Former South Australian Senator Nick Xenophon is busy defending his previous role providing legal work—and occasional public advocacy—on behalf of Chinese telecommunications giant Huawei.
Xenophon announced a week earlier that he would be running for the Australian Senate against former colleague Rex Patrick, who took Xenophon’s place when he retired from Parliament in 2017.
The former senator’s law firm, Xenophon Davis, was contracted by Huawei Australia to provide legal advice, during this time, Xenophon also publicly stated Huawei had been “unfairly maligned” following its ban from Australia’s 5G network in 2018 over security concerns.
On April 3, Xenophon said Huawei Australia was a separate business from its parent company in China, pointing out that it had a separate board.
“Interestingly, [Former Prime Minister] Malcolm Turnbull in his autobiography actually said they found the company did nothing wrong in Australia from a national security perspective,” he added. “But there was concern about what could happen down the track because the company is headquartered in China. I respect that.”
Xenophon maintained that he supported the bipartisan approach to dealing with foreign policy and Beijing, which has seen the Australian government take a tougher approach to foreign interference, and defence against Beijing.
In late March, his former colleague Patrick compared Xenophon’s tenure working for Huawei to that of “choosing to do PR work for the German companies Krupp or Messerschmitt in 1938.”
Both companies worked for the Nazi regime in Germany in the lead-up to World War II.
“Xenophon now says that he has not worked for Huawei for some time, though we don’t know when he ceased. He now claims to support the Australian government’s 5G ban on Huawei,” Senator Patrick told Parliament.
“As a declared Senate candidate, he should now, in the interests of transparency and accountability, disclose the full details of his contractual relationship with Huawei.”
Xenophon called the comparisons to the Nazis “pretty terrible” and downplayed the need to be registered on the Foreign Influence Transparency Scheme.
“Doing legal work for Huawei does not need to be on the foreign registry. It’s as simple as that,” he said. “The foreign registry is all about making sure people don’t do things covertly, where people don’t know who they’re actually representing.”
