THE HON. MARK DREYFUS QC MP
SHADOW ATTORNEY-GENERAL
SHADOW MINISTER FOR CONSTITUTIONAL REFORM
MEMBER FOR ISAACS
E&OE TRANSCRIPT
RADIO INTERVIEW
ABC RADIO NATIONAL DRIVE
MONDAY, 25 NOVEMBER, 2019
SUBJECTS: China; Foreign interference.
JONATHAN GREEN: Mark Dreyfus is the Shadow Attorney-General, joins us now. Mr Dreyfus, welcome.
MARK DREYFUS, SHADOW ATTORNEY-GENERAL: Thank you for having me Jonathan.
GREEN: If ASIO confirms this, that Nick Zhao was, as has been alleged, targeted by the Chinese Government to be its agent in the Australian Parliament, how serious is that?
DREYFUS: It's extremely serious. We've seen examples in United Kingdom, in the United States, of interference by foreign governments in political processes there. And we've had confirmed by ASIO today, in a very direct statement, the second last sentence of which is this: hostile foreign intelligence activity continues to pose a real threat to our nation and its security. That's a real concern that ASIO has made a formal statement and of course, the allegations themselves in the Nine newspapers, on 60 Minutes last night, are deeply concerning.
GREEN: This is the purchase of an Australian MP. This is, you know, not fake news on Facebook, the sort of the things that we have become accustomed to now, of covert action by foreign powers in the democratic processes. This is a very direct intervention.
DREYFUS: It is and I think we're all awaiting further outcomes of the investigation that ASIO is conducting. The Opposition has sought, and will be receiving later this week, briefings from government agencies about the current state of those investigations.
GREEN: Andrew Hastie, Chair of the Security and Intelligence Committee says he was briefed on Nick Zhao. You're a member of that committee as well. Were you also briefed?
DREYFUS: I'm not going to talk about what occurs in the Intelligence Committee.
GREEN: You can't even say that you were briefed? Andrew Hastie, the Chair, has said that he was?
DREYFUS: That's been my practice for many years, both as Attorney-General and as a member of the Intelligence Committee, Jonathan.
I think what's more important is what has now come to light. Exactly who was briefed and when is less important than what has now come to light. That those very, very serious allegations are being fully investigated. That's been confirmed by the Director-General of Security in his statement.
GREEN: Yep.
DREYFUS: And we're all awaiting, I think rightly, anxiously, for the outcome of the formal investigations into the allegations that have now been aired in the media.
GREEN: The head of ASIO speaks of hostile action. This puts Australia, does it not, in an extraordinary pickle? Here is our most significant trading partner, a country our economic relationship is so significant it would crush our economy if that were to wither and die. And yet, they act in this way, with overt hostility. How do we manage that relationship?
DREYFUS: It's true, Jonathan that Australia has never been in this situation before. Australia wasn't in this situation during the Cold War, when our antagonist was the Soviet Union. Australia's trade throughout the Cold War with the Soviet Union was negligible. We now find ourselves in the situation where our largest trading partner - by a considerable margin over any other trading partners, a country that is responsible for a third of our trade - is a country whose system of government is very different from our own.
GREEN: Should we just take the money?
DREYFUS: We have been taking the money Jonathan. Australia has been trading in increasing volumes with China since the Whitlam Government recognised China in late 1972. And at that point, our trade with China was negligible. Now as I say, China's responsible for a third of our trade.
We have to keep trading with China because it's an integral part of the Australian economy. Taking, not merely huge amounts of minerals, but also manufactured goods and our services, particularly in the form of educational services.
GREEN: Certainly China has tremendous influence over our higher education sector. Today we have sold $600 million worth of our dairy production to China as well. This is a difficult balance to strike and it would seem that we are not letting our security concerns or our concerns over covert action in any way impede our trading relationship.
DREYFUS: It's a very important task for any Australian government. It's been an important task for all Australian governments now for decades. It's going to go on being a very important task, engaging in the balancing process that you've described Jonathan, and no one should pretend that it is an easy task. Because, as I say, we have a very different system of government. Different values, to some extent in relation to democracy, in relation to the approach that we take to human rights, in relation to the approach that we take to government, in relation to the approach that we take to international relations. In all of those methods we have a different approach to China. But nevertheless, this is the task of international relations. You have to find ways to conduct amicable relations.
GREEN: It doesn't sound like we have the upper hand? I wonder, when do we characterise this, as you referred to this before, as a new century's Cold War?
DREYFUS: Well, I didn't call it a Cold War. I said that at the time of the Cold War, when our adversary was the Soviet Union, we had negligible trade with the Soviet Union. So let's be clear.
GREEN: Would you call this a Cold War?
DREYFUS: No. We have warm relations with China in a whole lot of respects. We have huge trade with China and we have shared interests with China in a number of UN and international forums. We have shared interests with China on climate change. This is something I can speak to because I represented Australia at a number of the international climate talks between 2010 and 2012. And we very often worked directly with China to bring about certain outcomes in the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, so there's a simple example. Not just environment, climate change, but other matters in respect to which we share interests with China.
Equally, we're competing with China for influence in our immediate area of the world. We're competing with China for influence in the South Pacific. We're competing with China for influence in Asia, and there are tensions. The fact of those tensions, Jonathan, is not a reason for not continuing to engage in the kind of diplomatic activity that all Australian governments are now required to engage in.
GREEN: And yet we have a regime, as we also read in the papers, made public in the last 24 hours, that is detaining millions of people in concentration camps. At what point do we draw the line?
DREYFUS: Well, I don't know that it's ever a matter of drawing the line as you'd like to put it
GREEN: Why not? Isn't this surely moral?
DREYFUS: What do you think the line might apply to? We do have moral positions. Australian governments, successive Australian governments, Labor and Liberal have expressed Australian values. The current government of Australia needs to express Australian values where they differ from those of China or indeed those of any other country. It's generally speaking going to be in Australia's interests that those values be expressed, but they have to be expressed in particular ways.
Clearly, there been some very concerning revelations now over some years, but particularly in recent weeks, about activities in Xinjiang province which you just referred to, and the current Australian government has had something to say about that, as I would expect them to.
GREEN: The Chinese defector Wang Liqiang - some extraordinary revelations from him as well. ASIO's Mike Burgess says these things were already under investigation. Are you confident of that?
DREYFUS: I've got absolutely no reason to doubt when our primary security agency says that those concerning revelations are under investigation that they are. I would expect nothing less and that's in fact what the statement by the Director-General of Security says. We've sought a briefing on this. The Government needs to listen very, very closely to what our security agencies conclude after they have investigated the allegations that came to light.
GREEN: We've had evidence of one attempt to buy a Federal MP. It's been suggested that subsequent to that, then anyone running for Parliament should be checked by ASIO. Would that be prudent?
DREYFUS: I think that the check is one that occurs at the ballot box. And I don't think that we are in the kind of country where an arm of the executive - which is what the agencies are - should be checking on MPs. I think that, potentially is a very dangerous path to go down.
We've got all sorts of requirements, Jonathan, of MPs, as to disclosure - disclosure of conflict of interest, disclosure of financial interest, disclosure, more recently of potential dual citizenship. All of those are good things. They are matters that need to be put on the public record. That's the form of scrutiny that I have in mind and the Parliament itself has through the Privileges Committees scrutiny of Senators and Members of the House of Representatives.
I think that its a different thing what you're proposing there, that somehow the intelligence agency should be vetting the suitability of people to be in Parliament. I think when you go about this we get to the same end by other means. By public disclosure, by scrutiny by the Parliament, by scrutiny by the Australian people, by scrutiny by people such as yourself, Jonathan, of what isn't publicly known and required to be publicly disclosed by members of Parliament.
GREEN: The Nick Zhao case, it came down to money. It was bankrolling a federal campaign. Is money the root of all evil here in our politics, the cultivation of influence? Is it time to publicly fund that process?
DREYFUS: Well, it's been a tremendous concern to Labor now for years, and over two years ago, Labor said it would not take and we have not taken any donations from a foreign source. It took the Government more than two years to catch up with this and legislate a ban on foreign donations, which, of course, is now consistent with Labor policy. And we think that's a good thing.
Labor stands for real time disclosure of donations. At the moment, there can be a lag of some 18 months between the giving of a donation and its requirement to be publicly disclosed. And Labor standards for a much lower threshold of disclosure. At present that disclosure threshold is approaching $14,000. Labor says that the threshold should be $1,000, and we'll be introducing, as I understand it, private member's bills to bring that about.
These are old problems which this government has not done anything about for its entire term in office. It continued to take foreign donations. It's continued to have, really, a scandalously high disclosure threshold, and it's not interested in real time disclosure.
None of these are unusual things. They occur in the United States, they occur in the United Kingdom, they occur in Queensland where there's lower disclosure thresholds and real time disclosure and we should have them at the federal level.
GREEN: There's an invitation there to speak about the New South Wales branch of your party and Aldi bags of cash, but perhaps Mark Dreyfus for another time. Thanks for your time this evening.
DREYFUS: Thanks very much Jonathan.
ENDS
