AUSTRALIA’S FOREIGN MINISTER WARNS POLS VS FOREIGN SPIES

Australian Foreign Minister Marise Payne on Wednesday warned the country's politicians to be vigilant against threats of spying and manipulation from foreign actors. 

“The threat is as high or higher than it has ever been, that's what intelligence agencies are telling us,” Payne said on commercial radio station 2GB. 

Payne said foreign interference was rife around the world and “malicious actors and foreign spies” were using new technology to target key people at a time of rising strategic tensions, the Deustche Presse-Agentur (dpa) also reported. 

Her warning comes a day after the head of Australia’s domestic security organization ASIO, Mike Burgess, told a Senate committee he would write to federal politicians on what to look out for and how to respond if they think they are being targeted by spies, news agency Australian Associated Press (AAP) reported. Neither Payne nor Burgess named which countries the threat comes from. In June federal police raided the home and office of a New South Wales Labor Party politician and those of four Chinese journalists as part of an investigation into an alleged Chinese government interference plot.