Foreign Interference

Senator VAN: I have some questions for you about foreign interference. Thank you for appearing today. Mr Smyth, is it fair to say that foreign interference is a tool of statecraft that foreign countries use against other nations?

Mr Smyth : I think that would be a fair assessment. Foreign interference, the term we use, is defined under the ASIO Act 1979. It says:

… activities relating to Australia that are carried on by or on behalf of, are directed or subsidised by or are undertaken in active collaboration with, a foreign power, being activities that—

(a) are clandestine or deceptive and—

(i) are carried on for intelligence purposes;

(ii) are carried on for the purpose of affecting political or governmental processes; or

(iii) are otherwise detrimental to the interests of Australia; or

(b) involve a threat to any person;

Senator VAN: Thank you for reading that out into Hansard. That's very, very useful. One of the reasons they use foreign interference is to seek to divide the target society and erode the fabric of that society. Would that be a fair statement?

Mr Smyth : That would be one of the potential aims of foreign interference. A number of states seek to change Australia's position through seeking to influence people that have positions of power. They may do so to undermine Australia's interests domestically and internationally, to diminish our notion of rule of law. So it has corrosive and divisive impacts on society, yes.

Senator VAN: I used to sit on the Select Committee on Foreign Interference through Social Media. We heard a lot of evidence through that committee of how foreign powers were seeking to divide Australia and there were numerous examples of that. The division that we're seeing at the moment that was initiated from the war in Gaza, are you seeing any element of foreign interference through that here in Australia?

Mr Smyth : The Director-General of Security has talked about foreign interference being our greatest security threat at the moment.

Senator VAN: I will have some questions for him too.

Mr Smyth : I'm sure you will. I'm not necessarily seeing a lot of, I suppose, activities that would go to foreign interference in relation to the Israel-Gaza hostilities. What we are seeing is a lot of more probably more misinformation potentially, blame, violent extremist material online and that is very concerning. But I can't go into detailed national security intelligence kind of activities and th like but I have not seen at any kind of particular detrimental scale foreign state actors looking to manipulate that information from a foreign interference point of view. There are certainly foreign influence activities which are legal and all nation states engage in those activities because they are in the open, but I am not necessarily seeing a lot of foreign interference activities.

Senator VAN: There is a lot of online propaganda that's seemingly fuelling a lot of division in Australia right now that I find quite troubling. I was very, very troubled over the weekend to see the graffiti on Mount Scopus, a Jewish school in my home state of Victoria. One of the things that the Select Committee on Foreign Interference through Social Media heard was that they were looking not so much for the smoking gun of foreign interference—as in there's a foreign actor doing this—but the effects of it. And we're seeing writ large right now the effects that are very much dividing Australia, and that troubles me greatly. Is there more that we could or should be doing to look into where this interference is occurring and the division that it's causing?

Mr Smyth : I would characterise it more as a social cohesion issue versus a foreign interference issue.

Senator VAN: But, if that cohesion is being broken down by foreign actors, shouldn't that be of concern to us?

Mr Smyth : There are obviously positions that nation-states and people take in relation to this information, but I'm not seeing large volumes of disinformation or influence campaigns by nation-states seeking to undermine the Australian community. But, from a social cohesion point of view, with the issues that go to domestic security, people's right to protest and people's right to free speech and to put particular views out there, that is certainly being tested on large scale. At times when we see particular protest activity or instances of the kind of graffiti that relates to antisemitism, Islamophobia et cetera, it's certainly open to the police forces in each jurisdiction to take appropriate action as necessary.

Senator VAN: Thank you, Mr Smyth, and please keep up the good work. Keep your eye on that foreign interference. It is terribly corrosive.