An Australian government scheme to bring foreign influence out of the shadows has “significant flaws” and enforcement has “focused almost exclusively on China with little success”, an inquiry has found.
In a damning report published on Wednesday, a powerful parliamentary committee said the scheme had achieved “such meagre results that it would be difficult to justify the ongoing compliance burden and resources without major reform”.
Under proposed changes, the government would expand the definition of foreign government-related bodies and gain the power to place people on the public influence register against their will.
The parliamentary joint committee on intelligence and security (PJCIS) said it “strongly urges” the government to use this new power to target the Chinese Communist party’s United Front Work Department.
A public register was set up in 2018 as part of a broader package of laws by the then Turnbull government to crack down on espionage, foreign interference and undisclosed foreign influence.
Since then, there have been 127 registrants on the public register, with 560 entries for activities undertaken on behalf of a foreign principal. No criminal prosecutions have been launched for breaches.
The bipartisan report by the PJCIS said the scheme had “failed to achieve its intended purpose” and suggested that “more transparency on foreign influence has been achieved through investigative journalism and parliamentary inquiries”.
“The committee notes with concern the very low number of registrations and minimal compliance and enforcement activity that has occurred in the six years since the establishment of the Scheme and the significant flaws in its design and implementation,” said the report tabled in parliament.
“Enforcement activity has focused almost exclusively on China with little success, while neglecting any material focus on other countries of significant concern (where there are no or very limited registrations).
“These include authoritarian nations like Russia and Iran which engage in malevolent foreign influence, as well as nations with which Australia has friendly and positive relations, such as India, which engage in foreign influence operations that should be transparently declared.”
The committee, chaired by the Labor MP Peter Khalil, said the scheme should remain “country-agnostic” rather than targeting specific countries of concern.
But it said it would be “common sense” for bureaucrats to give highest priority to investigating “influence activities on behalf of authoritarian states who seek to conceal their activities as well as those countries identified as most active and posing the greatest risks”.
Malcolm Turnbull, who introduced the scheme when he was prime minister, had told the inquiry it was noteworthy that “according to the transparency register there is apparently no organisation in Australia that has any association with the united front work department of the Communist party of China”.
“I would love to think that was true, but regrettably I can say absolutely that it is not true,” Turnbull told a PJCIS hearing last year.
The PJCIS said on Wednesday that bureaucrats should then work with intelligence agencies “to identify and proactively ensure the registration” of United Front Work Department “activities and proxies” in Australia.
The bipartisan committee said the definition of a foreign government-related entity should “recognise a relationship of control through chains of holding and subsidiary companies … no matter how many subsidiaries are involved”.
It should cover entities that are “required by law to assist or facilitate the activities of the branch of the foreign political organisation”.
PJCIS suggested a carve-out for high-profile media interviews in the wake of previous exchanges between the former prime minister Kevin Rudd and the Attorney General’s Department over whether he needed to register public interviews with state-owned or funded broadcasters.
The report said the early focus on “innocuous public activity by high-profile political figures” was “misguided” and “contributed to a negative perception” of the scheme’s practical usefulness.
The US and UK this week imposed sanctions on individuals and groups that they say targeted politicians, journalists and critics of Beijing in an extensive cyber espionage campaign.
The Australian government said on Tuesday that it “joins the United Kingdom and other international partners in expressing serious concerns about malicious cyber activities by China state-backed actors targeting UK democratic institutions and parliamentarians”.
A Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson, Lin Jian, said the accusations were part of the US-led effort to “spread all kinds of disinformation about the threats posed by the so-called ‘Chinese hackers’”.
