Wildly exaggerated intelligence warnings about communist influence are not new in Australia. A US naval intelligence officer who was posted as an attache to the American embassy in the late 1940s, Stephen Jurika, reported back to Washington that communism was "rife in the highest governing circles" in Australia.

According to the Australian Secret Intelligence Organisation’s official history, Jurika claimed there was "not one chance in 10 million" of any effective action against communism until Ben Chifley’s Labor government was removed. In 1949 , however, Chifley took the unprecedented peacetime step of sending in troops to break a strike. Communist unions were prominent in the strike by 23,000 coal miners.

Labor Prime Minister Ben Chifley sent in the troops as strike breakers, despite a US intelligence officer's claim that there was "not one chance in 10 million" of any effective action against communism until Chifley was removed. Credit:National Archives of Australia

In 1960, ASIO’s head Brigadier Charles Spry warned there were up to 60,000 “potential subversives” in Australia. The subversives, including 5000 communists, would supposedly destroy the existing political system. In fact, they were merely exercising their right to free speech and freedom of association.

In an interview published in The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald on November 22, the former head of the ASIO, Duncan Lewis, another ex-military officer, warned that the Chinese government is seeking to "take over" Australia's political system through its "insidious" foreign interference operations.