Australia China Council chairman backs cybersecurity crackdown

The Australia China Council chairman says Chinese hackers should be dealt with, regardless of Australia’s trading relationship.

The Australia China Council chairman Warwick Smith. Picture: Britta Campion

Australian business is seriously concerned about the pervasiveness of cyberhacking, warns Warwick Smith, a Seven Holdings director and chairman of the Australia China Council.

In an interview with The Australian in Beijing, Mr Smith, who also heads the Business Council’s committee on China, said he backed Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton in his mission to crack down on cyber crime.

He said that if there were Chinese state actors involved in cyber attacks in Australia they should be dealt with, regardless of Australia’s trading relationship with Beijing.

“The pervasiveness and the capability of cyberhacking is a real concern for business,” he said.

“If there are people who are state operators — whether they be Chinese or from any other country — they need to be stopped.

“It is not something we ought to tolerate. Peter Dutton has a tough job to do and we would want him to do it well.”

Mr Smith, a former Liberal Party minister, said if Chinese state-backed operators were involved in cyberhacking, it was “totally incompatible with their own values and shouldn’t be happening”.

“But if we believe it is, we should stamp it out and Peter Dutton is the man required by his Prime Minister to do it,” he said.

Mr Smith said he had arranged briefings for members of the Business Council with security agencies since taking over the role as head of the BCA’s China committee earlier this year.

He said Australia should not sacrifice its values “in favour of trade at any price” with China.

“We need to stand our ground,” he said.

He did not know if there were issues involving cyberhacking by state-backed operators from China, but if there were it was better for the long-term trading relationship for them to be sorted out.

He said business and government had mutual interests in working together to combat hacking.

Mr Dutton’s comments that Australia did not share the views of the Communist Party of China were nothing new. “We do not accept the values of the Communist Party,” Mr Smith said.

“They don’t align with ours. We are realists. We understand that. We don’t ask China to change their values to align with ours, nor do they ask us to change our values to align with theirs.”

But he said if state operators from China were involved in hacking events such as those involving the federal parliament and the ANU, it was “not acceptable”.

He said it was important for Australia’s long-term trade with China to ensure “those types of behaviours are not happening, if indeed they are happening”.

“We would want (Dutton) to do it because if those issues are dealt with properly and are resolved, it is actually going to strengthen the relationship in a trade context,” he said.

Mr Smith, who is heading the new National Foundation for Australia-China Relations, which will get under way early next year, said he thought the Australia-China relationship was improving after a period when it had been “in a holding pattern”.

“It’s getting better from where it was,” he said.

He expected Prime Minister Scott Morrison to visit China next year.

Mr Smith said he came away from the three-day Australia-China conference over the weekend between business and academics from Australia and Chinese business and government representatives “feeling good with how we are travelling,” in terms of the Australia China relationship.

He said Australia had a very strong relationship with China on a people-to-people basis and on a business-to-business basis, which was highlighted by the weekend conference in Beijing.

“We are pushing ahead with this National Foundation, which is being very well received,” he said. “It is a continuation of what we have been doing with the Australia China Council for 40 years but we are doing it in a way which is a bit more co-ordinated.”

He said there were good business opportunities for Australia in China but they needed to be “pursued with responsibility”.

Mr Smith said the Chinese government had done a successful job in taking hundreds of millions of people out of poverty.

But he said China had become more authoritarian.

“China has had a Communist government for the past 70 years,” he said. “We do see that China has changed its approach and become more authoritarian in recent years.”