Saturday, 10 July 2010

UWS civil liberties expert raises concerns about refugees detained by ASIO's powers | StreetCorner.com.au

as was posted here UWS civil liberties expert raises concerns about refugees detained by ASIO's powers | StreetCorner.com.au

UWS civil liberties expert raises concerns about refugees detained by ASIO's powers

by University of Western Sydney Media Unit
09/07/2010

As the government weighs up its refugee policy, concerns about the arbitrary powers held by the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO) are being raised after recent media reports suggest 120 to 150 asylum seekers are being detained in a state of limbo because the intelligence organisation is unable to decide whether they are security threats.

University of Western Sydney civil liberties expert, Associate Professor Michael Head, from the School of Law, says the current situation highlights the issue that refugees are being denied their right to natural justice - the basic legal right to procedural fairness.

"In recent months, the government denied protection visas to numbers of Sri Lankan Tamils, who face deportation without any right to know, or challenge, why ASIO considers them a threat to Australia's national security," says Associate Professor Head.

"This situation adds to the criticism of last week's deportation of a Sydney Muslim cleric, Sheikh Mansour Leghaei, who was also classified by ASIO as a national security threat without being told why."

Some of the refugees, mostly Sri Lankans or Burmese Rohingyas, have been in detention for more than 12 months waiting for ASIO security clearances. They form a sizeable part of the more than 3,800 people inside Australia's immigration detention centres.

Associate Professor Head says Sheikh Leghaei, who lived in Australia for 16 years with his family, went all the way to the High Court in unsuccessful legal bids to require ASIO to explain its adverse assessment.

"His saga is reminiscent of Franz Kafka's novel, The Trial, in which the accused man, Josef K, is arrested, prosecuted and ultimately executed for a crime that is never identified."

"In 2005, a Federal Court judge rejected Leghaei's objection that he had been denied natural justice because he had not been told of any allegations contained in his ASIO file, and thus denied the opportunity to respond to them," says Associate Professor Head.

The judge ruled that Leghaei could not be given even a summary of the accusations against him and an entire section of the judgment, of unknown length, was also kept confidential on ASIO's advice.

The case was appealed in 2007 and three Federal Court judges upheld the ruling, and ordered that about one-third of their own judgment be blacked out in the published version."

Associate Professor Head says even Australian citizens can be jeopardised by adverse ASIO assessments.

"Most recently, Shyloh Jayne Giddins, a Sydney mother of two, was detained by the authorities in Yemen for more than 3 weeks after the government cancelled her passport on the basis of an ASIO report."

"In Giddins's case, ASIO issued a statement of reasons, alleging that she 'has an extremist interpretation of Islam and her activities in Yemen are prejudicial to security'. ASIO refused to elaborate. Its statement nevertheless indicated that Giddins's religious views were regarded as objectionable."

"In effect, ASIO's powers have become legally unchallengeable," says Associate Professor Head.

"This is a grave worry, especially given that ASIO and the other intelligence agencies were involved in the false claims of 'weapons of mass destruction' used to justify the 2003 invasion of Iraq."

ASIO's bounty of red herrings under the bed | The Australian

as was posted here ASIO's bounty of red herrings under the bed | The Australian

ASIO's bounty of red herrings under the bed

Mike Steketee
From:The Australian
July 10, 2010 12:00AM

Cold War hysteria led to many Australians being unfairly hounded by the security service

THE life of John Burton, who died two weeks ago at the age of 95, provides another perspective on the revelations that there were indeed a few reds under Australian beds during the Cold War.

In 1947, H.V. 'Doc' Evatt, external affairs minister in the Chifley government, picked Burton to head his department. Aged 32 and after just 10 years in the public service, it was a spectacular rise. The protege of a Labor minister, and one with left-wing tendencies to boot, it also was enough to make him a marked man.

Burton came under suspicion as a communist and a Soviet spy, even though his background alone made those claims improbable. His father was a missionary and head of the Methodist church. Burton himself intended becoming a minister and was secretary of the Student Christian Movement at Sydney University.

He lost his religious faith, but not his values. Nor was he willing to compromise his intellectual independence, an attitude not well suited to the McCarthyist era of communist witchhunts. He promoted policies that were regarded as left wing but in reality were ahead of their time, such as diplomatic recognition of China, the independence of Indonesia from Dutch colonial rule and building Australia's future in Asia.

For years his movements were tracked by ASIO and his phones bugged. "I could never send a message from my office to Dr Evatt's office without the American ambassador having the precise details within minutes," he said in 1972. "The ambassador used to drop little hints to let me know he knew what I knew."

Along with other senior officials, he was asked to take a special oath of secrecy to not pass on intelligence information to the government. Burton refused. He said later that Charles Spry, then head of military intelligence and later to become ASIO's first director, had told him democracy needed to be protected from itself.

Although Spry denied using the words, it was typical of the attitude of the time. Some things were too important for our elected representatives, particularly if they were on the Labor side.

Burton was called as a witness at the Petrov royal commission into Soviet spying, objecting forcefully but in vain to being required to give evidence in secret. The release in 1996 of Soviet cables between Canberra and Moscow supported allegations of spying against two diplomats, Ian Milner and Jim Hill, but vindicated the reputation of Burton, among others.

But his career as a public servant had been ruined long before that. After Robert Menzies was elected in 1949, he shunted Burton off to Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) as high commissioner. Burton subsequently carved out an international academic career in conflict resolution and applied his thinking by bringing together opposing parties in secret talks on some of the world's most intractable conflicts, such as Ireland, Cyprus and confrontation between Indonesia and Malaysia.

Burton can be accused of naivety on occasions, such as when he went to Beijing for a peace conference that was regarded as a Chinese propaganda exercise. But that did not make him a communist, any more than the three ministers of religion who were in his party.

Historian Greg Pemberton, who is writing a book on Burton, says Marxism was not the only influence on the Labor left at the time: "As in Britain and New Zealand, Christian liberalism or Christian socialism was a really important element. Although Burton was a secular person by this stage, this was his inspiration. The debate about what happened in the Cold War misses that."

Conservatives will see as vindication of their obsession with communist influence in Australia in the evidence uncovered by Mark Aarons in his book, The Family File, from which an extract was published in last week's Inquirer. Aarons obtained access to the ASIO files kept on his family, a staggering 32,000 pages in all, including 14,000 on his father Laurie, Australia's best known communist. They include claims that John Wheeldon, a Whitlam government minister and Arthur Gietzelt, a Hawke government minister, were one time members of the communist party; secretly so, because otherwise they would have been expelled from the Labor Party. Wheeldon, who journeyed from the far left to the far right during his lifetime, is dead. Gietzelt denies the claim.

What ASIO established was extensive contact between Gietzelt, other prominent ALP members such as Tom Uren and communist party officials. Misguided it may have been, particularly with the benefit of hindsight, but it was not a crime.

Communists achieved their greatest influence in the broader labour movement, where Mark Aarons says at their peak they achieved control of almost half of Australian unions.

Given Labor's links with the unions, it is not surprising that some Labor MPs had contact with communists.In any case, their influence in Labor governments was limited. Gietzelt was a fierce opponent of Gough Whitlam, as was Uren for periods. When the Labor caucus elected Gietzelt to the front bench, Bob Hawke gave him one of the most junior jobs, veterans affairs.

To the extent that Labor governments have succeeded, in the past and present, it often has been by disowning left-wing policies. Communism was never a match for Australian democracy and conservatism.

More serious was that two diplomats, Milner and Hill, passed classified information on to the Soviets through a communist party official, Wally Clayton, including, according to Clayton in his confession to Laurie Aarons in his son's book, "detailed plans of the Yanks and their military situation in the Pyrenees for the war against the Soviet Union". But that was about the only concrete damage that occurred.

In the process, the net was cast extraordinarily wide, traducing the reputation of many innocent people in Australia, as in the US and elsewhere. The Hope royal commission into the intelligence services that reported to the Fraser government encountered an attitude to the inquiry of "deception, dissimulation, delaying tactics and suppression of information", in the words of commission secretary George Brownbill, in a speech in 2008.

In other words, they regarded themselves as above the law. They also, said Brownbill, were "badly politicised". "It would have been much more serious if the ASIO operatives had been more competent. But as it was, their scattergun approach to the investigation of 'subversion' resulted in an equally scattergun approach to the fulfilment of their true function: as the fourth arm of the defence of the realm."

Spry, as ASIO director-general, gave Menzies and his attorney-general intelligence gossip about political opponents.

"The ASIO files disclosed numerous cases where gossip and title-tattle about people and their so-called communist sympathies was recounted to certain figures in the Menzies governments and then revealed in some cases under parliamentary privilege," said Brownbill. "Much of this was no more than slander under privilege. That is, the evidence was just not there."

The legacy of the Cold War is a long one. One of John Burton's daughters, Meredith Edwards, became an influential public servant, playing a leading role in innovative policies such as the HECS scheme for universities, the child support scheme which greatly improved the circumstances of the children of separated parents and the labour market programs introduced in the wake of the 1990 recession.

She rose to deputy secretary in the Prime Minister's Department where, in 1996, her new boss, Max Moore-Wilton, gave her an excellent performance review but told her, according to Edwards, that she probably wouldn't go very far under the Howard government because of her "antecedents".

She says he then suggested that she move to the backwater of the Department of Veterans Affairs. Like her father, she resigned to become an academic.

Monday, 5 July 2010

Thankfully, Whitlam and Co rescued Labor from the Reds | The Australian

as was posted here ... Thankfully, Whitlam and Co rescued Labor from the Reds | The Australian

Thankfully, Whitlam and Co rescued Labor from the Reds

Bob Carr
From:The Australian
July 05, 2010 12:00AM

PAUL Keating, as president of Young Labor in 1968, always referred to the Left of the ALP as "the comms".

I was a bit taken aback by this brutal political shorthand. Fresh from university studies in history and politics, I thought snootily that his language a bit crude.

I was wrong.

How wrong is confirmed by the just-published book The Family File by Mark Aarons. It's an account of what ASIO files - the largest collection in Australian history - say about four generations of a communist family, Mark's father Laurie being the long-term general secretary of the Communist Party of Australia.

But the bombshell revelation is the system of dual membership of the ALP and the CPA, something long suspected but now spelt out by the ASIO documents and Mark Aarons's family familiarity with Australian communism.

The implications are huge.

As a teenage Whitlam-ite I sat in the gallery of Sydney Town Hall and watched factional debates at the annual state ALP conference. I now know, courtesy of this book, the Left leaders carried Communist Party tickets. Their real loyalty was to the CPA, a party still loyal to Moscow.

Aarons quotes ASIO files that place former senators Arthur Gietzelt and Bruce Childs as CPA members.

It is almost certain that in the circle of activists around them there were numerous others. Others were simple left-wingers who had fond and close association with the CPA. Others took their political cues from its campaigns and propaganda.

One ASIO agent believed that former federal ALP minister Tom Uren was a CPA member between 1948 and 1958. Bob Hawke, it is reported, believes Uren as well as Gietzelt, both ministers in his cabinet, were CPA members, probably on the basis of ASIO advice.

But Uren strongly denies it and Aarons, who listened to a long oral history interview between Uren and his father, accepts Uren's denial.

The revelation of dual membership is rich in implications. They recast the political history of Australia from the 1950s to the 70s.

First, they vindicate the decision of a large part of Catholic Australia to veto the election of federal Labor governments by voting for the breakaway Democratic Labor Party after the Labor split of 1955.

Still something of a Labor romantic, I find it painful to squeeze this out, but it strikes me the DLP indictment of the ramshackle Labor Party led by H. V. Evatt and Arthur Calwell was mostly right.

A "pro-communist left wing" - you can hear Bob Santamaria enunciating it as one word - secured an elevated role in the ALP once so many Catholics withdrew and this Labor Left was led (or largely led) by figures who kept a dual membership in the Communist Party in their bottom drawers or pasted in the end piece of an unread Das Kapital above the family fireplace.

Second, the revelations demean the reputations of Evatt, the mercurial and somewhat disturbed leader of the ALP 1951-60, and his successor Calwell, leader of the party from 1960 to 1967. Both compromised the party, in Evatt's case by choosing a communist-led Left wing to be his ally and tolerating cosy relationships with CPA personnel at a time when they were rusted-on Soviet loyalists. Calwell accommodated himself to the communist-dominated Victorian state ALP executive and finally, absurdly, joined it even while serving as federal leader.

Under Calwell's leadership the left was able to hammer a commitment to a nuclear-free southern hemisphere into federal ALP policy. This came straight out of the CPA and was designed to rupture the Australian-American alliance when Labor won government; that is, it was a policy device for banning visits by US naval vessels to Australian ports.

In 1963 the Left got to within one vote at a national ALP conference of committing Labor to oppose the American communications base on Northwest Cape. The other Left policy victory was to lock federal and state Labor governments into denying state aid to non-state (that is, Catholic) schools.

We can now assume the impetus behind these policy thrusts was delivered by ALP officials and trade unionists who held dual membership in the CPA or were so aligned to it a party ticket barely mattered.

It was Gough Whitlam who challenged this bunch and, I believe, must be rewarded with a marking up in his historic reputation. Historians should rediscover Whitlam the anti-communist.

It was he who took on the Victorian executive, even abusing them to their faces, in 1967 at the first Victorian conference he addressed as leader. It was he who treated the federal executive of the party with the contempt it deserved; it was he who sought to build a modern, reforming social democratic party instead of the comm-dominated rabble it had sunk to.

Just think: with no Gough, Jim Cairns would have led Labor, a naive academic who never conceded the North Vietnamese presence in South Vietnam, never criticised North Vietnam, could refer to Stalin and Mao as "leaders of world socialism", and as treasurer said he would print money to reduce unemployment. As I write this, the chilling analogy dawns on me: Cairns as an Australian Salvador Allende.

From Aarons's book not just Whitlam but the whole ALP Right is elevated, the party members who did not take Santamaria's advice and walk out but who opted to stay in the ALP and fight. Their names should be recorded on some kind of honour roll. They include Laurie Short and John Ducker, and the secretaries of unions of carpenters, electricians and rubber workers now dead and forgotten, united in a view that the party of Curtin and Chifley was not to be packaged up and handed over to Marxist-Leninists and outright Soviet agents.

Ducker, leader of the NSW Labor Right who died two years ago, once used the expression in a conversation with me, "the right-wing of the Labor Party, in the best sense of the term": in the 50s and 60s they turned up at conferences and blocked a takeover of the ALP by "the comms" - I now adopt young Keating's nomenclature.

Bob Carr is a former Labor premier of NSW.

Sunday, 4 July 2010

Australian Secret Intelligence Service – Intelligence Officers | Graduate Opportunities

as was posted here ... Australian Secret Intelligence Service – Intelligence Officers | Graduate Opportunities

Australian Secret Intelligence Service – Intelligence Officers

The role of an Intelligence Officer is truly unique. It offers highly talented people the opportunity to help protect and promote Australia’s national interests and, in some cases, help save Australian lives. Intelligence Officers plan, develop and manage intelligence operations overseas in often difficult environments that draw on their judgment, intellect and inner strengths. Intelligence Officers display personal courage, are highly motivated and have an innate sense of curiosity. They enjoy connecting with people from different cultures and overcoming obstacles to deliver results.

The role of an Intelligence Officer is challenging and exciting – it’s a job not just anyone can do.

Following a lengthy recruitment process, as a successful applicant you will undertake extensive and demanding training. After passing the training course, you will have the opportunity to work overseas as an Intelligence Officer.

To succeed as an Intelligence Officer, you will need to demonstrate:

superior interpersonal and liaison skills in order to build strong relationships with people;
personal presence and impact, with a proven ability to interact effectively with people from diverse cultures and backgrounds;
excellent written communication skills;
high levels of maturity and self-management skills, with excellent judgment and the ability to assess risks;
resilience and self-motivation, with a determination to achieve results in difficult and high-pressure environments; and
the highest levels of personal integrity and professionalism, which ASIS will continue to support through comprehensive training and development programs.

“The IO role has allowed my family and I to experience some truly amazing things. I have had the opportunity to work and travel in some spectacular countries, meet interesting people, learn another language, and contribute to
something worthwhile.” -- Kate, Intelligence Officer

Saturday, 3 July 2010

Islamic hardliners return for Sydney convention after push for ban fails | The Australian

as was posted here ... Islamic hardliners return for Sydney convention after push for ban fails | The Australian

HUNDREDS of Islamic activists are assembling in Sydney for a convention being held by the controversial Islamist group Hizb ut-Tahrir.

This is its first big event in Australia since a failed push to outlaw it three years ago.

Senior Hizb ut-Tahrir (HT) members have flown in from Britain for the conference, which is part of a series of events being held around the world, as the group steps up its campaign for the formation of a trans-national Islamic state.

HT's Australian spokesman, Uthman Badar, said the conference, the theme of which was the "struggle for Islam in the West", was aimed at countering rising hostility to "all things Islamic" in the Western world.

"Whether it be the US, the UK or Australia, we see constant attacks on Islam, its values, practices and symbols," Mr Badar said.

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"If it's not the face veil that becomes a security issue overnight in Australia, it's the minarets that frighten Switzerland."

Security agencies will be closely monitoring the conference.

In 2007, when HT held its last international assembly in Australia, the federal government considered banning the organisation in response to claims that it incites religious hatred and indirectly encourages terrorism.

But ASIO advised the then attorney-general Philip Ruddock that there was insufficient evidence to proscribe the group as it did not advocate terrorism.

HT explicitly rejects the use of violence in its quest for an Islamic state. But it supports militant campaigns against Western forces in Afghanistan and Iraq, and opposes the existence of Israel, which it calls an "illegitimate" state that "must be removed".

"Hizb ut-Tahrir's platform actually forbids its members from acts of terror and there is no clear evidence of (HT) engaging in terrorism or the preparation of terrorism," said Clive Williams, head of terrorism studies at the Australian National University. "There are many instances, though, of those whose views were forged in Hizb ut-Tahrir subsequently taking part in terrorism."

HT is banned in much of the Middle East, but operates legally in more than 40 countries, with an estimated one million members worldwide.

It has been active in Australia since the early 1990s.

Mr Badar denied the organisation was extremist. "There is nothing extreme about wanting representative, accountable governance in the Muslim world, or wanting the end of foreign interference there by removing the despots who rule," he said.

Conservative community groups in Sydney are planning a rally to coincide with Sunday's conference in Lidcombe to demonstrate their opposition to HT.

"We're really concerned, we believe (the philosophy) of Hizb ut-Tahrir is not one of peace and co-existence. They want world domination," said Nick Folkes, Sydney organiser for the Australian Protectionist Party, a fringe group that supports ending all Muslim immigration.

"Co-existence cannot happen. It's all lovely and fluffy to say co-existence is possible, but it's not. We want to end Islamic immigration because they want sharia law and we don't want it."

Thursday, 1 July 2010

NBN bid to stretch China ties | The Australian

as was posted here ... NBN bid to stretch China ties | The Australian

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.

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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.

Miners fear secrets stolen by Chinese cyber-spies | The Australian

as was posted here ... Miners fear secrets stolen by Chinese cyber-spies | The Australian

THE internal communications of Australia's major iron ore producers have been aggressively targeted by cyber attacks that many senior executives and members of the Rudd government suspect originate in China. The potential breaches of security and the continuing threat of more are thought to be so widespread that some senior industry executives have their more sensitive phone and email communications - even when in Australia - encrypted, with the assistance of the federal government.

The issue is so politically and commercially explosive that neither the companies involved nor the Rudd government will talk about the issue publicly. China has always emphatically denied any suggestions it was involved in cyber attacks on Western companies.

A report on the ABC's Four Corners program last night outlined cases of cyber attacks against BHP Billiton, Rio Tinto and Fortescue Metals at times of extreme tension in the relationship with their main customer, China. Although the program offered no proof that any of these attacks came from China, the companies and the Rudd government are believed to be operating unofficially on that assumption.

The Australian has also been told of a concerted cyber attack on a major iron ore company leading to radical changes, organised by Canberra, in the way its executives communicate to ensure confidentiality.

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An unnamed senior BHP Billiton executive told Four Corners about several attacks during the company's bid to take over Rio Tinto in 2008 and that its network security was regularly upgraded to counter these.

According to the program, Rio Tinto also discovered an intruder had launched a major hacking attack on its computer network around the time of the arrest of Stern Hu and three other Rio executives in China last June.

This was regarded as so serious that Rio took its Singapore office offline for almost three days immediately following Hu's arrest on charges of bribery and commercial espionage.

Hu pleaded guilty to bribery last month but the charges of stealing trade secrets were vague and held in closed court.

Fortescue Metals Group has also been targeted, leading to a serious upgrading of its IT systems and the encryption of highly confidential communications.

According to Four Corners and information given to The Australian, Australia's own electronic spying agency, the Defence Signals Directorate, and ASIO are helping some major companies to protect themselves from cyber attack.

Alan Dupont, director of the Centre for International Security Studies at the University of Sydney, said cyber penetration was a growing global problem.

"There's a general attempt by the government to educate the business community about the level of threat to their communications systems," Professor Dupont said.

"I am reasonably certain China is getting specific mention, as a lot of the attacks appear to have come through China, although no one can prove it categorically.

"Politically the government would have to be very careful about explicitly identifying any country, but the perception is that China has been the main perpetrator over the past two to three years. It is difficult to know whether, and at what level, it is co-ordinated and controlled by the state."

Internet services to several Australian companies were dramatically slowed last week following an internet attack on Optus that was believed to have originated in China. Internet giant Google announced this year it had been hit by a cyber attack mounted from China and said at least 20 other major corporations had been similarly targeted.

But the outraged reaction of the Chinese to any suggestions they are responsible - and the commercial importance of doing business in China - make Australian companies reluctant to raise the issue in public.

Major iron ore producers are already facing antagonism in China over the rising price of iron ore and a proposed joint venture between BHP Billiton and Rio Tinto.

At the same time, the Rudd government is trying to improve relations with Beijing after a rocky period, exacerbated by tensions over the level of Chinese investment in Australian resources companies.

The federal government opened a new Cyber Security Operations Centre last January

Huawei slams critics | The Australian

as was posted here ... Huawei slams critics | The Australian

CHINA'S leading telecommunications equipment maker, Huawei, has once again been forced to dismiss spying allegations and stake its claim in the $43 billion national broadband network bonanza.

Huawei has faced major challenges doing business in some parts of the world due to its close links with the Chinese government. The fact that its founder, Ren Zhengfei, was a People's Liberation Army officer also complicated some situations.

But Huawei has managed to overcome the odds and today ranks as one of the world's largest players in its field.

On Monday a company official's seemingly benign comments managed to raise the ire of The Australian readers online.

Huawei regional chief technology officer Paul Scanlan said the company backed the NBN model proposed by the government as it would drive competition in the local telecoms industry and raise productivity levels.

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"Huawei fully supports the government's decision for an open wholesale access network,'' Mr Scanlan told AAP.

Most readers were against the company's involvement in the NBN due to its close ties with the Asian nation's communist regime. It was also called to account on spying claims.

In September The Australian reported that ASIO was investigating whether Huawei Australia had employed technicians with direct ties to the PLA.

Huawei employees in Sydney and Melbourne had approached ASIO to voice their concerns.

The company denied it was being investigated nor linked to the Chinese military or the Chinese government.

The same line was repeated today, with Huawei spokesman Jeremy Mitchell stressing the company's performance and quality products instead of unfounded claims.

Mr Mitchell said Huawei booked worldwide sales worth over $US30bn ($32.8bn) in 2009.

It has partnerships with 36 of the world's top 50 telcos, he said.

"We have just recorded the largest LTE (long term evolution) contract in Europe and recorded double digit growth in the US.

"Huawei has been in Australia for over four years (and) 73 per cent of our staff (are) locals.

"Seventy per cent of revenue comes from outside of China and no, it isn't government- owned, its largest shareholder owns less then 2 per cent of the company and the rest is employee-owned," Mr Mitchell said.

Mr Zhengfei owns around 1.7 per cent of Huawei.

The company is involved in NBN rollouts in Britain, Malaysia and Singapore which Mr Mitchell said pointed to Huawei's success with large-scale government projects. It hopes to play a key role in Australia's broadband project.

"There is one simple truth, you don't get the global partnerships and continued sales growth across Europe, America, Asia-Pacific without delivering first class products and service as well as a continued demonstration of real R&D leadership," he said.

"Huawei currently ranks number one for the number of patent applications with the World Intellectual Property Organisation."