PERSPECTIVES | Security and social cohesion: Australia’s foreign interference challenge

This article appeared in UTS:ACRI's Perspectives on August 14 2025. Perspectives is the commentary series of the Australia-China Relations Institute at the University of Technology Sydney (UTS:ACRI), offering research-informed viewpoints on developments and debates in the Australia-China relationship.

Over the past decade or so, Australia has faced increased efforts by foreign governments to project power into its jurisdiction through surveillance, intimidation and influence operations. These include activities linked to the People’s Republic of China (PRC) which has a demonstrated record of pressure campaigns against ethnic Chinese diaspora communities and other minority groups abroad. Australian policy is formally conduct-based and country-agnostic, targeting behaviour rather than ethnicity or nationality. The policy task is to protect sovereignty while minimising collateral impacts on social cohesion and legitimate civic activity.

On August 2 2025, the Australian Federal Police charged a PRC national and Australian permanent resident with reckless foreign interference, alleging she collected information on Canberra-based members of Guan Yin Citta, a Buddhist organisation banned in the PRC, for the PRC Public Security Bureau. While states of varied systems conduct operations abroad, sustained, systematised transnational repression is most commonly associated with authoritarian regimes. Comparative data from Freedom House indicate that between 2014 and 2024, the PRC accounted for roughly one-quarter of documented incidents of transnational repression, the largest share of any state, unmatched in its scale and geographic reach.

Historically, PRC activity relied heavily on informal and often opaque methods. In recent years, it has been further supplemented by explicit legal instruments, most prominently Hong Kong’s National Security Law (NSL) enacted in June 2020. Article 38 asserts jurisdiction over offences committed outside Hong Kong by non-residents, with this extraterritorial effect described in official materials as an ‘essential component’ of the legislation’s design. 

Hong Kong authorities justify this on ‘protective jurisdiction’ grounds under international law and note that other states, including Australia, apply certain national security laws extraterritorially. In liberal democracies, however, such offences are generally limited by a jurisdictional link, such as nationality, residence, presence, substantial territorial effects or a defined threat to the state, as well as by procedural checks such as through Attorney-General or prosecutorial consent. Cooperation mechanisms like extradition and mutual legal assistance typically require dual criminality, preserves a political offence bar (with carve-outs for terrorism) and permits refusals on sovereignty or national interest grounds. Democracies do legislate a narrow class of wide-reach offences such as some espionage and terrorism provisions that can, in principle, reach non-nationals abroad, but practical use is constrained by requirements and safeguards noted above. The NSL’s scope is unusually broad in comparison.

For Australia, the NSL’s impact is tangible. In July 2023 and July 2025, Hong Kong authorities issued arrest warrants and cash rewards for information on Australian citizens and residents, including Kevin Yam, Ted Hui, Wong Sau-wo and Chongyi Feng, for alleged NSL offences. These measures have no legal effect in Australia but can stigmatise those targeted, restrict travel to third countries with extradition arrangements and signal heightened risk to diaspora communities.

These legal measures sit alongside long-running covert activity. Media reporting, human rights groups and parliamentary evidence detail surveillance and intimidation of diaspora communities in Australia, including mainland Chinese and Hong Kong students, Uyghur and Tibetan Australians, Falun Gong practitioners and political dissidents/pro-democracy activists, alongside testimony of threats to families abroad. Recent court filings have brought aspects of this conduct into sharper public view. 

ASIO assesses foreign interference and espionage as being at ‘extreme’ levels. Director-General Mike Burgess has described recurring methods consistent with the patterns above, and has warned these tactics are unlikely to diminish. He has also noted that some of the countries engaging in such activities ‘would surprise you’, underscoring that the threat is not limited to obvious competitors or adversaries. 

Applying the NSL to Australians asserts foreign jurisdiction within Australia’s legal domain. Australia’s 2018 foreign interference legislation criminalises ‘covert and deceptive conduct or threats of serious harm or menacing demand carried out by or on behalf of a foreign principal’. It does not function as a general ‘blocking statute’ that prohibits compliance with foreign laws. Foreign statutes have no domestic effect in Australia unless given effect by an Australian Act (including legislation implementing a treaty). Cooperation with foreign proceedings is mediated through extradition and mutual legal assistance frameworks and, in narrow cases, the Attorney-General may prohibit compliance with specified foreign processes or judgments.¹ 

Building on its 2018 foreign interference legislation, Australia subsequently suspended its extradition treaty with Hong Kong, introduced the Foreign Relations (State and Territory Arrangements) Act 2020 to vet sub-national agreements with foreign governments, updated the University Foreign Interference Taskforce guidelines for research security and formed the Counter Foreign Interference Taskforce. The Australian government in June 2024 also expressed commitment to ‘substantial reform and overhaul’ of the Foreign Influence Transparency Scheme. Agencies have reported multiple disruptions but few publicly reported prosecutions; among them is the 2023 conviction of Melbourne man Di Sanh ‘Sunny’ Duong. Most recently, Australia joined G7 nations plus the Netherlands, New Zealand and Sweden in condemning Hong Kong’s overseas arrest warrants and cash rewards as a form of transnational repression. 

The Guan Yin Citta-linked arrest also prompted political responses. For the opposition, it reinforced the case for a more assertive response. Shadow Home Affairs Minister Andrew Hastie termed it a ‘sobering reminder’ of the interference threat, noting that ‘the Chinese government is the primary perpetrator.’ He asserted that there is ‘no room for complacency’ and that agencies must be well-resourced with laws fit to counter the threat, remarks consistent with some calls for a firmer public stance on such activity.

Policy gaps remain. Used judiciously, restrictive and transparency tools – for example, targeted sanctions, visa and entry restrictions, public attributions and demarches, disruption and, where feasible, prosecution under espionage and foreign interference offences and risk controls in critical infrastructure – help protect intelligence methods and limit diplomatic friction. Underuse risks allowing foreign extraterritorial laws to shape behaviour in Australia. Overuse risks collateral limits on lawful activity and erosion of community trust, including reduced civic participation by diaspora communities. 

The scope and persistence of interference activities leave Australian policymakers with a dilemma. A ‘harder’ response involving more frequent use of the tools outlined above might better reassure targeted communities and complicate the operating environment for foreign interference networks. But it could also raise the diplomatic temperature and risk inflaming domestic mistrust if not carefully framed and accompanied by safeguards such as strong anti-profiling measures.

Conversely, maintaining the current measured approach preserves space for diplomatic dialogue and reduces the risk of overreach, yet may leave some communities feeling unprotected and reinforce perceptions of reluctance to confront the problem directly. The predominance of PRC-linked matters, despite a formally country-agnostic framework, adds another layer of complexity: the government must reconcile the reality of threat origins with the social imperative to avoid stigmatising entire communities.

This tension between acting decisively against state-directed interference and social cohesion has no easy resolution. For now, Australia manages a delicate equilibrium between deterrence and restraint, aware that leaning too far in either direction carries risks that adversaries could exploit. 

Endnotes

[1] For example, under the Foreign Proceedings (Excess of Jurisdiction) Act 1984.