Clare O'Neil (Hotham, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Home Affairs) Share this | Hansard source

I thank the member for Adelaide for this really important question. It's no secret that we face enormously difficult geopolitical challenges—in fact, the most difficult that our country has faced since the Second World War. How we, as a parliament, manage those challenges will define the Australia that my children enjoy as adults.

Our ability to manage and shape our nation's future will depend on how free and fair our democracy is, and how much Australians trust and engage with it. The stronger our democracy, the more choices we have about what our future looks like. The member for Adelaide has asked me about what is probably the biggest challenge to Australia's democracy today, and that is the threat of foreign interference.

Countries can, quite legitimately, influence what happens in other nations in perfectly legitimate ways. The Australian government does it through embassies, through the diplomatic corps and through our engagement with multilateral institutions. What we will not tolerate are attempts to engage in our politics or to interfere in our communities in ways that are coercive, corrupting, deceptive or clandestine. We will not tolerate attempts by foreign powers to harass, watch and coerce Australian citizens. Foreign interference is real, it is relentless and it is happening in all of our communities every day, and our government is stepping up efforts to fight it.

Earlier this week I spoke publicly for the first time about how one country, Iran, is attempting to influence Australian democracy in deceptive ways and trying to harass, watch and control the activities of Iranian Australians. Earlier this week I held a round table with other ministers and community leaders to talk about how we can work together on these problems. ASIO is very focused on these issues. I shared on Monday some detail about a plot that was foiled recently by our security agencies, where an Iranian-Australian family were put under surveillance in their own home in our country by the Iranian government. My message to regimes seeking to interfere with Australia and Australians is: don't. We are watching you and we will catch you.

To tackle this problem, some things are going to need to change. I have asked my agencies to develop an attribution framework. I think it's really important for us, as a parliament, to be able to point out this issue and to call out the perpetrators where appropriate. We need a public debate which is commensurate with the size of this problem, and we are nowhere near that today. That's something that I'm trying to change. When I talk to communities who are potentially at threat from this problem, the clear message I get back from them is that they need our help and that they need more information. That's why my agencies are going to undertake widespread community outreach this year.

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