number of assessments they are having to conduct,'' Dr Thom said.

She said her office had investigated a number of the complaints, but had not found any reason to believe that ASIO had acted unreasonably.