The Parliamentary Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security (PJCIS) is currently reviewing the scheme and will consider whether to better target the laws to capture more harmful activity by countries such as China and Russia.
Senator Paterson said in his address the purpose of the scheme was to provide the public with “visibility of the nature, level, and extent of foreign influence on Australia’s government and politics”.
“Individuals or entities are required to register certain activities under the scheme if they are taken on behalf of a foreign principal,” he said. “The type of activities captured under the scheme include political lobbying, communications activities, and general financial disbursement activity.”
Senator Paterson also credited Australia’s decision in 2018 to “secure our digital sovereignty” by banning Chinese telco Huawei and other high-risk vendors with close connections to the Chinese government from the nation’s 5G mobile network technology in Australia.
“That year we also banned foreign political donations to Australian political parties after a series of scandals linked to Chinese-national donors,” he said.
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Senator Paterson trumpeted the government’s new foreign veto laws allowing the foreign affairs minister to cancel agreements that states, territories, local governments and universities enter into with an overseas government if they contradict Australia’s national interest.
“This is aimed at counteracting a strategy by authoritarian states, most notably China with its Belt and Road deal, to seek to divide us internally between different levels of government,” he said.
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Europe considering adopting Australia’s foreign interference laws to counter China
Source: Philippines Alive
