Australian Federal Police Calls on Communities to Report Suspicious Foreign Interference

Crowds gather in the Chinatown district to celebrate Lunar New Year in Sydney, Australia on Feb. 1, 2025. Lisa Maree Williams/Getty Images

The Australian Federal Police (AFP) is urging Australians to stay alert to foreign interference and report anything suspicious, a month after a second person was jailed for the crime.

AFP Commander Matthew Gale said one of the best defences was community awareness and reporting suspicious behaviour. It has provided material translated into Russian, Chinese, Farsi and Hindi.

“Our message is simple: everyone in Australia deserves to live free from threats, coercion or pressure from any foreign government,” he said.

The AFP says it is aware foreign state actors are “actively undertaking foreign interference” targeting Australians.

“The activities are often deliberate, patient and designed to appear routine, with individuals targeted because of their professional experience, access, or networks,” it says.

It describes foreign interference as foreign governments, or people acting for them, trying to harm Australia to advance their own interests. This can include secretly meddling in politics or threatening migrant communities.

Gale urged people to call the National Security Hotline rather than raise concerns on social media, which could harm investigations and put people at risk.

On Sept. 10, a 58-year-old Sydney businessman was sentenced in the NSW District Court to up to three and a half years in jail for knowingly compiling reports for a foreign intelligence service. He followed a Melbourne man jailed for two years and nine months in 2024.

Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO) Director-General Mike Burgess said the spies had wanted the businessman to target people in the country’s intelligence community, the Prime Minister’s office, the defence sector, courts, and think tanks.

“Foreign interference is an assault on Australian sovereignty,” he said.

Burgess said the AFP and ASIO-led Counter Foreign Interference Taskforce had carried out “literally hundreds of operations” since 2020 to protect migrant communities, political systems and classified information.

The taskforce has charged eight people with spying and foreign interference offences.

The most recent was a 27-year-old dual Russian-Australian citizen arrested in Queensland in August, accused of trying to pass information on Ukrainian soldiers to people he believed were Russian spies. Three Chinese nationals in Canberra, accused of secretly gathering information on a Buddhist association, are also before the courts.

In his annual threat assessment on June 24, Burgess said ASIO knew of at least five regimes pressuring people in Australia to return to their country of birth, often to silence critics.

He said one country forced at least eight people to leave Australia in 2023, five of whom were Australian citizens or permanent residents.

Burgess also warned that foreign spy agencies were using professional networking sites, like LinkedIn, to recruit Australians, calling it a cheap, low-risk method.