Fears by Australian journalists the concentration of key security agencies under the oversight of a single "security czar" is a threat to press freedom is just one more reasons the Turnbull Government's "Home Office" plan needs close scrutiny.
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While it has been attacked by the Opposition as an attempt to shore up Malcolm Turnbull's leadership by appeasing Peter Dutton, there are more significant causes for concern.
One is that more than a week after the announcement the reasons behind the decision, soon to be implemented at great but unspecified cost, remain unclear.
There is nothing to suggest it will significantly enhance our defences against terrorism with some experts saying that, in the short term at least, the "reforms" could leave the nation more vulnerable.
Julian McCrae, a British expert on the UK's Home Office model on which the Turnbull-Dutton plan is reportedly based, is unconvinced: "Whenever you put things together.... you generally see a performance dip in the next couple of years."
He pointedly asked: "What's your rationale? Is there enough long term logic of bringing these things together to get over the short term dip in performance?"
The short answer appears to be "no". Only a handful of Australians have ever been killed in terrorist attacks on our own turf. This, we are frequently told, is because rarely does a few weeks go by without some state or federal police force or agency announcing it has thwarted an impending attack.
It seems what we already have is working well, probably even better than the UK's two-century old Home Office arrangement.
Britain has been hit by numerous deadly and high profile terror attacks since September 11 with the Home Office usually coming under fire for both its failure to predict and prevent and the inadequacy of its response in the aftermath.
If what we have isn't broken then why the rush to fix it?
The only real argument in favour of moving ASIO and the AFP away from the Attorney-General's department seems to be it would facilitate greater communication between them and Border Protection.
While nice in theory, this line of thinking ignores the fact that if these groups aren't already working well together in the national interest due to internecine rivalries and the like, a change of minister won't make much difference.
The Media Entertainment and Arts Alliance, the union representing journalists, believes that while there isn't much to be gained there is a lot to lose.
Between them ASIO, the AFP and Border Force possess some truly draconian powers to bring to bear against whistle blowers and journalists.
Concentrating these under the control of one political figure - a minister openly hostile to the national broadcaster - creates the potential for elected individuals to use these against political adversaries and critics.
We have already seen this happen overseas. Is that a genie we want to let out of the bottle here?
