Albanese government ‘failed to act’ on reforming foreign influence laws: Coalition

The federal government is yet to honour its own commitment to reform laws that limit foreign governments from meddling with Australian society, almost a year after a review found current legislation had abjectly failed.

The Coalition has criticised Labor’s sluggish response in reforming foreign influence legislation, despite the government promising in June that it would do so.

The Foreign Influence Transparency Scheme (FITS), introduced with much fanfare by the Turnbull government in 2018 amid heightened concern about covert activity linked to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), requires individuals and entities to register activities undertaken in Australia on behalf of a foreign principal for the purpose of political or governmental influence.

Opposition home affairs spokesperson James Paterson.Credit: Dominic Lorrimer

The scheme’s latest annual report published in December reveals a drop in registered Chinese companies from 55 in 2022-23 to 37 in 2023-24, after a powerful parliamentary committee found in March that “enforcement activity has focused almost exclusively on China with little success”.

Federal Labor accepted the committee’s recommendations in June. However, the government is yet to introduce legislation to make the scheme more effective, with the amount of time available to present new legislation to parliament narrowing ahead of a looming federal election.

Coalition spokesman for home affairs and cybersecurity James Paterson said the government had failed to act on reforming laws that would better improve Australia’s national security.

“The Foreign Influence Transparency Scheme is an important tool to shine light on otherwise covert foreign government attempts to influence our democracy – but it has been clear for some time it is not working as intended,” Paterson said.

“Given the heightened strategic environment, fixing it should be an urgent priority. But despite having a report with recommendations to fix it from the parliamentary joint committee on intelligence and security for almost a year, the Albanese government has failed to act.

“There are at most a handful of sitting weeks before the election. We should not enter into campaign mode having failed to deal with this problem given the risk to the integrity of the election. It’s time for Labor to act and introduce legislative reform to the FITS.”

In 2023, former prime minister Malcolm Turnbull told the committee that it was absurd former prime minister Kevin Rudd was required to declare his interviews with the BBC while no representatives of the CCP’s United Front Work Department had registered their activities.

Among 14 recommendations for reform, the committee called for the legislation to be updated to allow the secretary of the Attorney-General’s Department to register individuals who should be listed under the scheme but had not done so themselves.

George Brandis, the former attorney-general who was responsible for the legislation in 2017, told this masthead reform was necessary seven years after the bill had been introduced.

“The FITS legislation was world-leading, and has since been copied by other countries, including the UK. However, like all legislation that introduces a new regulatory regime, it is important that it be fine-tuned in light of operational experience,” he said.

Last year’s March budget allocated $2.1 million to undertake legislative reform of the act.

“The substantive task of legislative reform is under way,” a spokesperson for Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus said.

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