ALP turns up heat on foreign agents

Foreign Minister Penny Wong has put Chinese government-run Confucius Institutes on notice that their activities are being closely monitored.

Foreign Minister Penny Wong. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Kelly Barnes

Foreign Minister Penny Wong has put Chinese government-run Confucius Institutes on notice that their activities are being closely monitored, and warned Australian universities against any new partnerships with the centrally-run organisation that supports Beijing’s global propaganda strategy.

As part of a new government-wide crackdown on foreign interference, Home Affairs Minister Clare O’Neil will also vow on Tuesday to name and shame countries behind “insidious” attempts to undermine Australia’s political processes.

In a major speech, Ms O’Neil will detail a recent foreign interference operation foiled by ASIO in which Iran’s authoritarian regime targeted an Iranian Australian linked to local protests over the death of a 22-year-old woman in Tehran for failing to wear her hijab correctly.

The Australian can further reveal that Monash University will end its partnership with Chinese aerospace company COMAC by the middle of the year, after the Senate’s intelligence and security committee warned the arrangement could support the development of Chinese military technology.

It is understood the government will closely monitor the university’s progress in winding up the partnership, which was ­focused on the development of 3D-printed alloys that experts feared could be used to develop hi-tech weapons.

The Albanese government will on Tuesday release its response to the committee’s inquiry on national security risks affecting Australia’s higher education institutions, following detailed briefings for universities by the Foreign Affairs and the University Foreign Interference Taskforce.

Senator Wong told The Australian: “The government remains concerned about foreign interference and potential risks to academic freedom through some foreign arrangements at universities and will keep these arrangements under review.”

Ms O’Neil will tell the ANU’s National Security College that the government is determined to “bring foreign interference out of the shadows and into the light”.

She will reveal the government is developing a new policy to publicly identify cases of foreign interference, in a process led by the nation’s counter foreign ­interference co-ordinator Andrew Kefford and the Department of Home Affairs.

“As Minister for Home Affairs, there is something direct and practical I can do to help equip Australians to fight this problem – to talk as openly as I can about foreign interference in Australia,” she will say, according to an ­advance copy of her speech.

“To authoritarian states who operate in the shadows, I have a simple message – we are watching you. And where our national interest is served by calling out your operations, we will.”

In her first move under the new pro-disclosure policy, Ms O’Neil will reveal Iran’s Islamic theocracy’s brutal response to protests over the death of Iranian woman Mahsa Amini extended to Australia.

“Late last year, ASIO disrupted the activities of individuals who had conducted surveillance of the home of an Iranian dissident, as well as extensive research of this dissident and their family,” Ms O’Neil will say.

“Now, in this instance, our security agencies were onto it like a shot. They tracked the operation and shut it down immediately.”

Ms O’Neil, whose speech fails to name the Chinese Communist Party as the most active source of foreign interference in Australia, also refers to an unnamed country’s attempt last year – disrupted by ASIO – to collect “sensitive personal information of individuals seen as dissidents by the foreign government”.

“This included that country’s foreign intelligence service tasking members of the network to access privileged and sensitive information on the dissidents.”

The country – believed to be China – was behind efforts to arrange counter-protests “with the intent of provoking violence”.