Agency says media companies should not be spared foreign interference laws because journalism provides ‘ideal cover’ for spies to seek sensitive information

Journalists would be recruited as foreign spies if exempted from new laws, Asio warns

Australia’s intelligence agency has warned that media organisations should not be given blanket exemption from foreign interference laws because spy agencies would recruit journalists to exploit the loophole.

The director general of the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation, Duncan Lewis, told a parliamentary committee on Friday that journalism provided an “ideal cover” for foreign spies to seek information that harmed Australia’s interests.

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Asio’s evidence to the parliamentary joint committee on intelligence and security comes after the Law Council and media organisations called for further amendments to the espionage bill to protect journalism and innocent dealing with protected information.

The espionage bill contains prison sentences of up to 20 years for dealing with or publishing protected information such as material that is harmful or likely to harm Australia’s interests.

The attorney general, Christian Porter, has already agreed to a host of changes to the espionage bill, including a defence for journalists who “reasonably believe” that dealing with or communicating information is in the public interest.

In its submissions on the espionage bill, the Media Entertainment and Arts Alliance called for a complete exemption for the media.

News Limited’s head of government affairs, Georgia-Kate Schubert, warned that the bill still criminalised journalists for doing their jobs, arguing that support staff would not get the benefit of the defence because they could not assess the information’s public interest. She said that while news reporting would be protected, other formats such as opinion might not.

Lewis said Asio did not support exemptions because they would “fundamentally undermine the effectiveness of the legislation” and adversaries would “deliberately structure” their activities to exploit weaknesses.

Journalism provided the “ideal cover” for intelligence activities because both sought insights that were beyond public view, he said.

The director general said journalists were frequently targeted by foreign agencies, and cited an article by the Australian Financial Review’s Angus Griggs in which he revealed a Chinese agent tried to recruit him to pass on information about stories that would reveal revelations about Chinese cyber hacking or industrial espionage.

Lewis said the account was “stunningly consistent” with other approaches Asio had uncovered.

He thanked journalists for often self-reporting approaches but said Asio “can’t guarantee all of them have been rejected or reported”.

“Exemptions would leave the door wide open for foreign spies to exploit and may have the impact of increasing the threat to journalists.”

He said broader offences helped disrupt foreign intelligence operations because agents were “constantly running the risk, upon being caught, of being prosecuted”.

Lewis reiterated earlier evidence that the threat posed by foreign espionage was worse than during the cold war.

In evidence on Friday morning, the Law Council president, Morry Bailes, warned that the bill still threatened whistleblowers, bloggers, lawyers and people who innocently received national security information.



Witnesses from the Law Council suggested that harms to Australia’s political and economic interests were too vague to be the basis for criminal offences.

The Human Rights Law Centre’s director of legal advocacy, Aruna Sathanapally, told the committee the bill “still captures conduct that does not cause harm to the public interest”.

Sathanapally said the bill should not extend beyond commonwealth officers unless outsiders “owe some duty of confidentiality”.

The attorney-general’s department assistant secretary, Anna Harmer, confirmed that there could be further amendments to the bill as a result of the deliberation of the committee.

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This earned a rebuke from the shadow attorney general, Mark Dreyfus, who said the committee was in the “invidious position” of considering legislation that may not reflect what the government advances, and he accused the Coalition of a “disorderly” consultation process.

The committee is also considering a separate bill in the foreign interference package that would require agents of foreign principals to declare themselves on a public register.

Lewis said there were currently “no offences at all” for foreign interference, which is broader than espionage and could include harassment or co-opting “influential and powerful Australian voices” to lobby government.