Australian Federal Police Commissioner Reece Kershaw says the agency will need more Mandarin speakers to handle foreign interventions and will recruit language graduates and members of the Australian-Chinese community to deal with the new sophisticated threat.
The Australian reports that Rees Kershaw said Australia’s security agencies have had difficulty recruiting sufficient numbers of Mandarin-speaking non-Chinese people.
Also according to the Sydney Morning Herald, Rees Kershaw revealed that he has asked U.S. FBI Director Christopher Wray for help in training the 65 personnel of a new unit set up to respond to foreign intervention in how to catch foreign spies.
Rees Kershaw said the team would be expanded, with the federal police currently investigating foreign interventions based on information from the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO) and eventually following up on cases of their own or referrals from state or territory police.
Acting Immigration Minister Alan Tudge told the National Press Club in August, “Foreign interference in Australia is at an all-time high, as ASIO Director General Mike Burgess told the National Press Club this year. Earlier bluntly stated, ‘the threat level is higher now than it was during the Cold War’.”
“Despite having become proud Australians, some communities are still perceived by their country of origin as their own, thus harassing and even exploiting them to advance the interests of this country.”
“Some critics of their country of ancestry remain silent due to threats and intimidation …… Others are persuaded or forced to monitor or harass members of their own community whose views may be contrary to those of the ruling regime in their country of ancestry.”
In his speech, he also referred to concerns about “malicious information or propaganda” disseminated through multicultural media, “including foreign-language media controlled or financed by foreign governments.
In June of this year, federal police and security intelligence organizations raided the Sydney home and office of NSW Labor MP Shaoquett Moselmane, who has been charged with infiltrating the Chinese government.
Moselmane was accused of being linked to Chinese government infiltration, and was subsequently suspended from the Labor Party and frozen from the House of Lords, the first national-level investigation by the Australian government since the passage of new anti-foreign interference laws in 2018. Mosselman himself has denied the allegations.
In mid-September, the ABC reported that federal police were investigating whether the Chinese consulate in Sydney was conspiring with John Zhisen Zhang, an adviser to Musselman, to infiltrate the Labor Party and deliberately influence voters, according to a search warrant the agency had seen.
This has been met with “strong dissatisfaction and firm opposition” from China, and Zhisen has asked the High Court to quash the warrants to search his home, business and Senator Musselman’s office.
A police spokesman said the investigation was ongoing.
According to court documents, Australia’s anti-foreign interference law makes it a crime for foreign agents to attempt to interfere with the democratic process to aid their intelligence activities or to commit harmful or covert acts that undermine Australia’s national security.
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