AS POSTED HERE ---> People smuggling proposals blasted
A MODERN-DAY Oskar Schindler would be jailed for up 10 years under the Rudd government's proposed crackdown on people smuggling, lawyers say.
In largely unscrutinised changes, backed by the opposition, the government is introducing new criminal charges for supporting people smugglers, even unwittingly.
''It's mind-blowing legislation. I've never seen anything like it,'' the University of Sydney Professor of Public Law, Mary Crock, says.
''These laws capture innocent people who may be operating under perfectly good humanitarian reasons.''
Currently, the law defines people smugglers as those who are acting for profit when bringing five or more people to Australia.
Proposed laws make criminals of anyone sending money to asylum seekers overseas, who later use it to pay a people smuggler.
They also capture Australians who organise for asylum seekers to escape danger for no financial gain, jeopardising some of the work of charitable organisations.
The president of the Refugee Advice and Casework Service, Ben Saul, said the changes had so far evaded the attention of refugee communities they would affect.
''Unfortunately, most of the focus is on recent changes to asylum policy,'' he said. ''This one's snuck under the radar.''
Non-government organisations have recently increased criticism of the government's freeze on processing asylum claims from Sri Lanka and Afghanistan and the reopening of Curtin detention centre.
The anti-people smuggling and other measures bill also criminalises ship captains who rescue people on the high seas and bring them to Australia and pilots who unknowingly fly foreigners into Australia on false documents.
The Tampa captain, Arne Rinnan, would have been jailed if the laws had existed in 2001, Professor Saul said. The Norwegian captain made international news when he rescued more than 400 asylum seekers from a sinking boat and the Australian government denied him access to an Australian port to offload them.
''You could capture anyone, from a mariner at sea who saves people whose lives are at risk on the high seas - like captain Arne Rinnan - through to people who saved Jews from extermination in the Second World War like Oskar Schindler, who didn't do it for a profit,'' he said.
The changes planned for Australia go beyond comparable laws in the US, Canada, the UK and New Zealand, he said.
The government proposed the changes in February, saying they subjected people smugglers to the ''full force of Australian law''.
At the time, Attorney-General Robert McClelland said the measures were a part of Labor's ''hardline approach to combating the scourge of people smuggling''.
The proposed laws also extend ASIO's powers. The domestic spy agency's remit will soon go beyond intelligence to cracking people-smuggling syndicates.
If the bill is passed, ASIO will be able to tap the phones of anyone suspected of supporting people smugglers.
The opposition has questioned how ASIO would be supported in its new work.
Opposition immigration spokesman Scott Morrison has said the proposed laws are ''too little too late''.
The government has said the changes would be cost-neutral.
public news and things I spy ..
Wednesday 28 April 2010
Thursday 22 April 2010
'Security risk' refugees left in limbo
AS POSTED HERE ---> 'Security risk' refugees left in limbo
AN AMMUNITION runner for the Tamil Tigers is among six Oceanic Viking refugees languishing on Christmas Island, despite an offer of quick resettlement from the Rudd government to end last year's standoff with Indonesia.
Mr Rudd brought the six Tamils - three men, a woman and her two children - to Australia knowing they were a security risk.
They are now condemned to indefinite detention. No country wants them after ASIO declared them a threat to national security, and they cannot be returned to Sri Lanka having been deemed refugees.
The Age met two of the men in detention on Christmas Island this week, including Shanmugarayah Sasikanthan, a trained LTTE combatant who used to smuggle pistols and ammunition hidden in books from Tiger to Tiger.
The one-time maths teacher believes the arms and messages he passed on as an informant were used in assassination attempts.
Their predicament makes a mockery of the special deal Mr Rudd cut with the 78 refugees rescued last year by the Australian customs vessel Oceanic Viking.
Under the deal, they were offered resettlement to a third country within 12 weeks. The government insisted they did not get special treatment, even though other asylum seekers can wait for more than a year to have their applications processed in Indonesia.
The other 72 refugees have been resettled in a variety of countries, including the United States, Canada, Norway and Australia.
Mr Sasikanthan, 27, had told UNHCR he was a Tamil Tiger before Mr Rudd cut the deal.
"Everybody's first selection is Australia because Australia is a humanitarian country," Mr Sasikanthan said, seated at a detainee visiting room. "We believe and we hope that we can restart our new life in Australia and continue with our study."
The UNHCR declared Mr Sasikanthan a refugee. Despite the Tamil's assignments for the notorious LTTE rebel group, the UNHCR decided his activities did not amount to war crimes or crimes against humanity.
Mr Sasikanthan had initially phoned The Age from the Phosphate Hill detention compound on Christmas Island.
"We are from Oceanic Viking and we want to tell our story," he said. In earlier reports, Mr Sasikanthan had denied LTTE involvement.
Sinnathurai Yasikaran, 27, is the eldest of five children. He said he left school in Sri Lankan grade 7 to help his father look after the family when his mother died of illness.
"After the peaceful time, the LTTE collected young people to join their group so [I] couldn't stay in Sri Lanka," he said, using Mr Sasikanthan to translate. He did not discuss the information he had given to UNHCR.
In mandatory checks for refugees, Australia’s domestic spy agency found four Oceanic Viking refugees were "directly or indirectly a risk to security", including a woman. Her children, a boy aged two and a girl aged six, are also indefinitely detained after assuming the security assessment of their mother.
ASIO never interviewed the adults or explained why they were considered dangerous. The negative assessments were based on interviews by immigration officials and the UN, the former inspector-general of intelligence and security Ian Carnell said.
"There were practical impediments to ASIO officers conducting interviews at the relevant time," Mr Carnell wrote in a letter to their lawyer dated the day before he retired as inspector-general.
Mr Carnell could not say whether ASIO also relied on information from the Sri Lankan government "as this relates directly to ASIO's collection methods and is not something which it [sic] is appropriate for me to discuss in public".
The refugees' lawyer, Stephen Blanks, warned such information could be unreliable. He admonished the government for failing to honour its resettlement deal, which he said was "not qualified by a requirement to fulfil identity, security or health checks".
His clients had lived in detention camps in Sri Lanka, Malaysia and Indonesia for years and arrived on Christmas Island in a mentally fragile state. "To describe this situation as raising serious human rights concerns is putting it at its mildest," he said.
Outspoken Liberal backbencher Wilson Tuckey was roundly criticised last year for saying that those aboard asylum seeker boats could include terrorists.
AN AMMUNITION runner for the Tamil Tigers is among six Oceanic Viking refugees languishing on Christmas Island, despite an offer of quick resettlement from the Rudd government to end last year's standoff with Indonesia.
Mr Rudd brought the six Tamils - three men, a woman and her two children - to Australia knowing they were a security risk.
They are now condemned to indefinite detention. No country wants them after ASIO declared them a threat to national security, and they cannot be returned to Sri Lanka having been deemed refugees.
The Age met two of the men in detention on Christmas Island this week, including Shanmugarayah Sasikanthan, a trained LTTE combatant who used to smuggle pistols and ammunition hidden in books from Tiger to Tiger.
The one-time maths teacher believes the arms and messages he passed on as an informant were used in assassination attempts.
Their predicament makes a mockery of the special deal Mr Rudd cut with the 78 refugees rescued last year by the Australian customs vessel Oceanic Viking.
Under the deal, they were offered resettlement to a third country within 12 weeks. The government insisted they did not get special treatment, even though other asylum seekers can wait for more than a year to have their applications processed in Indonesia.
The other 72 refugees have been resettled in a variety of countries, including the United States, Canada, Norway and Australia.
Mr Sasikanthan, 27, had told UNHCR he was a Tamil Tiger before Mr Rudd cut the deal.
"Everybody's first selection is Australia because Australia is a humanitarian country," Mr Sasikanthan said, seated at a detainee visiting room. "We believe and we hope that we can restart our new life in Australia and continue with our study."
The UNHCR declared Mr Sasikanthan a refugee. Despite the Tamil's assignments for the notorious LTTE rebel group, the UNHCR decided his activities did not amount to war crimes or crimes against humanity.
Mr Sasikanthan had initially phoned The Age from the Phosphate Hill detention compound on Christmas Island.
"We are from Oceanic Viking and we want to tell our story," he said. In earlier reports, Mr Sasikanthan had denied LTTE involvement.
Sinnathurai Yasikaran, 27, is the eldest of five children. He said he left school in Sri Lankan grade 7 to help his father look after the family when his mother died of illness.
"After the peaceful time, the LTTE collected young people to join their group so [I] couldn't stay in Sri Lanka," he said, using Mr Sasikanthan to translate. He did not discuss the information he had given to UNHCR.
In mandatory checks for refugees, Australia’s domestic spy agency found four Oceanic Viking refugees were "directly or indirectly a risk to security", including a woman. Her children, a boy aged two and a girl aged six, are also indefinitely detained after assuming the security assessment of their mother.
ASIO never interviewed the adults or explained why they were considered dangerous. The negative assessments were based on interviews by immigration officials and the UN, the former inspector-general of intelligence and security Ian Carnell said.
"There were practical impediments to ASIO officers conducting interviews at the relevant time," Mr Carnell wrote in a letter to their lawyer dated the day before he retired as inspector-general.
Mr Carnell could not say whether ASIO also relied on information from the Sri Lankan government "as this relates directly to ASIO's collection methods and is not something which it [sic] is appropriate for me to discuss in public".
The refugees' lawyer, Stephen Blanks, warned such information could be unreliable. He admonished the government for failing to honour its resettlement deal, which he said was "not qualified by a requirement to fulfil identity, security or health checks".
His clients had lived in detention camps in Sri Lanka, Malaysia and Indonesia for years and arrived on Christmas Island in a mentally fragile state. "To describe this situation as raising serious human rights concerns is putting it at its mildest," he said.
Outspoken Liberal backbencher Wilson Tuckey was roundly criticised last year for saying that those aboard asylum seeker boats could include terrorists.
Monday 12 April 2010
ASIO probes fake passports used in Dubai hit
as posted here
Australia’s intelligence agencies have taken over the investigation into the use of fake Australian passports by an assassination team in Dubai.
On Friday, the Government received the Federal Police report into claims the documents were fraudulently used by Israeli agents involved in the assassination of a senior Hamas leader in Dubai.
Foreign Affairs Minister Stephen Smith has told Channel Nine he needs more information.
“I’m talking about our intelligence agencies, about ASIO and ASIS,” he said.
“There’s no point being coy about that further work is required, further consideration is required.
“When that’s done I’ll let the Government’s decision about these matters be known publicly.”
Four forged Australian passports were used in the hit on Hamas commander Mahmoud al-Mabhouh in Dubai in January this year.
as posted here
Australia’s intelligence agencies have taken over the investigation into the use of fake Australian passports by an assassination team in Dubai.
On Friday, the Government received the Federal Police report into claims the documents were fraudulently used by Israeli agents involved in the assassination of a senior Hamas leader in Dubai.
Foreign Affairs Minister Stephen Smith has told Channel Nine he needs more information.
“I’m talking about our intelligence agencies, about ASIO and ASIS,” he said.
“There’s no point being coy about that further work is required, further consideration is required.
“When that’s done I’ll let the Government’s decision about these matters be known publicly.”
Four forged Australian passports were used in the hit on Hamas commander Mahmoud al-Mabhouh in Dubai in January this year.
as posted here
Friday 9 April 2010
NBN bid to stretch China ties
as posted here
AUSTRALIA is facing another test in its relationship with China, as the country's largest technology group, Huawei Technologies, makes a bid for a piece of the $43 billion Australian National Broadband Network.
The test for the communications giant, which is also reported to be pursuing part of the Motorola mobile network in the US, is whether it can overcome the security taint of its links with the People's Liberation Army. Huawei's chief executive officer, the reclusive Ren Zhengfei, is a former PLA officer.
Australia's rosy economic relationship with China, which resulted in $83bn in two-way trade in 2008-09, descended last year into acrimony that culminated in the jailing of Australian mining executive at Rio Tinto Stern Hu and his three colleagues last week.
Nevertheless, and despite the spectacular collapse of the $19bn deal for state-owned Chinalco to buy more of miner Rio Tinto, investment continues to pour in. China tipped $10.7bn into our companies last year, with billions more promised.
But if the overriding issue last year was how much Chinese investment should be allowed in Australia, the biggest bogey now is cyber security. Fears about security are mounting across the world following Google's withdrawal from China after a huge cyber-attack in December.
Huawei is regularly touted as a role model in China's "going out" policy: expanding its companies' international footprint through winning business and buying up foreign companies.
The Shenzhen-based group is now the world's second-largest provider of telecommunications networks to operators across the globe behind Sweden's Ericsson.
It claims to have had international sales of $US30bn ($32.3bn) last year and contracts in scores of countries. Recent wins include a role in the British broadband network and the contract to build the entire NBN in Singapore for Optus's parent Singapore Telecommunications.
The push has not been without controversy. In 2003 Huawei quietly settled a lawsuit for intellectual property theft with US based networks rival Cisco Systems. In 2007 the US knocked back Huawei's bid for another technology group, 3Com, on security grounds.
This week it emerged that US government security agencies are once again probing Huawei as it angles for a piece of the disintegrating technology giant Motorola.
Huawei has operated in Australia for about four years and has a local workforce of about 200 people, 20 per cent of them expatriate Chinese. The company has longstanding contracts with three out of four of Australia's biggest fixed line telecoms groups: Singtel-owned Optus, Telecom New Zealand's Australian arm AAPT and Perth-based internet service provider iiNet.
"Over 50 per cent of Australians already use a Huawei product," Huawei Australia spokesman Luke Coleman cheerfully tells The Australian.
"Huawei is a trusted partner for operators in Australia and globally. We work with Optus, Vodafone-Hutchison Australia, Primus, AAPT and more."
Despite these second-tier deals, Huawei found its way firmly blocked at Telstra under US import Sol Trujillo. Huawei recently got its first sniff as one of three companies Telstra named to test next generation wireless networks, but that's not the big fish the company hopes to catch.
The NBN - one of the centrepieces of Kevin Rudd's successful 2007 campaign - now looms as the company's big chance to bulk up its business here. Analysts say between $5bn and $7bn will be spent on networks gear. Huawei is pitching for the lot.
But already hampered by decades-old fears about its army and government connections, Huawei now faces a world more wary of cyber warfare and network security threats, as well as a right-leaning opposition unafraid to peddle an anti-China message.
Nor has the Rudd government been shy to use security concerns to exclude Chinese projects, such as a Minmetals mine near the defence test site at Woomera.
In their book Australia and Cyber-Warfare, Des Ball of the Strategic and Defence Studies Centre in Canberra, retired air commodore Gary Waters and national security consultant Ian Dudgeon claim cyber warfare units in the Chinese PLA have penetrated the Pentagon's internal internet router and designed software to disable it in the event of a conflict. They say Australia's civilian IT networks and also the defence force's command, control, communications, intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance systems "are at great risk if they are not adequately defended".
Growing concerns about cyber espionage, particularly from China, prompted the Rudd government to establish the new Cyber Security Operations Centre. It was opened in Canberra in January by Defence Minister John Faulkner, who revealed the department had last year investigated about 200 "electronic security incidents" a month.
He said there was evidence that some of the attacks had come from overseas but did not mention China by name.
Huawei's activities in Australia have already been subjected to close scrutiny by the domestic spy agency ASIO.
As revealed by The Australian last September, ASIO officers met Australian Huawei employees in Sydney and Melbourne who told them the company was employing technicians with direct links to the PLA. ASIO has declined to comment on its investigations into Huawei and the company itself has dismissed as "inaccurate and ungrounded" claims that it has links with either the Chinese military or the Chinese government.
Huawei sought a meeting with ASIO last June to "provide a brief introduction to Huawei".
"Huawei's customers are well aware that we adhere to the highest security standards they set for their networks, and not one company has ever called these standards into question," says Coleman.
In the past six months, Huawei has quietly ramped up its lobbying efforts to allay fears in Canberra ahead of decisions on NBN tenders. "As is normal business practice with a build of this size, any vendor including Huawei will be in a position to allow a full and regular security audit of the equipment and the network," Huawei's Australian chief technology officer Peter Rossi says.
"All data centres would be based in Australia with no remote access available and Huawei would also be in a position to allow the government full access to the source code of the network equipment," Rossi says.
The company has hired heavy-hitting boutique public relations firm Bespoke Approach, which boasts as principals former foreign minister Alexander Downer, Keating-era minister Nick Bolkus and Ian Smith, who ran public relations for the T2 and T3 sale of Telstra shares.
In December the former Chinese army officer Ren - who has never given a media interview - visited Australia "to meet customers". He also caught up with NBN executive chairman Mike Quigley who will be the arbiter - with Rudd's say so - on which vendor gets what.
Singtel, majority-owned by the Singapore government's Temasek holdings, had to jump through plenty of security hoops before it was able to buy Optus, which runs the second biggest network in Australia. But Huawei presents a different problem.
Huawei is no stranger to controversy or security concerns. Still, unlike Minmetals and the vast majority of Chinese mining, energy and steel corporations that have been making multi-billion-dollar investments in Australia's resources sector, Huawei is a private company. This has proved a blessing and curse for the group.
Rather than allaying fears by opening its books and share register, the company issues scant financial information and keeps its shareholders under wraps, and Ren resolutely in the background.
And like just about every large privately owned company in China, Huawei has its internal Communist Party committee. Such committees, which act as a brake on politically "incorrect" behaviour by corporations, are seen as essential to gain government contracts in China.
"In Huawei, affiliation and membership in any political organisation is considered a personal matter. As with other activities related to personal interests, committee meetings are organised outside regular working hours and are not part of daily Huawei work," company spokesman Jeremy Mitchell said.
It is understood that Huawei is considering two approaches to its NBN bid: a purely network-based bid and a larger networks plus value added services bid.
A number of companies contacted by The Australian say they had been in preliminary talks with Huawei about being involved in a larger bid that could see the group make Australian investments or even buy local companies, but Huawei has denied this.
"Huawei Australia is not currently, nor has [it] plans to invest or buy any Australian technology companies," says Rossi.
Of course all the NBN contracts will be nominally made at arm's length from the government by its wholly owned company, which will build and operate the network.
NBN Co issued $23 million in information technology contracts last week to IBM, Accenture and Oracle but the big spending is yet to come. There is only one tender open so far out for thousands of kilometres of fibreoptic cable and the government's timetable for the release of a long and short list of vendors - due to start in February - appears to have collapsed.
The billions of dollars China brings to our economy could hardly be expected to come without strings attached. But Huawei, together with the fading promise of an all-singing, all-dancing broadband network, promises another election year headache for the Prime Minister.
Additional reporting: Cameron Stewart.
as posted here
AUSTRALIA is facing another test in its relationship with China, as the country's largest technology group, Huawei Technologies, makes a bid for a piece of the $43 billion Australian National Broadband Network.
The test for the communications giant, which is also reported to be pursuing part of the Motorola mobile network in the US, is whether it can overcome the security taint of its links with the People's Liberation Army. Huawei's chief executive officer, the reclusive Ren Zhengfei, is a former PLA officer.
Australia's rosy economic relationship with China, which resulted in $83bn in two-way trade in 2008-09, descended last year into acrimony that culminated in the jailing of Australian mining executive at Rio Tinto Stern Hu and his three colleagues last week.
Nevertheless, and despite the spectacular collapse of the $19bn deal for state-owned Chinalco to buy more of miner Rio Tinto, investment continues to pour in. China tipped $10.7bn into our companies last year, with billions more promised.
But if the overriding issue last year was how much Chinese investment should be allowed in Australia, the biggest bogey now is cyber security. Fears about security are mounting across the world following Google's withdrawal from China after a huge cyber-attack in December.
Huawei is regularly touted as a role model in China's "going out" policy: expanding its companies' international footprint through winning business and buying up foreign companies.
The Shenzhen-based group is now the world's second-largest provider of telecommunications networks to operators across the globe behind Sweden's Ericsson.
It claims to have had international sales of $US30bn ($32.3bn) last year and contracts in scores of countries. Recent wins include a role in the British broadband network and the contract to build the entire NBN in Singapore for Optus's parent Singapore Telecommunications.
The push has not been without controversy. In 2003 Huawei quietly settled a lawsuit for intellectual property theft with US based networks rival Cisco Systems. In 2007 the US knocked back Huawei's bid for another technology group, 3Com, on security grounds.
This week it emerged that US government security agencies are once again probing Huawei as it angles for a piece of the disintegrating technology giant Motorola.
Huawei has operated in Australia for about four years and has a local workforce of about 200 people, 20 per cent of them expatriate Chinese. The company has longstanding contracts with three out of four of Australia's biggest fixed line telecoms groups: Singtel-owned Optus, Telecom New Zealand's Australian arm AAPT and Perth-based internet service provider iiNet.
"Over 50 per cent of Australians already use a Huawei product," Huawei Australia spokesman Luke Coleman cheerfully tells The Australian.
"Huawei is a trusted partner for operators in Australia and globally. We work with Optus, Vodafone-Hutchison Australia, Primus, AAPT and more."
Despite these second-tier deals, Huawei found its way firmly blocked at Telstra under US import Sol Trujillo. Huawei recently got its first sniff as one of three companies Telstra named to test next generation wireless networks, but that's not the big fish the company hopes to catch.
The NBN - one of the centrepieces of Kevin Rudd's successful 2007 campaign - now looms as the company's big chance to bulk up its business here. Analysts say between $5bn and $7bn will be spent on networks gear. Huawei is pitching for the lot.
But already hampered by decades-old fears about its army and government connections, Huawei now faces a world more wary of cyber warfare and network security threats, as well as a right-leaning opposition unafraid to peddle an anti-China message.
Nor has the Rudd government been shy to use security concerns to exclude Chinese projects, such as a Minmetals mine near the defence test site at Woomera.
In their book Australia and Cyber-Warfare, Des Ball of the Strategic and Defence Studies Centre in Canberra, retired air commodore Gary Waters and national security consultant Ian Dudgeon claim cyber warfare units in the Chinese PLA have penetrated the Pentagon's internal internet router and designed software to disable it in the event of a conflict. They say Australia's civilian IT networks and also the defence force's command, control, communications, intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance systems "are at great risk if they are not adequately defended".
Growing concerns about cyber espionage, particularly from China, prompted the Rudd government to establish the new Cyber Security Operations Centre. It was opened in Canberra in January by Defence Minister John Faulkner, who revealed the department had last year investigated about 200 "electronic security incidents" a month.
He said there was evidence that some of the attacks had come from overseas but did not mention China by name.
Huawei's activities in Australia have already been subjected to close scrutiny by the domestic spy agency ASIO.
As revealed by The Australian last September, ASIO officers met Australian Huawei employees in Sydney and Melbourne who told them the company was employing technicians with direct links to the PLA. ASIO has declined to comment on its investigations into Huawei and the company itself has dismissed as "inaccurate and ungrounded" claims that it has links with either the Chinese military or the Chinese government.
Huawei sought a meeting with ASIO last June to "provide a brief introduction to Huawei".
"Huawei's customers are well aware that we adhere to the highest security standards they set for their networks, and not one company has ever called these standards into question," says Coleman.
In the past six months, Huawei has quietly ramped up its lobbying efforts to allay fears in Canberra ahead of decisions on NBN tenders. "As is normal business practice with a build of this size, any vendor including Huawei will be in a position to allow a full and regular security audit of the equipment and the network," Huawei's Australian chief technology officer Peter Rossi says.
"All data centres would be based in Australia with no remote access available and Huawei would also be in a position to allow the government full access to the source code of the network equipment," Rossi says.
The company has hired heavy-hitting boutique public relations firm Bespoke Approach, which boasts as principals former foreign minister Alexander Downer, Keating-era minister Nick Bolkus and Ian Smith, who ran public relations for the T2 and T3 sale of Telstra shares.
In December the former Chinese army officer Ren - who has never given a media interview - visited Australia "to meet customers". He also caught up with NBN executive chairman Mike Quigley who will be the arbiter - with Rudd's say so - on which vendor gets what.
Singtel, majority-owned by the Singapore government's Temasek holdings, had to jump through plenty of security hoops before it was able to buy Optus, which runs the second biggest network in Australia. But Huawei presents a different problem.
Huawei is no stranger to controversy or security concerns. Still, unlike Minmetals and the vast majority of Chinese mining, energy and steel corporations that have been making multi-billion-dollar investments in Australia's resources sector, Huawei is a private company. This has proved a blessing and curse for the group.
Rather than allaying fears by opening its books and share register, the company issues scant financial information and keeps its shareholders under wraps, and Ren resolutely in the background.
And like just about every large privately owned company in China, Huawei has its internal Communist Party committee. Such committees, which act as a brake on politically "incorrect" behaviour by corporations, are seen as essential to gain government contracts in China.
"In Huawei, affiliation and membership in any political organisation is considered a personal matter. As with other activities related to personal interests, committee meetings are organised outside regular working hours and are not part of daily Huawei work," company spokesman Jeremy Mitchell said.
It is understood that Huawei is considering two approaches to its NBN bid: a purely network-based bid and a larger networks plus value added services bid.
A number of companies contacted by The Australian say they had been in preliminary talks with Huawei about being involved in a larger bid that could see the group make Australian investments or even buy local companies, but Huawei has denied this.
"Huawei Australia is not currently, nor has [it] plans to invest or buy any Australian technology companies," says Rossi.
Of course all the NBN contracts will be nominally made at arm's length from the government by its wholly owned company, which will build and operate the network.
NBN Co issued $23 million in information technology contracts last week to IBM, Accenture and Oracle but the big spending is yet to come. There is only one tender open so far out for thousands of kilometres of fibreoptic cable and the government's timetable for the release of a long and short list of vendors - due to start in February - appears to have collapsed.
The billions of dollars China brings to our economy could hardly be expected to come without strings attached. But Huawei, together with the fading promise of an all-singing, all-dancing broadband network, promises another election year headache for the Prime Minister.
Additional reporting: Cameron Stewart.
as posted here
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