The agent, or “puppeteer,” had hired someone in Australia and equipped them with hundreds of thousands of dollars from an offshore bank account with the aim of “shaping the jurisdiction’s political scene to benefit the foreign power,” Burgess continued. “It was like a foreign interference start-up.”
The head of the ASIO — akin to the FBI in the United States — was careful not to mention the foreign power, the political party targeted or the location in Australia. But like a spy novel blurb, his deliberately vague account of the foiled plot only sparked further interest. And coming just a few months ahead of what promises to be a close federal election, the speech instantly became fodder for fierce government attacks on the opposition.
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“We now see eence that the Chinese Communist Party — the Chinese government — has also made a decision about who they’re going to back in the next federal election,” Defense Minister Peter Dutton claimed in Parliament the next day. “And they have picked this bloke, the leader of the opposition, as their candidate.”
The attacks — which critics have compared to a Cold War-era scare campaign — intensified after local media outlets reported that the plot did involve China targeting federal Labor candidates in New South Wales, ahead of this year’s election.
On Wednesday, Prime Minister Scott Morrison of the ruling Liberal Party went so far as to call Labor Party leaders “Manchurian candidates” — a comment he then was forced to withdraw.
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The alleged plot and subsequent political haymaking have dominated headlines for more than a week in Australia, where anti-Chinese sentiment has risen in recent years amid a chilly economic and diplomatic standoff. Beijing launched an informal trade war against Canberra in early 2020 after officials Down Under called for an investigation into the origins of the coronavirus pandemic.
The relationship soured further in September when Australia announced an agreement with the United States and Britain to obtain nuclear-powered submarines capable of contesting China’s rapidly growing navy.
China has denied the latest allegation, but it comes on the heels of a string of other alleged Chinese-interference plots that have targeted both major parties in Australia over the past five years.
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With Morrison’s conservative coalition trailing in the polls, critics have accused him of politicizing intelligence in a way that is not only misleading, but also might cause more damage.
“The coalition government is arguing that the opposition is acting as a Manchurian candidate to China. That’s just completely untenable. That plays into China’s hands,” said John Fitzgerald, professor of Chinese politics and history at Swinburne University. “Australia’s falling about itself in a sort of partisan blame game. No one wins out of that except China.”
The Labor Party has said it has done nothing wrong, and in his speech, Burgess noted that the targeted candidates had no knowledge of the plot. Yet it is Chinese Australians, already the target of rising hate crimes, who could be most affected by the attacks.
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“Trying to score political points off the idea that one side of politics has been bought by China is very damaging to the community and damaging to social cohesion,” said Natasha Kassam, an expert at the Lowy Institute and former Australian diplomat in China who has polled Australia’s Chinese communities.
“We have seen so many Chinese Australians withdraw or retreat from public life because they feel that they are treated unfairly or are under additional layers of scrutiny,” she said. “If the leader of the opposition is not off-limits to suggestions that they’ve been bought by China, what would any ordinary Australian of Chinese heritage think?”
Australia and China were on good terms as recently as 2015, when they struck a free-trade agreement. But by 2017, the conservative prime minister who pushed the deal through Parliament, Malcolm Turnbull, was warning of Chinese meddling. That same year, a Labor senator announced he was stepping down after accepting money from a Chinese businessman.
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In 2019, the ASIO announced it was investigating an alleged Chinese plot to infiltrate Parliament after a Liberal Party member who had reportedly been approached by Chinese agents was found dead in a Melbourne hotel room — an incident later deemed to be suicide. And in 2020, a Chinese Australian with Liberal ties became the first person charged under new foreign interference laws. Di Sanh “Sunny” Duong, who said he has been accused of conspiring with the Chinese Communist Party, has denied the allegations and is awaiting trial.
In his speech, Burgess said he was departing from the normally dry format of an annual threat assessment because, with the federal election roughly three months away, it was “important to explain what political interference actually looks like.”
Some took issue with his timing, which echoed James B. Comey’s decision to publicly announce the FBI was renewing its investigation into Hillary Clinton’s emails days before the 2016 election in the United States.
“I think history will probably judge that the director general of ASIO made a serious error of judgment in publicizing this report at this time, so close to an election, because by doing so, albeit without revealing any details, he naturally laid open a path for a wealth of speculation without proing any significant details about who was involved and all of that, but also how serious it really was,” said Hugh White, a professor of strategic studies at the Australian National University.
The day after Burgess’s speech, Morrison pivoted on the Parliament floor from talking about taxes to warning that Labor Party leader Anthony Albanese was backed by “those who are seeking to coerce Australia.”
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Albanese called the comments “nonsense” and said Burgess had never raised any concerns about Labor candidates, which the ASIO chief later confirmed. Turnbull, the former Liberal prime minister, called the attacks “reckless” and a sign of Morrison’s “desperation.”
But the issue was given new life a day later, when the Sydney Morning Herald quoted anonymous security sources saying the plot involved China targeting Labor candidates in New South Wales — the country’s most populous state.
Two federal lawmakers, one Liberal and one Labor, confirmed the outlines of the plot to The Washington Post. They spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss issues of national security.
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The story threatened to overshadow a visit last week by U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken for a meeting of the Quad, a bloc of Indo-Pacific democracies created to counter China’s growing regional influence.
On Monday, Labor Sen. Kimberley Kitching named Chinese Australian political donor Chau Chak Wing as the “puppeteer.” Burgess refused to confirm or deny her claim, which, because it was made in Parliament, is exempt from Australian defamation laws.
“I am shocked and disappointed at the baseless and reckless claim made by Senator Kimberley Kitching,” Chau said in a statement. “I am a businessman and philanthropist. I have never had any involvement or interest in interfering with the democratic election process in Australia.”
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Five years of tensions have left Australians much more wary of China, said Kassam, the former diplomat, “so you can make these very specific claims in Parliament or on breakfast television, and they will resonate in a way they didn’t a few years ago.”
Yet the Labor Party had largely embraced the government’s policies toward China, including the submarine deal, she said. And while a Labor victory later this year could proe a “circuit breaker” for the heated relationship, the plot allegation could also lead a Labor government to feel the need to demonstrate its national security credentials by maintaining a tough line.
In its eagerness to score a political win, the Australian government had ignored its own top intelligence chiefs, including Burgess’s warnings about infighting, said Fitzgerald, the Chinese politics expert.
“It is critical we do not let fear of foreign interference undermine stakeholder engagement or stoke community division,” Burgess said in his speech. “Were this to happen, it would perversely have the same corrosive impact on our democracy as foreign interference itself.”
