Correspondent's Notebook

Spying on the boss

27 March 2009

Elements in Australia’s defence establishment have been hit by allegations of spying on their political boss, Defence Minister Joel Fitzgibbon.

The highest-ranked civilian public servant in Australia’s defence department, Secretary Nick Warner, has ordered an investigation into the spy claims.

The suspects are accused of hacking into the minister’s computer in search of information about his long friendship with Helen Liu, a wealthy, Sydney-based business woman, who is also Chinese.

Radio Australia’s Canberra Correspondent, Linda Mottram, looks at the spy scandal and its political reverberations in Australia’s capital.

Citing various China-based sources, Fairfax newspapers’ Beijing correspondent has reported that Ms Liu is known in China for her philanthropy and as a well-connected leading light from Shandong province, who’s been seen with significant Chinese figures including former Premier Li Peng.

She’s been praised for reporting on Australian policy developments to the appropriate Chinese authorities and for playing her role on behalf of the motherland.

Australian analysts say this is what’s expected by China of all its citizens.

None of this necessarily makes Helen Liu a security risk, though former military intelligence officer turned academic, Clive Williams, of the Australian National University, says there is cause for concern.

He says it’s common for China to invite foreigners to visit the country, where he says the copying of laptop contents is also common.

He notes also that China takes a long-term view of intelligence collection.

He cites a recent case in the United States which found that Chinese interests started cultivating a person of interest 20 years before they came to a position of influence.

Joel Fitzgibbon has known Helen Liu he says for 16 years.

What has further complicated the picture though is that having declared that he’d never accepted any major gifts from Ms Liu, Mr Fitzgibbon was then forced to admit that he in fact took trips to China in 2002 and 2005 paid for by Ms Liu but not declared on a public register as required of Australian parliamentarians by law.

Though he apologised, it was a compromising error by Mr Fitzgibbon, especially given the Chinese connection and especially given his front line role in Australian defence policy.

But Mr Fitzgibbon is not the logical head to roll over the spy scandal, should it be proven to be true.

Many observers believe it points to rogue elements in the defence department, public servants out of control, in a system that provides checks and balances that are supposed to avoid just such things.

Those are the elements that should be rooted out, long-time observers say.

As to evidence about the accuracy of the spy claims, intriguingly, Australia’s acting director general of security has said in a statement that ASIO, Australia’s domestic spy agency, has no information relating to Ms Liu – which, in the past, would have given rise to any security concern.

That still leaves whatever ASIO may discover in future, if anything, and it leaves unanswered the question of information other agencies may hold, for example, ASIS, Australia’s overseas intelligence agency, and the very secretive Defence Signals Directorate – the signals intelligence agency within the defence department which its claimed did the spying on their very own minister.

Much remains unanswered.

Even before this scandal, the tension between the minister and elements of his department was one of Canberra’s open secrets.

Even without this week’s claims there were serious matters to attend to in defence.

That’s now escalated considerably, while adding to the national debate about just how Australia should handle China.