Home Affairs no longer just 'boats and borders' as Clare O'Neil sets out vision

In a broad-ranging speech to a National Press Club audience, Home Affairs Minister Clare O'Neil promised to widen the "oddly-narrow view" the former government held for the department.

In practicality, it seemed Ms O'Neil was appealing to the vision from the now-Opposition Leader that Home Affairs was the tough guy on the beat who did the hard jobs: boats and borders, terrorism and child exploitation, bikies and organised crime.

Sure, the department should continue its old work but it needed to do it in new ways and take on new tasks entirely too, she said.

"The issues that will define the lives of my children and my grandchildren are not bikies and boat people," she said.

"They are how Australian governments manage climate change, navigate our interests with regard to China, and protect Australians in the face of the biggest shift in the global world order since the Second World War."

Some of that change happened strikingly fast in the weeks following the election.

One of Prime Minister Anthony Albanese's first major public service decisions was to rip out the Australian Federal Police, along with a number of law enforcement agencies, and place them under the Attorney-General's Department.

For a department so heavily focused on its domestic security remit, it caused somewhat of an identity crisis.

While the cops were sent down the road in Barton, it retained the domestic spy agency, Australian Security Intelligence Organisation, and gained the role of national disaster manager.

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But Ms O'Neil again sought to distance herself from her predecessor, who she said was "reactive to the issues" and "reactionary in the politics".

"It's time to stop feigning shock at supposedly once-in-a-generation floods and fires and storms," she said.

"We need disaster management to be a routine, seamless, well-practised function of government, so that when multiple disasters strike, government and the community are not fully consumed by them."

So, what of secretary, Mike Pezzullo, who gained some notoriety after an Anzac Day message referring to the "beating drums of war" last year?

While "chest beating" is out the window, Mr Pezzullo's time there isn't yet over.

Instead, the security tsar will stay on in the role to carry out the minister's vision to expand the department's remit of domestic security beyond "boats and borders".

He's already been integral in its reshaping.

The Canberra Times previously reported he personally made the case for a single disaster agency - one he would oversee, of course - to handle floods, fires and whatever else might threaten Australians in the coming years.

The tough posturing isn't entirely gone.

Ms O'Neil is empowering her department to "punch back" at hackers and warns the country is facing "the most dangerous set of strategic circumstances" since World War Two.

But gone is any dog-whistling, "xenophobia" - as Ms O'Neil considers it - or China bashing.

The Department of Home Affairs still remains the important domestic security agency it was always envisioned to be under the former government.

But it's a kinder, nicer one - not quite as you remember it.