I laughed, told them to start reading the papers and said I was not interested.

Since then my anecdote has twice been used by ASIO to argue for stricter controls on journalists, most recently at Wednesday’s parliamentary inquiry into press freedom.

It was cited as a reason why journalists should not be exempt from national security laws around the publication of classified information.

ASIO tendered testimony by its outgoing head Duncan Lewis speaking about “foreign spies seeking to recruit” Australian journalists.

“Angus Grigg from The Australian Financial Review provided an illuminating account of one such approach, albeit an unsuccessful one,” he said.

“I can say that the events described by Mr Grigg are stunningly consistent with other examples known to ASIO.”


Now I’ve read a few spy books over the years and they might refer to this as “chickenfeed” – interesting but ultimately useless information.

Alternatively, it might be seen as misdirection.

In my article, I was cautious not to overstate the ability of China’s security services. In my experience, they were stunningly naive to the outside world despite three decades of “reform and opening up”.

The larger point was that China remained a vulnerable and constrained power, unable to wean itself from debt-fuelled development and therefore would struggled to deliver clean air for its citizens or sufficient white collar jobs for the 8 million university students who graduated each year.

China, I surmised, had more problems than most countries and its system didn’t have the flexibility to fix them.

That larger point has been lost on ASIO, which has appropriated the anecdote for its own ends.

For if the agency was really concerned about journalists being co-opted by “foreign operatives” you’d think they would have contacted me.

But in the 18 months since the story was published, I’ve heard nothing from 70 Constitutional Avenue, ASIO’s shiny new headquarters overlooking Canberra’s Lake Burley Griffin.


ASIO's new headquarters in Canberra. Sitthixay Ditthavong

Indeed, after Lewis mentioned my article in March 2018 when making the case for journalists to be included in foreign interference laws, I contacted ASIO.

I did manage to speak with someone who suggested I send an email.

“Thank you for your email. We are considering your request and will respond in due course,” I was informed.

That was the last I heard from ASIO and the response told me everything I needed to know about their level of concern around “foreign operatives” co-opting Australian journalists.

Part of ASIO’s argument is that journalists make good spies – apart from the obvious flaw of being unable to keep our mouths shut.

“Journalism can provide an ideal cover for a foreign power seeking to hide its intelligence activities, and journalists are therefore, quite unsurprisingly, frequently targeted by foreign spies,” Lewis told the committee last year.

That might be the case, but ASIO has refused to provide any additional evidence of this being true.


It has a data set of one and that’s me.

This is typical of the “trust us” approach taken by Australian intelligence agencies, a stance which is counter-productive according to Danielle Cave from the Australian Strategic Policy Institute.

“If our national security agencies have evidence that is being used to underpin policy decisions –and that information can be shared without revealing sources, methods and access – then the government needs to work harder to get that information into the public domain,” she wrote last July.

Cave said that, in an era of strategic change and competition, people are increasingly sceptical when “national security concerns” are cited to explain the latest international stance or policy position.

ASIO’s approach to this week’s press freedom inquiry suggests it has not listened to her advice.

Faced with a united media demanding changes to a raft of national security laws, ASIO initially didn’t even make its submission to the inquiry public.

It eventually declassified the document under pressure and it was revealed to be little more than a rehash of what Lewis said last year.

This tendency to stamp documents sensitive or confidential in the first instance is another gripe of the media organisations, which have banded together under the Right to Know coalition, and are seeking reform around freedom of information laws, along with changes to a whole raft of legislation that has made it more difficult for journalists to inform the public.


It should be noted that ASIO’s aversion to any public engagement is likely to change with the appointment of Mike Burgess as its new director general. During his time running the Australian Signals Directorate, Burgess explained the decision to ban Huawei from Australia’s 5G network, while also giving speeches and answering questions from journalists.

But being a little more open is still no justification to criminalise journalists who receive classified information and then publish it.

ASIO is arguing broad exemptions for journalists could invite exploitation by foreign intelligence agencies and this may increase the instances of journalists being targeted.

“There is a risk that not all approaches will be rejected or reported to the appropriate authorities,” ASIO said in its submission.

Yes that is a risk but it does not account for what the Right to Know coalition – which includes Nine, publisher of AFR Weekend – describes as “the rising tide of secrecy”.

“In recent years, many legal provisions that undermine and threaten the Australian public’s right to know have been passed by the federal Parliament under the guise of various national security concerns and national security legislation,” the coalition said in its submission.

In at least one instance, this tightening of control was aided by ASIO using my anecdote and taking advantage of a great headline, which was only a fraction of the story.