Security agencies wary of Andrew Hastie’s asylum call for ‘spy’

Concerns have been raised at senior levels about Andrew Hastie’s Chinese spy call as critics accuse him of ‘getting ahead of himself’.

Andrew Hastie in the House of Representatives in Canberra. Picture: Kym Smith

Concerns have been raised at senior levels of Australia’s intelligence and security community about Liberal MP Andrew Hastie’s call for an alleged former Chinese spy to be granted asylum ahead of the formal assessing of his case.

Mr Hastie, who carries auth­ority as chairman of the federal parliamentary joint committee on intelligence and security, was quick to urge the Morrison government to give Wang Liqiang its “protection” as the first Chinese operative to blow his cover.

The West Australian Liberal, a former Special Air Service Regiment captain, is supported by China watchers who back his persistent criticism of Beijing for meddling in the sovereign affairs of other nations, and for its human rights record.

But critics allege he has gone “too far” and could be “getting ahead of himself” before all evidence is available on the credibility of Mr Wang, who spoke publicly to Nine newspapers and the 60 Minutes program last weekend. “It would be sensible to note, not rush and be led into saying some things,” one said.

Top intelligence sources say an ASIO assessment could conclude Mr Wang is a former Beijing agent, as he claims, with intimate knowledge of covert Chinese operations in Australia, Taiwan and Hong Kong. But they also told The Weekend Australian, while not discounting Mr Hastie’s views, that the 27-year-old’s behaviour was highly unusual.

Professionally trained officers were “unlikely to go to the media” with the identities of Chinese military intelligence officers and ­details of operations because of ­serious ramifications for family members back home.

“They’re more likely to go to the government, and end up with ASIO, which would take some time,” a senior source said. “It doesn’t mean he isn’t who he says he is, but it calls for caution. He may be on the periphery.”

Urging the government to grant asylum to Mr Wang last weekend, Mr Hastie told Nine newspapers: “I’m of the view that anyone who’s willing to assist us in defending our sovereignty ­deserves our protection.”

The outspoken Liberal MP confirmed in The Australian on Friday his immediate reaction when Mr Wang contacted him through an intermediary on October 8 was to “put it back through official channels, to hand it off to the intelligence services”.

In further comments to The Weekend Australian, Mr Hastie stood by his support for Mr Wang. “On the face of it, Wang makes a compelling case for political asylum,” he said. “He’s also gone public at great risk to himself and family. In any case, the security agencies have it in hand. Let’s wait and see.”

Mr Hastie has the backing of his intelligence committee deputy, Victorian Labor MP Anthony Byrne. Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton has also highlighted Mr Hastie’s access to information not available to other MPs, while Scott Morrison said this week a ­decision on Mr Wang’s asylum claim would not require his story to be proven.

Former foreign minister Julie Bishop was sceptical. In pointed criticism of Mr Hastie, she told The Weekend Australian she would caution people to “make judgments via the evidence being gathered” and noted ASIO was still trying to establish the veracity of Mr Wang’s allegations.

“The fact that he has sought to out himself raises fascinating questions because, in my experience, if there were truly a spy, from any nation, who’d been engaged in such high-level espionage, that person would be enveloped within our intelligence community and would be nowhere near the media,” Ms Bishop said.

ASIO issued a rare statement saying “matters that have been ­reported” were under active investigation following the news of Mr Wang’s defection, and allegations 32-year-old Nick Zhao, found dead in a Melbourne motel room in March, had been cultivated by the Chinese government to run as a Liberal candidate.

The domestic spy agency’s ­director-general of security, Mike Burgess, added: “Hostile foreign intelligence activity continues to pose a real threat to our nation and its security.”

Peter Jennings, executive ­director of the Australian Strategic Policy Institute in Canberra, said Mr Hastie had taken an important stand on China and not gone too far with public support for Mr Wang. “It’s been welcome to have an MP to call things plainly, and one of the great difficulties of dealing with China is having politicians of any stripe talk openly and honestly about the problems we face,” Mr Jennings said.

“Hastie has been prepared pretty consistently to call out China’s bad behaviour when others in our country won’t.”

David Brophy, senior lecturer in modern Chinese history at the University of Sydney, said commentary on China-related issues had been “running ahead of what the evidence allows us to say”. “In the case of Wang, unnamed security sources were cited as vouching for the truth of his story, but within 24 hours serious doubts were being raised,” Dr Brophy said.

He claimed the Australian media were also losing credibility on China-related questions with international scholars and analysts. “The foreign interference panic has given Andrew Hastie a valuable media platform to posture as a defender of democracy, and at the same time push for an increased role for unaccountable security agencies in Australian public life. I see a dangerous tendency here for journalists to collaborate with politicians and security agencies, when they should be holding them to account.

“If we’re not more careful, the narrative that China is undermining Australian democracy will end up doing precisely that — undermining Australian democracy.”

It is not the first time Mr Hastie has faced tough criticism for allegedly inflaming tensions between Australia and the Chinese government. He and fellow Liberal James Paterson were refused entry for a China study tour this month, and told they were not “welcome” until they “repent and redress their mistakes”. In August Mr Hastie wrote an opinion piece blasting Australia’s failure to comprehend the challenge to its sovereignty posed by China under Xi Jinping, and particularly angered Beijing by making a comparison with the German advance into France in World War II.

Last year he was accused by Federal Court judge Steven Rares during a defamation hearing involving Nine newspapers of an “absolute abuse of parliamentary privilege and contempt of this parliament” by claiming with full protection that billionaire and party donor Chau Chak Wing was a Chinese agent named “CC-3” involved in a US bribery matter.