Mike Burgess, the head of ASIO, is neither a careless nor stupid man, so he knew exactly what would follow when he dropped this into the national conversation:
“[He or she] sold our their country, party and former colleagues.”
Burgess was talking about a former Australian politician, who he said had been recruited by a foreign country’s spy network he refers to as “the A-team”.
Burgess declined to name the country of influence, because he doesn’t want us to get too focussed on a specific actor when many countries are conducting espionage and foreign influence operations here — not that this will slow down speculation.
He also didn’t name the former politician, triggering both a social media meltdown as to their identity. Ever helpful, Peter Dutton volunteered that it has to be a Labor Party politician from NSW, hinting that this is going to be the worst-kept secret ever — but of course he could be just making it up, as usual.
Burgess also revealed that at one point the former politician had proposed recruiting a member of the then prime minister’s family. Malcolm Turnbull’s son Alex piled in yesterday with the claim that he had been approached by Chinese operatives in 2017, and had reported this to security agencies. Whether these things are connected, who knows; perhaps it just underlines how quickly a mysterious scandal attracts bees to the honeypot.
But the real question with Burgess’ refusal to name the putative spy is: why not?
If Burgess’ words are literally true — that among us there’s a former member of Parliament, presumably federal, who has betrayed their country (which sounds quite adjacent to treason), why are they walking around free and protected from exposure?
The pertinent issue isn’t Joe Hockey’s anguished plea that the spy be named to lift suspicion from all the other ex-pollies (like him) who have not sold us out, lol. The real concern is something Hockey might struggle to comprehend — the national interest.
There is no statutory suppression regime preventing ASIO from naming its quarry. Burgess hasn’t directly addressed why it isn’t doing so, but he did give a hint, saying, “If they’re not doing it now they’re not breaking the law.” He also indicated that their actions could fall foul of foreign interference laws enacted in the past few years, if repeated today.
That suggests that whatever the former MP was doing did not, at the time, constitute a crime on the legal advice ASIO has received. My assumption therefore is that the choice to not name is driven by two related considerations: fairness and defamation.
Obviously, public exposure would be terminally devastating for the former politician. Regardless of the factual circumstances or provability of allegations, ASIO’s finger-pointing alone would be unsurvivable. It would also be defamatory. However, as recent cases amply demonstrate, a defamation trial is far from an appropriate medium for testing and adjudging allegations of serious criminality.
There is a possible statutory pathway for ASIO to name our fifth columnist without legal risk. Under the ASIO Act 1979, the agency is given statutory immunity from lawsuits for a broad range of actions it may undertake in pursuit of “special intelligence operations”, including (arguably) the making of public statements.
Whether that applies to this situation (special intelligence operations have to be designated as such), I don’t know, but I’m guessing not.
Putting that aside, is there a national interest here that transcends the obvious legal interests of Politician X? He or she, it appears, will never be charged with an offence for what they did, and Burgess said he was sure they’d never be stupid enough to do it again. Clearly ASIO does not consider that they constitute a present risk to national security.
However, one is inevitably drawn back to the extraordinary circumstance of Burgess’ intervention, and the dramatic nature of his words. He was clear that we all need to know about what happened, and to take it seriously.
What that leaves is an unsatisfactorily large vacuum: we are told that someone in a position of political, possibly governmental, power “sold out” our country at some point in recent history. We know that it was at the behest of a serious foreign power. But we don’t know who, what or why — or what if anything it achieved.
What use, then, can we really make of the information Burgess has decided to share? Not much, I’d say. Hence the vacuum, hence the media scramble to fill it.
My view is this: if Burgess has cogent evidence to substantiate what he’s alleged, albeit falling short of criminal proof, then we should know exactly what he’s talking about. The personal interests of the politician are comfortably subsumed by the national interest that has driven Burgess to say as much as he has. Defamation law should not, and would not, get in the way.
Alternatively, Burgess should have said nothing at all. All he’s created is a mess.
ASIO has a long history of calling wolf and trying to ratchet up community fear against so called “enemies”. Remember the reds under the bed, the yellow peril, the Vietnam dominoes and the McCarthist destruction of peoples careers and reputations. I doubt very much the seriousness of this so called “traitor’s” crimes. Doesn’t take much to be considered a traitor in ASIO’s eyes. Have sympathy for Palestinians? Oppose the AUKUS deal? Decline to join in the current China phobia? All justification for coming under ASIO suspicion. I wouldn’t be surprised if there weren’t a few Crikey contributors on ASIO’s watch list.
Unless the alleged offender was a Minister, it would be most unlikely that s/he had access to anything particularly sexy from a national security perspective.
The naivete shock horror at the idea of politicians talking to foreign representatives is, frankly, infantile. Do people think diplomats, whether spies or bona fide, get all their information from the newspapers?
Ever been to a national day function – where politicians, business people, civil society members, public servants, diplomats and, good heavens, even the media, all mingle, exchange cards, engage in light, or heavier, discourse and make appointments to catch up?
As for Burgess, I think his briefing the media is wrong, and the Minister, Clare O’Neil, should be telling Burgess to stay at his desk in Lubyanka by the Lake. Other than at Estimates, public servants should be neither seen nor heard. Politicians do the talking, not public servants.
It makes me wonder if it is just part of the bidding war for more money for ASIO in the Budget. If he’s trying to put the wind up everyone, it doesn’t even have to be a true story if there are no names. What’s to say he hasn’t fabricated the whole story just to put the frighteners on anyone currently being approached? And if that was the reason then why not a quiet word in their ear?
Unless the alleged offender was a Minister, it would be most unlikely that s/he had access to anything particularly interesting from a national security perspective.
The shock horror at the idea of politicians talking to foreign representatives is, frankly, infantile. Do people think diplomats, whether spies or bona fide, get all their information from the newspapers?
Ever been to a national day function – where politicians, business people, civil society members, public servants, diplomats and, good heavens, even the media, all mingle, exchange cards, engage in light, or heavier, discourse and make appointments to catch up?
As for Burgess, I think his briefing the media is wrong, and the Minister, Clare O’Neil, should be telling Burgess to stay at his desk. Other than at Estimates, public servants should be neither seen nor heard. Politicians do the talking, not public servants.
It makes me wonder if it is just part of the bidding war for more money for ASIO in the Budget. If he’s trying to put the wind up everyone, it doesn’t even have to be a true story if there are no names. What’s to say he hasn’t fabricated the whole story just to put the frighteners on anyone currently being approached? And if that was the reason then why not a quiet word in their ear?
A letter by Ian McKenzie of Canterbury in today’s Age is worth noting. In it, he says:
“But (Burgess) needs to be a bit careful about language such as “Australians are being targeted for foreign interference and espionage” more than ever before”. Is there a metric for this? Maybe ASIO is getting better at discovering people who have always been there. With the privilege to be able to talk publicly without government approval, there needs to be some care that the public presentation of the annual security assessment is not seen as part of a budget bid.
Finally, it is somewhat weird that the headline case of the former politician and his handlers does not result in any arrests and prosecution.
If the explanation is that the case pre-dates the 2018 foreign interference legislation, what merits it being such a big story today? Other than as a warning to other current and former politicians to take care.”
ASIO ramping up national security fears to get more funding from the budget is not unheard of.
To my mind, obviously it is in all the Intelligence Agencies various sections interest’s to over state the hidden threats to our Nation’s security. On the plus side, it reduces the chance of Government gradually reduced funding over time until our security against hidden threats and secret intelligence gathering of both friendly and antagonistic governments and terrorist/other organisations … to the point it is only as strong as a wet brown paper bag. On the other side, there is the risk of an over-fed bureaucratic monstrosity arising more concerned with gathering more and more funding to cover … empire building? Especially given that a bureaucrat’s salary, especially at the senior levels depends upon things like education, knowledge, level of responsibility and accountability particularly for subordinate staff and their salary levels – and of course the size of their own budget they manage. (As an aside, Scomo must have been pulling in a bundle with the extra salary or allowances for ALL his portfolios! I mention it, as I have not seen any concern at all in our media for this facet of added remuneration for him. Particularly as allowances for portfolios changed from a set value to a percentage of an MP or Senators salary several years ago … was it just before the secret portfolios scandal?)
CT, to your last point. Just the other day, my computor detected two external connections made to the outside world. Now, I’m not saying anything but I interact with service friends/acquaintances on a couple of closed Facebook groups. I also comment on some ‘sites’ relating to the illegal Russian invasion of Ukraine – and had just mentioned why Russians leave their own wounded when vacating a battle-field and their prevalence for killing enemy prisoners all in relation to the burden wounded place on an army in the field. This was immediately before this account of mine was deleted, and those external connections were made. Coincidentally one was made to the Defence Department DNS, and the other to the that of the Defence Organisation. So it seems the boys are on the job, which is a good thing. No, I don’t expect a knock on the front or back door. 🙂
As you say Michael, Burgess, is no mug. This was his explanation for not disclosing the name of the MP:
“There are multiple reasons for this, including the need to protect our sources and capabilities… In this case, while we want the foreign intelligence service to know its cover is blown, we do not want it to unpick how we discovered its activities.”
I find that very difficult to argue against. I’d love a disclosure to prove whether my own theory is correct, and to satisfy native curiosity, but I fully understand that is not in the national interest.
What I do like is that MP’s and their staffs have been given a public warning to be cognisant of the issues, and if they receive an offer like an all expenses paid tour of a desirable part of the world from foreign new-best-friends, they should perhaps report it. With a federal election due by May ’25 I also like the shot across the bows of foreign governments and their operatives not to interfere with the election.
It’s a shame Mr Burgess can’t put the wind up billionaire media owners and mobs like Advance in a similar way.
I saw this, and agree. Though I do think (being cynical) that there is some element of campaigning for resources inherent in the performance, at least it was more stylish than the police’s usual efforts.
Burgess is quite correct, he’s sent a message to which ever country or countries were behind this. And ASIO are now probably watching very carefully to see if anyone else pops up out of the woodwork as that country does it’s counter-intelligence in an attempt to see where they got pinged.
What really gets on my goat is that our elected pollies do not have to have any form of security clearance. Yet they can access anything, at any clearance level. This is a hole so wide you could drive not just a truck, but something much larger, through.
So all a foreign agent has to do is renounce any foreign citizenship, get elected (presumably with some funding slipped in by their controlling power), and happy days, free access to anything you want. And if ever questioned then a loud protestation (anyone remember a oncer who was pronounced as be “How good is…..” by Morrison after the 2019 election?) that “I renounced my Outer Crashbaniaan citizenship, how dare you impugn my loyalty to this country” with Section 44 doing the exact opposite of what it intendeds and providing the Manchurian Candidate with the perfect cover. I suggest that MPs should be subject to proper security vetting, the idea that just because they were elected by the masses they are able to have unfettered access is a complete nonsense. On election cleared to Secret. Committee Chairs, Ministers, Shadow Ministers to Top Secret, and those in National Security positions, their shadows, and party leaders and deputies in either house to Codeword. Some careers might come to a screeching halt as a consequence, but it’s a small price to pay.
Whilst I disagree with much that you say here, I do agree that MPs should undergo thorough security assessments as it’s clear that there are many very dodgy characters accessing national security information, characters who cannot be trusted to put the national interest first.
While that sounds fair enough on the face of it, how long do you think it would take before we realised that the security service scrutineers doing the assessments all agree that nobody with any progressive tendency in politics, or any background outside solid dependable white anglo-saxon Xtian minimum 3rd generation Australian, is to be trusted with access to anything more sensitive than a standard desk diary?
Don’t you think that already happens? The gate-keepers open the gates to those they want in and close them to the rest, although mostly they want more people immediately so the process isn’t as thorough as it might be. The trouble is that those who should be looked at more closely are often not examined properly. However, this is discoverable as there are records that need to be kept about assessment done. We are now seeing such records examined by the NSW police, the NT police and other organisations, so the process is documented enabling flaws to be identified, if not always publicly acknowledged.
Again, do you have evidence of this bias? That may have been true decades ago, but times are changing and intelligence agencies know today that they need people from diverse backgrounds to do their job effectively.
Of course they do, no question they need people from diverse backgrounds to do their job effectively. But those are the people they use. Here, ASIO would decide which politicians get access to the inner workings of ASIO. That’s completely different.
Do you have evidence for that assertion? I certainly would not say “it’s clear”, as I have no idea what you are referring to.
The lack of any sort of progressive effort, the assistant minister for competition, charities and treasury, the professor has a junior role and Plibersek landed the worst job in politics. The one where the most clear breach of democracy is so evident , Ff control of political outcomes.
Doesn’t make any sense though does it? If he knows who it is, and by announcing it, he wants them to know their cover is blown, wouldn’t they also need to know who it was, and if they did know who it was then by his logic the sources and capabilities are no longer protected?
Who does not equate to How. According to other stories in the media the same agency was lured into attempting to recruit another individual who was in fact an ASIO officer, who told them “the jig is up”. That stops that problem. All sides involved will know who the pollie was, but how ASIO found out is still open. And presents ASIO with further opportunities if the agency concerned does it’s own counter intelligence process to try and find out how they are compromised. They may reveal more of themselves in doing so.
That could have been done via a PRIVATE letter to all politicians, his public comment left only suspicion and innuendo!
This is not just about politicians (even though they think it is). It is a warning to all people who have access to information that is supposed to be kept secret.
Then how long would it have remained private?
Burgess would ordinarily let the foreign intelligence service know privately that they have finally been sniffed out. But no, he chose to engineer a media event. ” All he’s created is a mess. ” No, Michael, he also created a demand for details of which he is the custodian. He and you learned that in first year. So, what is his real end objective?
No M@nchurian candidates allowed in these parts, we only accept Virginian candidates and they can sell us out till the cows come home.
No we shouldn’t….
This is actually a matter of national security.
Mind your own bees wax.
Also spying is so 20th century.
China and Russia both know they can inflict more damage on Australia and democracy by supporting the Coalition.
I’m not joking or being political.
It’s the same with Trump and the US.
Spying has been around since forever, and it’s just as relevant now as it was millennia ago.
Yes but now we have the actual former president of the United States of America doing the bidding of his enemies.
Plus millennia ago we didn’t have data mining and the internet which can be used to destabilise countries and put in said president.
One of the biggest problems with the focus on spying is that it assumes that there is this united front. But when you have mainstream political parties aligned with authoritarian regimes (and I include the Coalition here).
There is so much secrecy and dishonesty, deception and rules that apply to others in the real world are not applied to Politicians.
They are called Right Honorable and how many if them are Honorable, had this been a normal citizen or someone who was in a industry that was “allegedly” spying or who was selling off information , then that persons name would be all over the media ( and) pictures of him.
About time they started apply one rule for all and stop the secrecy!
Um ICAC .. with teeth and transparency
Thought we had one, seemed to disappear into stratosphere along with all other broken promises!
The transparency is the problem. Albanese sold us out to the Coalition by agreeing that the NACC would operate behind closed doors. Some days it’s like the Coalition never lost office.
Coalition and Labor, two sides of one coin on all questions regarding ministerial accountability, party access to wealthy donors and the like. Their interests are identical, so of course they act in concert.
I am sorry to say it but you are absolutely right.