Australia's intelligence agency, the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation, has foiled a plot by Chinese agents to bankroll candidates of the opposition Australian Labor Party (ALP) in this year's federal election.
Mike Burgess, the director-general of ASIO, revealed the foreign interference attempt in an annual assessment on Wednesday, but did not name the country. A day later, Australian media outlets revealed a business figure in Australia with ties to China attempted to finance potential candidates of the Australian Labor Party who would be sympathetic to China.
Interestingly, Burgess said the candidates did not have any knowledge of the “foreign plot”.
“Labor leader Anthony Albanese insisted the potential candidates courted by China were not ultimately preselected by his party, and the foreign interference attempt on Labor was unsuccessful,” ABC News reported. Albanese said on Friday that he had spoken to Burgess, who had “reaffirmed that he has not raised concerns about any of my candidates”.
The revelations triggered a row in Australia's parliament. Australian Defence Minister Peter Dutton claimed on Thursday, “The Chinese Communist party, the Chinese government, has also made a decision about who they’re going to back in the next federal election, Mr Speaker, and that is open and that is obvious, and they have picked this bloke [Anthony Albanese] as that candidate,” Dutton was quoted as saying by The Age.
Dutton argued he had not made any allegations against the leader of the opposition. “Mine was on a reflection of the Chinese government, the actions of the Chinese government, and that is the context in which I made the comment and it is perfectly in order,” Dutton was quoted as saying by The Age.
Following the claims, Albanese accused Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison of attempting to politicise the ASIO reports.
Albanese accused Morrison of “trashing the bipartisan tradition in matters of national security for political purposes to win the next election”, News.com.au reported.
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Former prime minister Malcolm Turnbull told ABC Radio that Dutton's claim was “reckless” and accused him of using “matters of grave national security purely for crass political advantage”.
