The Dunkley by-election is done and dusted, with Advance’s fear campaign failing to fire, and Labor’s primary vote actually increasing. The swing to the Liberals on preferences came from right wing voters not having anyone crazier to vote for this time, with UAP and One Nation out of the race. Meanwhile another question continues to be raised; which Australian politician was secretly working for a hostile foreign power, and when?
ASIO’s Director-General of Security, Mike Burgess, recently announced the existence of an ‘A-team’ (sadly not involving Mr T), a group working for an unnamed foreign intelligence service, specifically targeting Australia. ‘Several years ago, the A-team successfully cultivated and recruited a former Australian politician, said Mr Burgess. ‘This politician sold out their country, party and former colleagues to advance the interests of the foreign regime.
‘At one point, the former politician even proposed bringing a prime minister’s family member into the spies’ orbit. Fortunately that plot did not go ahead, but other schemes did.’
Abbott-era treasurer and retired ambassador to the US Joe Hockey spat out his cigar and demanded Mr Burgess name names, for fear that the loyalty of all retired politicians would come under question, with reputations ‘besmirched’, but the chief spook was unmoved. He released another statement the next day saying the individual concerned was no longer a security concern, and that ASIO’s policy of not discussing individuals or providing operational details was unchanged.
Malcolm Turnbull’s son Alex has since named himself as one princeling who was approached, but reported the contact to authorities immediately. Former Labor senator Sam Dastyari says the mystery traitor is not him. The guessing game continues in the mainstream media, while the rest of Mr Burgess’s speech has been largely ignored.
Accelerationists
After dropping his political bombshell, Mike Burgess emphasised that ASIO was busier than ever, with Australians of all walks of life being heavily targeted by foreign intelligence, including members of the media, academics, business people, law enforcement officers and the judiciary, and a fast-growing threat from what he called ‘accelerationists’, people seeking to ignite race wars by inflaming divisions in society.
Spies and self-destruction are also discussed in a new book by Rachel Maddow, aptly named Prequel, which concerns the outrageous efforts of the German government in the 1930s and ’40s to keep America out of World War II, and if possible expand the Third Reich to the United States. Largely forgotten now, this scheme was only stopped due to the courage and investigative skills of a few individuals who lost pretty much everything as a result.
In the days before social media, Maddow’s book shows how Joseph Goebbels used the influencers and technologies of his day to divide the United States along pre-existing fault lines (particularly race), using compliant members of congress, religious leaders and celebrities such as Charles Lindbergh. It’s astonishing how close he came to succeeding.
Then, as now, comparatively open democracies offer numerous avenues for ruthless authoritarians to gain entry. The book shows how citizens need to remain alert to the traps and seductions of fascism and other forms of magical thinking, such as the beliefs that drove the Train brothers when they murdered police in Queensland in 2022, with the encouragement of Arizona’s Donald Day Jr.
In the US last week, Donald Trump’s supporters remained unmoved by the arrest of former FBI informant Alexander Smirnov, upon whose evidence the entire bribery case against the Bidens rested. Smirnov is now proven to have links to Russian intelligence.
Similarly dodgy and unethical campaigns are at work in most democracies, with politicians like Peter Dutton accelerating things by seizing upon any cracks they can find in society, and then widening them for their own short term interests.
AUKUS
Mike Burgess patted himself on the back in his recent speech by talking about ’embedding’ ASIO officers in the AUKUS nuclear submarine taskforce. ‘Security is being built into every step of the supply chain,’ he said.
The wider question of whether the whole idea of getting into a nuclear bed with two increasingly rogue nations was making Australia more or less secure was above his pay grade.
‘Threats are not simple; threats are not static,’ he said. ‘Our adversaries are proficient, persistent and patient.’
The question remains though, who are Australia’s enemies? And if they’re so clever, why would they bother going through LinkedIn accounts, stealing laptops and trawling passwords of potential traitors when they could gain the ears of our highest elected representatives behind closed doors completely legally?
Powerful interests with no concern for the Australian environment or its people do this every day in Parliament House. It’s called lobbying.
Originally from Canberra, David Lowe is an award-winning film-maker, writer and photographer with particular interests in the environment and politics. He’s known for his campaigning work with Cloudcatcher Media.
Long ago, he did work experience in Parliament House with Mungo MacCallum.
For four decades The Echo has printed the stories some people loved, some people hated, and some pretended not to read. If you want us to keep telling the truth, the real truth, not the sugar-coated version. We’ll need your support to keep the presses rolling. 
