Dennis Richard has not given in to the mewling cries of intelligence agencies for public safeguards to be loosened because it costs more.
His intelligence legislation report critiques numerous proposals from agencies that would ram holes in civil liberties and undermine oversight, and gives sound reasons for rejecting them. Their powers are already greater than available to overseas agencies, but require cooperation with each other to take advantage of fully.
"The term 'administrative burden' tends to be thrown around too loosely by NIC agencies," Richardson warns. "Government should be wary of, and properly test such claims."
Others have said similar before. But this time it's Richardson. Former director-general of Security. Former secretary of Defence and DFAT. Former ambassador to the US. The ultimate insider.
Richardson is one of those brilliantly wily public servants who can produce a 1600-page classified report, 203 recommendations, overhauling hundreds of pages of legislation, where the end state - in terms of powers - will be very close to the status quo.
The electronic surveillance laws are outdated and Attorney-General Christian Porter has given himself a timeline of 18 months to draft new laws with streamlined warrants.
Porter says the nation's biggest threat is the dynamic and fluid world. Key threats from only a few years ago are not the same as the threats today. Today it's the end-to-end encryption on any device in someone's pocket. Will it be AI and drones in a few more years? Or climate, mass migration and water shortage?
Amid that uncertainty Richardson and Porter have clung to principles and fundamentals. We're a nation of laws and agencies must respect them, including human rights. We do not subject dual citizens to surveillance because of their race. We do not keep "secret police". We set boundaries, both jurisdictional and territorial on agency powers.
While the world will keep changing and our spy laws will keep changing with it, these principles should not.
It will take a while for civil liberties experts to explore if there are steps backwards in the government's response, but it would appear to largely keep Australia's intelligence gathering practices on their existing path.