A former politician was cultivated by spies, Australian intelligence has revealed, and former treasurer Joe Hockey says every politician's loyalty will be questioned until that 'traitor' is named.
Former treasurer Joe Hockey says every politician will be questioned as a traitor until the politician recruited by spies is named
The Australian Security Intelligence Organisation's boss Mike Burgess said the politician had "sold out their country, party and former colleagues to advance the interests of the foreign regime". "It is absolutely inconceivable that you would have a former politician representing their community, representing the country, who then goes and engages with a foreign adversary, and somehow they're allowed to walk off into the sunset without having their name or their reputation revealed.
"There's a strong public interest ... it brings every former politician into disrepute by doing this. "What we need to do is make sure Australians, from our politicians, from our leaders in business, but also ordinary people going about their ordinary day have some awareness about what are relentless attempts to try to build a picture of what life looks like in Australia and how decisions are made."
"This is now the third year in a row where has said that espionage and foreign interference has supplanted terrorism as our principal security concern, and he's previously said that espionage and foreign interference are at record levels, higher than they ever were, even at the height of the Cold War," Senator Paterson said.
"We've got among the best agencies in the world dealing with this, the specific facts which underlie this scenario for good reason are not in the public domain."
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