Suspended Labor MP Shaoquett Moselmane boasted about raising funds for Anthony Albanese

Shaoquett Moselmane bragged about raising money for Anthony Albanese.

NSW Labor MP Shaoquett Moselmane arrives at his Rockdale home in Sydney after it was raided by federal police as part of an investigation into allegations of foreign interference. Picture: AAP

The NSW state Labor MP raided by federal agents on Friday as part of an ASIO probe into Beijing’s foreign influence activities boasted on Facebook about raising money for Anthony Albanese ahead of the 2019 federal election.

A spokeswoman for the Opposition Leader would not comment on Friday about whether donations from the fundraiser — promoted on Facebook by Shaoquett Moselmane — would be paid back.

Mr Moselmane, who was suspended from the Labor Party on Friday, said on the social media platform that he was “delighted” to have put on the event for Mr Albanese as well as a key Labor frontbencher and leading figure of the NSW Right, Tony Burke.

He also posted photos to his page of Mr Albanese, Mr Burke and former Labor foreign minister and former NSW premier from 1995 to 2005 Bob Carr, who he said was a “special guest” at the fundraising event.

A spokesman for Labor’s NSW division told The Weekend Australian that “all donations are declared­ within the relevant rules” but the party would not be auditing ­donations or looking at any money raised through Mr Moselmane’s Chinese connections.

The ASIO investigation comes about 2½ years after former Labor senator Sam Dastyari resigned from parliament embroiled in his own foreign influence scandal, amid claims he tipped off Chinese billionaire Huang Xiangmo to the fact he was likely under surveillance by intelligence agencies.

Scott Morrison said the raids on Friday morning demonstrated the “extremely serious” and elevated threat to Australia posed by foreign actors, highlighting the importance of tough new foreign interference laws passed in 2017.

While the problem of foreign influence is not confined to one political party, it is the Labor Party’s links with Beijing that have repeatedly been questioned, including the decision of Victoria’s Labor Premier Daniel Andrews to sign his state up to President Xi Jinping’s Belt and Road Initiative.

Since coming to office in 2014, Mr Andrews has visit­ed China six times and, in his last official visit in October last year, he signed the framework agreement locking Victoria into signing a deal with Beijing by mid-2020 over investments worth billions of dollars.

Victoria is the only jurisdiction to sign on to the BRI initiative, and in May Mr Andrews’s Treasurer, Tim Pallas, pinned the blame for China’s 80 per cent tariff hit on Australian barley farmers on the Prime Minister’s push for an independent global investigation into the origin of COVID-19.

“I think the idea of vilification of any single nation in this context, I think, is dangerous, damaging and probably irresponsible in many respects,” Mr Pallas said.

Victorian Labor MP Danny Pearson, parliamentary secretary to Mr Andrews, also told the Legislative Assembly in March that Australia was “fortunate” China’s reaction to the coronavirus outbreak in Wuhan had “given us time” to prepare for the pandemic.

Mr Dastyari remains the highest-profile politician to fall victim to the trap of foreign influence and was caught out contradicting Labor policy on tape by defending China’s actions in the South China Sea while standing next to Mr Huang in June 2016.

Australia went on to cancel Mr Huang’s permanent residency in February last year, in one of the first actions taken against a suspected agent of foreign influence.