The Labor leader, Anthony Albanese, says a Chinese spy who has offered a trove of intelligence information to Australia may have “a legitimate claim for asylum”.

On Saturday, the Sydney Morning Herald and the Age revealed a Chinese spy who claimed to have been involved in political interference in Hong Kong and Taiwan had held a number of meetings with the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation and was seeking to defect.

The spy, Wang “William” Liqiang, is the first Chinese intelligence operative to blow his cover. He has reportedly offered a trove of inside information, including on intelligence operations within Australia.

Albanese said the reports were “of real concern” and that he would seek a briefing from security agencies.

“We need to make sure that Australia’s national sovereignty is protected,” he told reporters. “We will await processes with the government and one of the things that we will be seeking next week is a briefing from the appropriate authorities on these issues.”

Asked whether he believed Wang should be offered asylum, Albanese said it would be a decision for the government but that he was “sympathetic with the circumstances”.

“We know that he has outlined a range of activities which clearly put him in a circumstance whereby it’s a legitimate claim for asylum,” he said. “But we will have appropriate briefings next week in Canberra.

“We support human rights. We are a democracy. We support freedom of expression. And these things need to be dealt with on their merits. And Australia has obligations under the principles of the way that we operate as a democracy.”

According to the report in the Sydney Morning Herald and Age, Wang provided a sworn statement to Asio in October stating he had “personally been involved and participated in a series of espionage activities”.

The statement reportedly details efforts to infiltrate Hong Kong’s democracy movement, manipulate Taiwan’s elections and information about Chinese intelligence operations in Australia.

In interviews with the newspaper, Wang also describes the use of listed companies to fund intelligence operations overseas and claims that the Chinese government has infiltrated major media organisations in Hong Kong.

He says he faces certain detention and possible execution if he returns to China.

Wang told Nine the Chinese Communist party “infiltrates all countries in areas such as military, business and culture, in order to achieve its goal”.

Wang is currently at an undisclosed location in Sydney on a tourist visa, telling Nine he is seeking urgent protection from the Australian government, a plea he says he has made in multiple meetings with Asio.

Senior government minister Josh Frydenberg said the matter was now in the hands of appropriate law enforcement agencies and said he would not comment on individual cases.

“But I would say the government makes no apologies for the strong measures that we have taken to ensure that we have foreign interference laws in place, that we are resourcing our law enforcement intelligence agencies like never before,” he told reporters in Melbourne on Saturday.

“We will always stand up for our national interests, whether it’s on matters of foreign policy, foreign investment or other related issues.”

The attempted defection follows a warning from retired Asio chief Duncan Lewis that the Chinese government was seeking to use “insidious” foreign interference operations to “take over” Australia’s political system, and was likely to open a new chapter in the already tense relationship between the two countries.

Last week two Liberal Party MPs, Andrew Hastie and James Paterson, said the Chinese government had rejected their plans to visit the country on a study tour next month because of objections about their “frankness about the Chinese Communist party”.

China responded by calling on the pair to “genuinely repent and redress their mistakes” – which they refused to do – and warned that it “will never yield to colonisation of ideas and values”.