Countering foreign interference: the government should name names
28 Jan 2025| and

It didn’t receive much publicity amid summertime’s distractions, but Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke unveiled on 14 January what’s been described as the ‘first ever analysis of foreign interference and espionage threats’. It’s safer to say the first publicly released by the Australian government. It’s a step towards what we need: political leaders explaining these threats and naming the sources of these dangers. But it’s only a step, because the document still doesn’t name names.

Since 2020, Australia’s Director-General of Security, Mike Burgess, has raised public awareness through annual threat assessments. In 2024, Burgess said that if we had a threat level for espionage and foreign interference it would be at ‘certain’—the highest level. The threat was ‘deeper and broader’ than we might think, he added.

Burgess’ ground-breaking assessments have been a vital source of information. They have raised public awareness and built confidence in Australia’s operational response through the Counter Foreign Interference Taskforce, which is headed by an officer from the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO). The taskforce combines ASIO’s and the Australian Federal Police’s sophisticated capabilities, along with those from other National Intelligence Community agencies.

The government’s new guide is called ‘Countering Foreign Interference in Australia: Working together towards a more secure Australia’. It covers the basics of what foreign interference is, how it manifests and how it adapts. The document also identifies contact points for reporting suspected interference. The guide borrows heavily from the earlier threat assessments.

So, what is foreign interference? The guide defines it as activities carried out by, on behalf of, directed or subsidised by, or undertaken in active collaboration with, a foreign power and involving either a threat to a person or being clandestine or deceptive and detrimental to Australia’s interests. Espionage is relegated to a subsidiary activity in this regard.

Like previous official statements, the guide distinguishes foreign interference from foreign influence, which refers to activities conducted by foreign governments openly and transparently.

This distinction matters in a society and economy as open as Australia. Assertions that Elon Musk has engaged in foreign interference demonstrate how the concept is misunderstood: Musk’s comments are far from clandestine, so they’re not foreign interference.

The guide also describes typical warning signs of foreign interference for those who might be at risk: communities (especially foreign diasporas), democratic institutions, the higher education and research sector, industry, and media and communications.

The highlighting of media and communications as targets (and vectors) for foreign interference is important. In this regard, it’s important to distinguish misinformation from disinformation. The source of misinformation is just mistaken; the source of disinformation aims to deceive. Disinformation then becomes foreign interference when foreign powers seek to exploit societal divisions or amplify false narratives to manipulate public opinion, destabilise societies or influence decision-making processes.

The guide fails to consider that foreign interference isn’t a temporary or new aberration. In fact, it’s an intensifying threat that we’ve faced for decades. We just thought we were exempt from this foreign interference.

Precisely because it is pervasive and sophisticated, foreign interference requires our political leaders—not just senior intelligence leaders, who have long been active in this regard—to explain the threat and how we should adapt to what’s coming.

We say we live in the most dangerous time since World War II. In such times, history tells us we need to prepare ourselves—as political representatives such as Winston Churchill and Franklin D Roosevelt explained to their people in the lead-up to WWII and successive leaders did through the Cold War.

While the guide commendably seeks to do just that, it does not identify perpetrators. This is a problem. While senior intelligence and departmental officials must be circumspect, we need elected governments to speak plainly and directly to their publics.

Unfortunately, Western governments, including Australia’s, are increasingly reluctant to come clean publicly about who, in Burke’s own words, is threatening ‘our most valuable national assets—our social cohesion, our trusted democracy, our security and prosperity and our freedom of thought and expression’. It’s been almost a decade since Malcolm Turnbull explicitly cited Chinese activities when introducing Australia’s foundational counter-interference laws. Marco Rubio’s testimony in his nomination hearing for the position of US secretary of state bucked the trend of avoidance: he identified espionage and interference as key enablers of Chinese ascendency.

Australian government responses to the threat, as comprehensively as they’re outlined in the guide, will ultimately be sub-optimal unless the government finds the courage to publicly name those who are interfering. Having established an attribution framework, Australia has only used it once: to call out Iran, a safely egregious pariah. On the worst offenders—China and Russia— the government remains silent.

Rest assured: actual, attributable threats underpin security decision-making within the government, in high policy but also in personnel matters and issues such as procurement. Attribution informs policy stances behind closed doors. The concern is that few Western governments similarly take ordinary citizens into their confidence.

This returns us to the consideration that foreign interference is in fact the new normal—not an aberration, not temporary, and not something that can be solved once and then ignored thereafter. In these circumstances the current agnostic approach across Western governments to publicly countering foreign interference is unsustainable. It will continue to confuse the community, shield bad actors, divert resources and undermine compliance—as ASPI research has explained in relation to the Foreign Influence Transparency Scheme.