Push for ASIO to brief NSW MPs on spies

The NSW parliament is seeking to have formal briefing sessions with ASIO for MPs about how to manage foreign agents.

Federal officers enter the home of NSW Labor MP Shaoquett Moselmane in Sydney’s Rockdale on Friday June 26. Picture: AAP

The NSW parliament is seeking to have formal briefing sessions with ASIO for MPs across the political divide so they can be armed with critical information about how to manage foreign agents that may be cultivating them for nefarious purposes.

The Australian can reveal that NSW parliamentary officials contacted the Australian Security ­Intelligence Organisation earlier this year amid concerns about several interest groups and organisations engaging with political leaders.

A discussion was held with agency officials about providing formalised briefing sessions for MPs but this was put on hold due to the COVID-19 pandemic, though the desire to hold such briefings remains.

An ASIO spokesman said ­“details of these discussions are sensitive and it would inappropriate to comment further”.

After the request, the Australian Federal Police and ASIO conducted an extraordinary joint operation of raids on the home and parliamentary office of Labor MP Shaoquett Moselmane and his part-time staffer John Zhang.

Labor MP Shaoquett Moselmane and John Zhang.

Neither men have been charged with any offence, though both have been questioned. Mr Moselmane, an outspoken proponent of the Chinese government, has claimed parliamentary privilege over several documents being sought by the AFP. The decision on whether they can be ­released will be delegated to the parliament’s privileges committee next month.

Mr Moselmane has previously said he has done nothing wrong, and that ASIO informed him that he was not the target of the investigation.

The MP was closely associated with two Chinese interest groups: the Australian Shanghainese ­Association and the Australian Chinese Association, both of which counted Mr Zhang as a senior official. Mr Moselmane’s speeches to parliament lauding the presidency of China’s Xi Jinping have become a line of inquiry for the investigation.

Another organisation — the Australia China Economics, Trade and Culture Association — has been linked by China analysts to Beijing’s network of foreign influence operations, known as the United Front Work Department.

Until 2019 its deputy secretary-general was Mr Zhang, whose house was raided by federal police last month. Another life patron, billionaire political donor Huang Xiangmo, was expelled from Australia following ASIO advice concerning foreign interference.

The organisation, which has made sizeable donations to the Liberal and Labor Party, was named in a federal parliamentary submission in 2018 as one whose senior figures were “closely associated” with the Chinese government. It has previously described itself as an apolitical organisation.

The effort to hold briefings with ASIO follows a similar one undertaken for federal MPs in the wake of similar concerns about foreign interference. In February ASIO ­director-general of security Mike Burgess said the threat of foreign espionage and interference activities was “currently unprecedented” and higher than it had been “at the height of the Cold War”.

A government source familiar with the matter said the need for ASIO briefings was long overdue for state parliaments, which were notionally seen as soft targets for foreign interference operations.

“This is a wake-up call to state politicians that they owe an ­obligation to the sovereignty of Australia in respect of their interaction with agents of foreign influence,” the source said.