SPIES IN AUSTRALIA’S PARLIAMENT-
FROM HAWKE & CARR TO ABBOTT & BISHOP TO RUDD-TURNBULL AND GILLARD
The Australia media on Thursday 29th February was abuzz with two stories concerning so-called spies. First, the Director General of the Australian Security Intelligence Organization (ASIO) Mark Burgess claimed that a person working within a foreign intelligence cell in Australia, dubbed the “A-Team” was offered access to a former but unnamed prime minister.
The second story was that a Chinese-Australian business man and former Liberal political candidate Di Sanh Duong was jailed for two and a half years for attempting to influence a former acting immigration minister, Alan Tudge, Di Sanh Duong is believed to be the first person convicted under the Foreign Interference Act, passed in 2018 by the federal parliament. Influence operations by foreign governments has been going on in Canberra since the 1950s.
ISRAELIS-AMERICANS- BRITISH AND CHINESE SPIES
Many Australians have been cultivated by the US, the Israeli and the British governments, and their associated intelligence agencies. This grooming included all expense paid invitations for trips to conferences in the these countries and the introduction to officials.
However, a question arises in the context of these clandestine relationships West on West (Australia). Is it illegal, immoral or even fattening?
The USA, UK, Israel and NATO are after all very close allies of Australia and their inter dependent relationships, even if in the shadows, is necessitated out of fear and concern that Australia is the weakest and most vulernable link in the chain of this relationship. With China and Russia it is a completely different story.
TWO BOBS EACH WAY- CARR AND HAWKE
Leaked US Embassy cables in Caberra and consulates in Sydney and Melbourne, published by Wikileaks found that former NSW Premier and foreign Minister Bob Carr had been briefing the US embassy since the 1970s on the internal decision making of the Australian Government during the Whitlam era, and on the internal workings of the Australian Labor Party (ALP).
Carr’s relationship began in the mid 1970s when Carr was president of Young Labor and an education officer of the NSW Labor council. In recent years, Carr has been close to the Chinese, and has been of interest to Australian intelligence organizations in the past.
The late wife of Bob Carr, Malaysian Chinese born Helena Carr was the recipient of the largesse of Chinese spy agencies which she channeled through her relatives in Malaysia and Australia to avoid detection. Her loyalties were first and foremost like those of 90% of the Chinese diaspora, to her community, the Chinese and China.
THE CULT OF MONEY- AN AUSSIE STAPLE
Wikileaks cables also pointed to former Labor senator Mark Arbib, who was a ‘protected’ US embassy source, passing on information and commentary about Australian politics. US diplomatic cables also implicated the former Australian Council of Trade Unions (ACTU) president and later prime minister Bob Hawke, saying he regularly conferred with the US Consulate in Melbourne and with Israeli government officials and its consular staff in Melbourne and in Canberra during his ACTU years. It is a relationship he continued through his mates the late Sir Peter Ables, Mark and Isi Leibler and others who acted as conduits for his trysts with the Israelis.
Leaked US documents have confirmed what many believed that the US had infiltrated the Australian Labor Party. One cannot forget former ALP party secretary David Combe’s relationship with Soviet diplomat back in 1984, which led to swift action on the part of the Hawke government at the time, in the interests of “sovereignty and transparency”.
Fast forward to the present, the current foreign minister Penny Wong’s brother is a member of Malaysia-China Chamber of Commerce organization – Youth Entrepreneurs Committee in Malaysia, which is directly funded by the Chinese United Front.These relationships don’t mean any ill-proprietary. Wong’s relationship is one degree away.
In Asia, organizations seek funds from any source willing to provide them. In Australia today, 5.5 percent of the population are Chinese. Most are proudly Chinese and have a strong loyalty towards China. They are also Australians and proud to be a citizen. The Chinese diaspora doesn’t see any conflict in this.
Actions taken to benefit both parties would be considered something positive for the Chinese. This is the culture Australia must deal with as diaspora identity is complex and blurred.
The former Liberal MP Gladys Liu had to deal with this. She would always be guilty by association. Just like Penny Wong’s brother, Liu was a member of the China Overseas Exchange Association, purported to be a bureau within the United Front, Liu also associated with members of the local Chinese community, who were also purported to be connected wit the CCP. So, was Liu a patriotic Australian trying to bring Australian-Chinese relationship closer, or a person of influence?
TO THE CHINESE 2 WAYS OF CAPTURING THE ‘GEWI LO’-IN BED AND IN HIS STOMACH
Move a step further to the present, one merely has to look at the Chinese mindset, its sinister links with China and their objective and means of infiltrating and influencing Australians to ‘their way of life’ in a “positive way” manifested in the following;
The food and cultural travelogue shows intensely aired on the SBS (Special Broadcasting Service) and the ABC TV, (both national broadcasters) now in the thrall of influencers Adam Liaw, Poh Ling Yau and their half a dozen or more exponents of “Chinese culture” (mostly Chinese) are funded by the same sources in the Chinese government. Each of these consciously advancing China’s objectives of domination of the Australian continent.
The air time allocated to Liaw and Poh by the ABC and the SBS is disproportionaly greater than that allowed to any other ethnic community or cultural group (apart from the mainstream Anglo Celtics) in Australia. Channel 10 and 7 are no different in their gullibilty and cooperation with the Chinese government through these agents of influence in this regard.
If one reads Clive Hamilton’s 2018 tome ‘The Silent Invasion: China’s Influence in Australia’, no one will be surprised with the networking, financial enticements, donations to political parties, organizational connections with universities and labour unions, and even ‘honey traps’ set by foreign entities carried out at all levels of Australian politics and government today.
China is doing at an unprecedented level, what the US did in the 50s onwards in Australia. What China has is a massive diaspora, which extends Chinese influence at all levels in Australian society. The author knows for a fact, this was all studied and planned by the Chinese more than two decades ago, where Chinese academics, the diaspora in Australia, and intelligence worked hand in hand to develop an executable multipronged strategy.
This strategy is much more sophisticated than what Philip Agee described about the CIA in the 50s and 60s, in ‘Inside the Company: CIA Diary’. Today, many acts of espionage are not even recognized as such, disguised as cultural exchange, mutual cooperations, or just friendships. One will not even know they have come in contact with a foreign operative. Espionage has become blurred today. Originally published in Eurasia Review 29th February 2024.
Ha ha Julie Bishop to the rescue in Myanmar? She is part of the problem having interfered in its internal affairs on the side of Aung San Su Kyii, then laying the groundwork for her betrayal. That was her contribution as Australia’s foreign minister. What can she do that is constructive now?
“One rotten fish fills the whole boat with a foul smell”- Myanmarese proverb.