Hostile Countries ‘Aggressively’ Seeking Australia’s Secrets, ASIO Warns

Other countries are trying to discover everything from Australia’s defence capabilities to medical advances, and more needs to be done to stop them, ASIO says.

Australian Army soldiers run during Exercise Chong Ju at the Puckapunyal Military Area on May 9, 2019 in Seymour, Australia. Scott Barbour/Getty Images

The Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO) has told the Joint Parliamentary Committee on Defence and Security that “hostile foreign states and their intelligence services are aggressively seeking secrets” and that more needs to be done to stop them.

The wanted information includes details about Australia’s defence capabilities, government decision-making, political parties, foreign policy, critical infrastructure, space technologies, academic and think tank research, medical advances, key export industries, and personal information.

The Committee is reviewing a proposed amendment to the Defence Act which would prevent people with knowledge of sensitive defence information from training or working for certain foreign militaries or governments where that activity would put Australia’s national security at risk.

It is expected that work for certain countries will be exempt from the provisions such as AUKUS members, plus New Zealand and Canada.

Could Cause ‘Immeasurable Harm’

In its submission, ASIO says protecting Australia’s secrets is critical to keeping Australians safe, preserving the country’s democratic values, maintaining strategic advantage, and retaining the trust of key allies.

It warns that permitting former Defence members to perform work for foreign interests without any oversight or restriction had “the potential to significantly undermine the interests of Australia and Australia’s allies, and cause immeasurable and irreparable damage to Australia’s security, defence, and international relations.”

It wants to see secrecy provisions hardened for intelligence community personnel due to the “unprecedented threat currently facing Australia.”

As it stands, the Bill applies only to former Defence personnel. Still, ASIO points out that “a much wider range of government agencies and departments have access to secrets and expertise that are of great interest to Australia’s adversaries. No equivalent offence exists for former members of the national intelligence community, including former ASIO employees or affiliates.”

While former spies may breach other legislation by sharing their knowledge and expertise, the agency admits that detecting this is often difficult “and the ability to obtain relevant evidence may be hindered by the jurisdictional limits of Australia’s law enforcement agencies.”

It therefore wants the restrictions in the Bill extended to a wider range of ex-government employees.

Pilots Lured by Beijing

In 2022, intelligence revealed that serving and former military pilots from Western countries were being approached through international flight training schools to provide training in China.

“ASIO is aware that foreign intelligence services deliberately identify vulnerabilities in the essential systems and processes of other countries, including their legal systems, to exploit and leverage to their own advantage,” the submission says.

The Australian Defence Force, in its submission, calls the Bill “an important step towards ensuring foreign actors cannot collect Defence secrets through the employment of former Defence personnel, or Australians with knowledge of and access to sensitive technology and military information.”

Academics Concerned

However, Senior Research Fellow at the University of Queensland School of Law, Brendan Walker-Munro, said the Bill “contains sweeping, vague and incredibly punitive provisions with no logical, rational or observable connection to ’military secrets,' which is the supposed policy harm which it is intended to remedy.”

He said it also “unnecessarily exposed former ADF members and APS staff to significant potential criminal penalties for merely exercising their rights to seek employment for an entity which resides outside Australia,” and recommended it not be passed in its present format and be significantly amended before any future re-introduction to Parliament.

He noted that if someone were to provide security classified information to a foreign principal, they were already liable for prosecution for those offences.

“If they do so in circumstances where there is recklessness or intentional surrounding the impact on Australian national security, a prosecution for espionage or foreign interference could also already be open depending on the facts,” he says in his submission.

“If the [Bill] is passed in its present form, it will have the somewhat ridiculous effect of criminalising defence staff members’ dealings with information that is either unclassified ... or dealings with information that has no effect on Australian national security.”

By not defining “military tactics, military techniques or military procedures,” the Bill could criminalise a history professor who delivers a lecture to a Vietnamese university about Australian military tactics used during the Vietnam War, Mr. Walker-Munro said.

That concern is echoed in the submission of Macquarie University, which is concerned that the definition “may be broad enough to be held to apply to educational services ... even where the academics may have no knowledge of sensitive defence information.”

Committee chair Peter Khalil said: “The committee will closely examine the Military Secrets Bill to ensure that it appropriately manages the potential risk of former defence staff members revealing sensitive defence information and placing Australia’s national security at risk.

“The committee will then test this evidence with the Department of Defence, who would administer this legislation, and the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation.”

The committee holds its first hearing in Canberra today.