Its Charter of 15 December 1954 described ASIS's role as 'to obtain and distribute secret intelligence, and to plan for and conduct special operations as may be required'.

[6] The Ministerial Statement of 1977 stated that the "main function" of ASIS was to "obtain, by such means and subject to such conditions as are prescribed by the Government, foreign intelligence for the purpose of the protection or promotion of Australia or its interests".

The Richardson Report in June examined the roles and relationships of the collection agencies (ASIO, ASIS and DSD) in the post-Cold War era.

The inquiry was to examine progress in implementing the previous recommendations; arrangements for developing policies, assessing priorities and coordinating activities among the organisations; ministerial and parliamentary accountability; complaints procedures; financial oversight and the agencies' compliance with the law.

The Government appointed Justice Gordon Samuels and Mr Mike Codd to inquire into the effectiveness and suitability of existing arrangements for control and accountability, organisation and management, protection of sources and methods, and resolution of grievances and complaints.

He claimed that "ASIS secretly holds tens of thousands of files on Australian citizens, a database completely outside privacy laws".

They appeared to support the officers' concerns regarding the grievance procedures: Bearing in mind the context in which the members of ASIS work, it is not surprising that there should develop a culture which sets great store by faithfulness and stoicism and tends to elevate conformity to undue heights and to regard the exercise of authority rather than consultation as the managerial norm.

The commissioners stated that "evidence presented to us of action and reaction in other countries satisfies us that the publication was damaging":[14] They rejected any suggestion that ASIS was unaccountable or "out of control".

[16] In addition to their recommendations, Samuels and Codd put forward draft legislation to provide a statutory basis for ASIS and to protect various information from disclosure.

[19] An ASIS station was established in Chile out of the Australian embassy in July 1971 at the request of the CIA and authorised by then Liberal Party Foreign Minister William McMahon.

[20] However, the last ASIS agent did not leave Chile until October 1973, one month after the CIA-backed 1973 Chilean coup d'état had brought down the Allende government.

[23][20] ASIS's involvement in Chile was revealed in 1974 when Whitlam set up the First Hope Royal Commission to investigate Australia's security services.

[25] The National Archives of Australia holds documents related to ASIS operations to help the CIA undermine the government of Allende in the years 1971-1974.

In 2021, the archives refused a request from Clinton Fernandes, professor of International and Political Studies at the University of New South Wales, to access records relating to ASIS operations in Chile.

Most of the AAT hearing was held behind closed doors, because Attorney-General Michaelia Cash issued a public interest certificate, suppressing the disclosure of evidence provided by ASIS, ASIO and the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade.

[24] During the lead-up to Indonesia's invasion of East Timor in 1975, ASIS paid a Dili-based Australian businessman, Frank Favaro, for information on local political developments.

[23] On 30 November 1983, ASIS garnered unwanted negative attention when a training operation held at the Sheraton Hotel, now the Mercure (Spring Street), in Melbourne went wrong.

In March 1983, ASIS had begun training a covert team of civilians at Swan Island in Victoria whose role was to protect or release Australians who may be threatened or captured by terrorists overseas.

When the lift started returning to the ground floor, ASIS operators emerged wearing masks and openly brandishing 9mm Browning pistols and Heckler & Koch MP5 submachine guns, two of them with silencers.

[29] Within two days, the minister for foreign affairs, Bill Hayden announced that an "immediate and full" investigation would be conducted under the auspices of the second Hope Royal Commission, which was still in progress.

[32] Although not included within the public version of the report, the Hope Royal Commission prepared an appendix that would appear to have dealt with the security and foreign relations consequences of The Sunday Age's disclosure of participants' names.

Subsequently, in A v Hayden, the High Court held that the Commonwealth owed no enforceable duty to ASIS officers to maintain confidentiality of their names or activities.

[33] At the time of the Sheraton Hotel incident, the extant Ministerial Directive permitted ASIS to undertake "covert action", including "special operations" which, roughly described, comprised "unorthodox, possibly para-military activity, designed to be used in case of war or some other crisis".

It was alleged that ASIS had been involved in training Papua New Guinean troops to suppress independence movements in Irian Jaya[40] and Bougainville.

The Sunday Telegraph alleged that "ASIS regularly flouted laws, kept dossiers on Australian citizens ... and hounded agents out of the service with little explanation".

[46] Two days after the program aired, the Samuels and Codd Royal Commission was convened by Minister for Foreign Affairs Gareth Evans.

[47] Earlier in her career as a journalist, Ratih was married to Bruce Grant, who during this period was senior policy adviser to Gareth Evans, co-authoring the book, Australia's foreign relations: in the world of the 1990s.

In 2005, The Bulletin ran an article based on allegations by serving ASIS officers that alluded to gross mismanagement of intelligence operations, staff assignments, and taskings, particularly with respect to the war on terrorism.

By this, they meant the recruitment of "...young mostly white university educated agents with limited language skills and little knowledge of Islam against poor, zealous extremists intent on becoming suicide bombers", the "inappropriate" assignment of "...young female IOs [intelligence officers] against Islamic targets...", in addition to poor staff retention rates, and general lack of officers possessing significant practical field experience.

[48] It was revealed in 2013 that ASIS planted devices to listen to the East Timorese government during negotiations over the Greater Sunrise oil and gasfields.