Australia is to review its espionage laws, the government’s chief legal officer said yesterday, as the country seeks to strengthen spy agencies strained by juggling counterterror work and worries about China’s rising influence.
For years Australia has been handing extra cash and extra powers to its police and spy agencies to bolster their counterterrorism abilities.
Then in December last year, responding to “disturbing reports about Chinese influence,” the government turned its attention to interference in politics and announced a crackdown on political donations and the outlawing of foreign interference.
“We live in an unprecedented age of foreign interference, influence, espionage and domestic terrorism,” Australian Attorney-General Christian Porter told radio station 5AA in Adelaide.
“We think it’s very appropriate to step back and look at the whole system from top to tail,” Porter said, adding that the government was not aiming its intelligence laws at “any one international country.”
However, the review, which is to run 18 months and is the deepest in four decades, is to be headed by former Australian spymaster Dennis Richardson, who last year warned that China in particular was conducting extensive espionage against Australia.
“With China we’re in a situation which we were never in previously, where we now have levels of concern — because they have levels of capacity and ambition — that weren’t the case,” said Greg Barton, a professor and security expert at Deakin University in Melbourne.
Outdated laws that have not kept pace with the advent of the Internet and cybersecurity challenges, as well as arcane information sharing rules between the nation’s intelligence agencies, are likely to be candidates for reform, Barton added.
A staunch US ally, Australia’s intelligence agencies have expanded while the nation has been on heightened alert from 2014 for attacks by home-grown militants returning from fighting in the Middle East.
That has helped to foil about a dozen plots since, authorities said.
At the same time, intelligence officers have found themselves increasingly focused on thwarting Chinese influence as public concern has deepened, while ties between the trading partners have soured.
Australian Security Intelligence Organisation Director-General Duncan Lewis, the nation’s spy chief, has said that universities need to be “very conscious” of foreign interference — an apparent reference to China’s perceived involvement on campuses.
This month, the rift between the two countries, opened in the wake of Australia’s foreign influence crackdown, widened.
Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs Wang Yi (王毅) on Monday last week rebuked Australia for applying “colored glasses” to the relationship, as Australia’s largest winemaker — Treasury Wine Estates Ltd — suddenly encountered problems clearing its products through Chinese customs.
Four people jailed in the landmark Hong Kong national security trial of "47 democrats" accused of conspiracy to commit subversion were freed today after more than four years behind bars, the second group to be released in a month. Among those freed was long-time political and LGBTQ activist Jimmy Sham (岑子杰), who also led one of Hong Kong’s largest pro-democracy groups, the Civil Human Rights Front, which disbanded in 2021. "Let me spend some time with my family," Sham said after arriving at his home in the Kowloon district of Jordan. "I don’t know how to plan ahead because, to me, it feels
Polish presidential candidates offered different visions of Poland and its relations with Ukraine in a televised debate ahead of next week’s run-off, which remains on a knife-edge. During a head-to-head debate lasting two hours, centrist Warsaw Mayor Rafal Trzaskowski, from Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk’s governing pro-European coalition, faced the Eurosceptic historian Karol Nawrocki, backed by the right-wing populist Law and Justice party (PiS). The two candidates, who qualified for the second round after coming in the top two places in the first vote on Sunday last week, clashed over Poland’s relations with Ukraine, EU policy and the track records of their
‘A THREAT’: Guyanese President Irfan Ali called on Venezuela to follow international court rulings over the region, whose border Guyana says was ratified back in 1899 Misael Zapara said he would vote in Venezuela’s first elections yesterday for the territory of Essequibo, despite living more than 100km away from the oil-rich Guyana-administered region. Both countries lay claim to Essequibo, which makes up two-thirds of Guyana’s territory and is home to 125,000 of its 800,000 citizens. Guyana has administered the region for decades. The centuries-old dispute has intensified since ExxonMobil discovered massive offshore oil deposits a decade ago, giving Guyana the largest crude oil reserves per capita in the world. Venezuela would elect a governor, eight National Assembly deputies and regional councilors in a newly created constituency for the 160,000
North Korea has detained another official over last week’s failed launch of a warship, which damaged the naval destroyer, state media reported yesterday. Pyongyang announced “a serious accident” at Wednesday last week’s launch ceremony, which crushed sections of the bottom of the new destroyer. North Korean leader Kim Jong-un called the mishap a “criminal act caused by absolute carelessness.” Ri Hyong-son, vice department director of the Munitions Industry Department of the Party Central Committee, was summoned and detained on Sunday, the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) reported. He was “greatly responsible for the occurrence of the serious accident,” it said. Ri is the fourth person
RSS