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China wants to ‘take over’ Australian politics, former spy chief warns
- Duncan Lewis tells newspaper ‘any person in political office is potentially a target’ for espionage and foreign interference
- He cited incidents of Chinese agents making large contributions to Australian political parties as part of a wide-ranging influence-peddling campaign
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China wants to “take over” Australia’s political system with an “insidious” and systematic campaign of espionage and influence-peddling, Canberra’s ex-spymaster warned in an interview published on Friday.
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Duncan Lewis, who resigned in September after five years at the head of the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (Asio), said China could target anyone in political office, with the impact potentially not known for years to come.
“Espionage and foreign interference is insidious. Its effects might not present for decades and by that time it’s too late,” Lewis was quoted as telling The Sydney Morning Herald in his first interview since leaving office.
“You wake up one day and find decisions made in our country that are not in the interests of our country,” he said in unusually blunt comments from a former senior intelligence official.
“Not only in politics but also in the community or in business. It takes over, basically, pulling the strings from offshore.”
Lewis singled out incidents of Chinese agents making large contributions to Australian political parties as part of a wide-ranging influence-peddling campaign that also targeted media and the country’s universities.
He cited the case of Labor Party power broker Sam Dastyari – dubbed “Shanghai Sam” – who was forced to resign after taking tens of thousands of dollars from a Communist Party-linked donor.
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