As with its predecessors, after 1949 ASIO was primarily concerned with communism and espionage. Yet Australian society was changing rapidly, developing different crimes and criminals and extending their links internationally. Corruption had always existed but paled into insignificance with the rise of a drug culture that knew no international boundaries or restrictions. Some emerging criminals were connected to the developing multicultural populations, while others had roots in pre-existing Australian crime families and youth gangs. None were a major concern of ASIO unless they overlapped with security issues or espionage. One issue Australia had committed to in 1945 was detection and punishment of war criminals. Most suspects in Australia were from communist-controlled countries in Eastern Europe. Some had local political influence and protection in churches and parties.

Ethnic politics often involved disagreement on homeland issues, for example between Croats and Serbs, Russians and Ukrainians and Greeks and Macedonians. These were of only limited interest to the security services, apart from communist influences. Occasionally, they led to violence or even arson. The closing report of the Special Investigations Unit on war criminals complained that its work could not be completed. The report listed a large number of cases that had been drawn to its attention but rejected. These mostly concerned former enemy subjects from Croatia, Ukraine, Latvia, Lithuania, Belarus, Hungary, Serbia, Romania and Slovenia, all then under communist control. Australia, like other Western states, was reluctant to accept representations from any of them. Most suspects died peacefully in their beds as aged relics of horrors that most Australians wanted to forget, but a minority never could (Commonwealth of Australia 1993). As we saw in the last chapter, only one person was returned, Serbian general Dragan Vasiljkovic – remanded to Croatia in 2016 after years of delay. Nobody had ever been returned for war crimes in World War II. A concern with ‘migrant crime’ was widespread in the 1950s with the arrival of non-British immigrants in large numbers, especially those from Southern and Eastern Europe. This became an ASIO concern where communists were involved. Immigrant frustration at unemployment led to a threat to move the army up to Bonegilla migrant camp near Albury in 1952. Again in 1961, Italians and Yugoslavs held a riotous meeting about their isolation from the labour market in their remote location away from the large cities (Sluga 1988).