Australian Politician Betrayed Country to Help Spy for Foreign Regime: ASIO Reveals

Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO) Director General Mike Burgess poses for a portrait ahead of his annual threat assessment speech at ASIO headquarters in Canberra, Australia on Feb. 28, 2024. AAP Image/Mick Tsikas

The latest annual threat assessment from ASIO, the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation, includes several alarming revelations about the level of threat faced by the country—including from within.

ASIO revealed that while some people collaborating with foreign intelligence agents are victims of deception, others willingly provide information and sometimes high-level access. In one instance, an autocratic foreign regime tried to physically harm Australian-based critics and attempted to find dissidents to make them “disappear.”

Much of the activity detailed in the report is the work of a dedicated unit within a foreign intelligence service that made Australia its primary target, operating for several years until at least 2023.

ASIO Director-General Mike Burgess declined to identify the government behind what the report calls “the A-team,” which included supposed consultants, head-hunters, local government officials, and researchers, while claiming to be from fictional companies such as “Data 31.”

‘Sold Out Their Country’

In another instance, ASIO revealed a former politician betrayed Australia and attempted to bring a relative of a prime minister into contact with foreign spies.

Mr. Burgess did not identify the former federal politician, whom he said “sold out their country, party and former colleagues to advance the interests of the foreign regime.”

“Fortunately, that plot did not go ahead but other schemes did,” he revealed.

“Another Australian, an aspiring politician, provided insights into the factional dynamics of his party, analysis of a recent election and the names of up-and-comers—presumably so the A-team could target them too,” he said.

“Several individuals should be grateful the espionage and foreign interference laws are not retrospective,” he said. Parliament passed tough foreign interference laws in 2018.

Mr. Burgess said he believed the problem had been “neutralised,” and the politician would not be “stupid enough to repeat what they’ve done in the past” now that foreign interference laws could be used against them.

He said ASIO confronted the “A-team” directly last year when its team leader thought he was grooming another potential spy online.

“Little did he know he was actually speaking with an ASIO officer.”

Wide Range of Australians Targeted

Academics, as well as politicians, were offered invitations to an all-expenses-paid overseas conference where foreign agents built relationships with the Australians and “aggressively targeted them for recruitment, openly asking who had access to government documents,” Mr. Burgess said.

“A few weeks after the conference wrapped up, one of the academics started giving the A-team information about Australia’s national security and defence priorities.”

The Australians were offered consulting opportunities and paid thousands of dollars for reports on the country’s trade, politics, economics, foreign policy and defence, with extra offered for “exclusive” information.

Students, business people, researchers, law enforcement officials and public servants at all levels of government were also cultivated by the “A team.”

ASIO believes that increasing numbers of Australians are being targeted for foreign interference and espionage purposes.

“Australians need to know that the threat is real. The threat is now. And the threat is deeper and broader than you might think,” Mr. Burgess said.

Sabotage an Increasing Threat

The agency is also increasingly worried that sabotage could emerge as a threat, possibly from a compromised Australian worker shutting down a telecommunications network or power grid during a heat wave at the behest of a hostile nation.

“ASIO is aware of one nation-state conducting multiple attempts to scan critical infrastructure in Australia and other countries, targeting water, transport and energy networks,” he said.

“The reconnaissance is highly sophisticated, using top-notch tradecraft to map networks, test for vulnerabilities, knock on digital doors and check the digital locks.

“We assess this government is not actively planning sabotage, but is trying to gain persistent undetected access that could allow it to conduct sabotage in the future.”

Mr. Burgess said he was worried such sabotage could also be undertaken by “accelerationists, extremists who want to trigger a so-called race war.”

The Counter Foreign Interference Taskforce has conducted more than 120 operations since it was established in 2020.

Calls to Name ‘Traitor’ Politician

Former treasurer and former ambassador to the United States, Joe Hockey, said ASIO should have named the politician. He said ASIO’s Threat Assessment would “besmirch” the reputation of every politician until the person was named.

“For a start, the former politician is a traitor. It wasn’t an allegation by the head of our intelligence agency, it was a statement of fact,” Mr. Hockey said.

Former treasurer and former ambassador to the United States, Joe Hockey, has called on ASIO to name the politician who aided a foreign power. Daniel Munoz/Getty Images

“It is absolutely inconceivable that you would have a former politician representing their community, representing the country, who then goes and engages with a foreign adversary, and somehow they’re allowed to walk off into the sunset without having their name or their reputation revealed.

“It makes us all question as representatives in the Parliament who we can trust, who of our current and former colleagues can we trust? And that’s ridiculous.”

Mr. Hockey warned he had already received questions from U.S. officials about ASIO’s comments, and that it had raised questions over Australia’s Five Eyes intelligence-sharing relationship.

But current Defence Minister Richard Marles said there may be good reason not to name the retired politician.

“I respect what ASIO have done here in terms of putting this story into the public domain but also maintaining the confidentiality of the facts around this, and there could be a whole lot of reasons why that should happen,” he said.

Shadow Home Affairs Minister James Paterson said he had “a fair idea” of who Mr. Burgess was referring to, but he would not speculate.

“In a sense, it doesn’t matter. Every politician is a target. The people around us, including our staff and family members and associates, are targets, and we need to approach our work with that in mind,” he said.

‘Old-Fashioned Espionage’: Defence Expert

Michael Shoebridge, director of Strategic Analysis Australia, said the politician’s activity sounded like “old-fashioned espionage,” which has been a crime since 1914.

“So even though Mr. Burgess told us this happened some years ago before the espionage laws were strengthened, it still would have been a crime at the time and I can see no reason that there shouldn’t be a prosecution,” he said.

“There’s a strong public interest [in naming them] ... it brings every former politician into disrepute by doing this.

“This is a pretty extraordinary, extreme case, someone who was working with a foreign country’s spy agency to damage Australia’s security.”

No Australians Travelling to Fight in Middle East

Meanwhile, ASIO said it does not believe Australians are travelling to aid terrorist groups in the Middle East in the wake of the Hamas attack on Israel in October last year, but it has seen “heightened community tensions that have translated into some incidents of violence” at protests in Australia.

“Sunni violent extremism poses the greatest religiously motivated violent extremist threat in Australia,” Mr. Burges said. “But we are not seeing Australians travelling to join the terrorists ... as we did for the ISIL Caliphate.

“And thankfully, we have not seen the lone actor attacks that have occurred elsewhere and were inspired by that conflict,” he noted.