The purpose of the raids, instigated by Attorney-General Lionel Murphy, was to obtain terrorism-related information that the ASIO was accused of withholding.
The Whitlam government came to office shortly after the terrorist attack at the 1972 Summer Olympics and the Sydney bombings involving Croatian separatist groups in Australia.
One of the first acts of the new government was to help US-led efforts in the United Nations General Assembly to counter the rise of 'political violence' to person and property around the globe.
These efforts failed because the Non-aligned Movement states believed that political violence or terrorism was not inherently illegitimate, given resistance and revolutionary activities in the former colonies.
At the 1971 Federal Labor Party conference, only a single vote (22 in favour, 23 against) had defeated a proposed motion "that ASIO be abolished".
They located a document which implied that ASIO and "the departments of Foreign Affairs, Attorney-General's and Immigration" had conspired to withhold information from him about Croatian separatists in Australia.
At around the same time the Prime Minister's office was fitted with bulletproofed glass and the pregnant wife of Attorney-General Lionel Murphy, Ingrid, went into hiding after a series of death threats.
[2]: 134–5 At a reception for the visiting Prime Minister held at The Lodge, Whitlam said:[2]: 135 It has taken regrettably long for the Commonwealth police force and ASIO to adjust themselves from such momentous activities as the pursuit of draft dodgers and Vietnam demonstrators to the new situation where we ought to provide our interest in terrorist activities in our midst.Murphy had indicated on 1 March that he was going to make a statement on the issue of terrorism in Australia.
It was "a statement on terrorism and a political attack on the previous government" the same "conclusion reached by the United States, which had followed parliamentary debates and press coverage closely".
Labor took the policy of an inquiry to the election in 1974 and, after the controversy surrounding ASIO's leaked views on Deputy Prime Minister Jim Cairns, the Royal Commission on Intelligence and Security was launched.