MH370: Report on Chinese search ship withheld

Australian officials will not release a document on how many days a Chinese vessel has looked for ­flight MH370

Chinese ship Dong Hai Jiu 101 in the shipping channel at Gage Roads off Fremantle last month.

Australian government officials have refused to release a document revealing how many days a Chinese government vessel suspected of spying has spent on its official mission looking for ­Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370.

The deputy secretary of the Department of Infrastructure and Regional Development, ­Judith Zielke, knocked back the Freedom of Information request from The Australian this week on the grounds that to release the document “would cause harm to the Australian government’s ­relationship with other governments”.

Ms Zielke said she had ­decided to use the exemption under the FOI Act relating to “documents affecting national security, defence or inter­national relations”.

As revealed by The Australian last month, security experts ­believe the Chinese government vessel Dong Hai Jiu 101, which arrived in Fremantle in February officially to join the search for MH370, is mostly probably spending its time gathering ­intelligence on Australian military activity in what they ­describe as “target rich” Western Australia.

The Perth area is home to the navy’s submarine base and Special Air Service regiment, while farther north lie top-secret naval communications and electronic spying joint facilities operated with the US and Britain.

An analysis of weekly operational search bulletins issued by the government’s Joint Agency Co-ordination Centre indicates the Dong Hai Jiu 101 has spent only 17 to 30 days actually operating sonar imaging “tow fish” looking for the downed aircraft in the southern Indian Ocean.

A few days after The Aus­tralian revealed the security ­experts’ opinion that the Dong Hai Jiu 101 was spying, a Chinese embassy spokesman said the ­report “distorted the truth”.

“The assertions in the report that the vessel may be ‘gathering intelligence’ are wild speculation and a mere reflection of a Cold War-style scare campaign,” the spokesman wrote in a letter published in the The Australian.

Defence Minister Marise Payne has declined to say whether officials believe the Chinese vessel is spying, saying the government does not comment on “intelligence matters”.