Apparently there's more to the story about the Chinese woman who showed up at Mar-a-Lago to go swimming although she didn't have a swim suit...A search of her hotel room revealed she had $8,000 in cash and more computer equipment.
China is seeking to 'take over' Australia's political system, former Asio chief claims
"Foreign interference continues to increase around the world."
Tony Abbott is basically a more conservative than right-center asshole, while Paul Keating generally speaks with much more common sense, integrity and balance. Just so you know.
Duncan Lewis says Chinese authorities are using espionage and foreign interference to gain influence
Australian Associated Press
Fri 22 Nov 2019 07.26 AEDT Last modified on Fri 22 Nov 2019 07.40 AEDT
Duncan Lewis speaking to Senate estimates in February as the director general of Asio. He has called China’s interference in Australia ‘insidious’. Photograph: Lukas Coch/AAP
The retired Asio chief Duncan Lewis has reportedly warned that the Chinese government is seeking to use “insidious” foreign interference operations to “take over” Australia’s political system.
Anyone in office could be a target and the strategy’s full impact might not be apparent for decades, Lewis is reported to have told the political journal Quarterly Essay.
Chinese authorities are trying to “place themselves in a position of advantage” by winning influence in political, social, business and media circles, Lewis said.
“Espionage and foreign interference is insidious,” he said. “Its effects might not present for decades and by that time it’s too late.
“You wake up one day and find decisions made in our country that are not in the interests of our country.”
Lewis, who retired in September, was the director general of the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation for five years.
In the forthcoming Quarterly Essay interview, the Herald says, he warns that covert foreign intrusion into the heart of Australian politics .. https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/australian-politics .. is “something we need to be very, very careful about”.
His remarks follow claims by the senior Chinese diplomat Wang Xining that the MPs Andrew Hastie and Senator James Paterson have shown no respect for his country.
The pair have been banned from travelling there.
“It is cynical that in a country boasting freedom of speech, different views from another nation are constantly and intentionally obliterated,” Wang wrote in an opinion piece in the Australian on Thursday.
“Understanding truth succumbs to being politically right. A people said to be audacious and adventurous like kangaroos are scared of stepping out of the comfort zone of ideas and thinking.”
Abbott accused China of bullying its neighbours and warned that Australia’s relations with it were unlikely to rise above a “cold peace”.
In a speech to the India Foundation in New Delhi, Abbott promised to champion further engagement with India, suggesting that Australia had “put too many eggs into the China .. https://www.theguardian.com/world/china .. basket”.
He said the Australian media .. https://www.theguardian.com/media/australia-media .. had been “up to its ears” in drumming up anti-China hysteria. He singled out the Sydney Morning Herald and the Age, but also criticised the Australian.
The media wrongly equated the actions of individual businessmen or universities with the acts of the entire Chinese state, he said.
The long-term national interest should guide Australia’s approach to China, Keating said, not “pious”, “do-gooder” journalists who were “fed on leaks” from security agencies and failed to appreciate the magnitude of the shifting dynamics in the region.
“The Australian media has been recreant in its duty to the public in failing to present a balanced picture of the rise and legitimacy and importance of China, preferring instead to traffic in side plays dressed up with the cosmetics of sedition and risk.”
Keating, who championed Australian engagement in the Asia Pacific .. https://www.theguardian.com/world/asia-pacific .. as prime minister, said the US had ceded influence and withdrawn from the region as it returned to an “America-first” posture.
He said Australia must adopt strategic realism in its approach to China and not force upon itself a choice of one great power over the other.
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