And is also the department that famously decided to conduct a mock hostage rescue training exercise in a 5-star hotel without obtaining permission or even notifying the hotel management and staff.
When ASIS operators were refused entry into a hotel room, they broke down the door with sledgehammers. The hotel manager, Nick Rice, was notified of a disturbance on the 10th floor by a hotel guest. When he went to investigate, he was forced back into the lift by an ASIS operator who rode the lift down to the ground floor and forcibly ejected Rice into the lobby.
Believing a robbery was in progress, Rice called the police. 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[1]
Wow. Impressive. But still, it was in 1983. Victoria police managed to arrest some of them, with no casualties. And ASIS head John Ryan was eventually forced to resign.
ASIS is also the department that was secret between its founding in 1952 until 1972
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australian_Secret_Intelligence...