ASIO should focus more on defending our liberties, rather than taking them away

Burgess has, it seems, no problem with the way that some controversial countries, such as Israel and Taiwan, conduct regular seminars and conferences, attended by senior Australian politicians, lobbyists and officials. When he first spoke of such a conference I thought he was talking about a Taiwan conference. When he spoke of political figures discussing party factional brawls, and sources of power in their party, I assumed he was talking of Bill Shorten or any number of other Labor figures speaking freely with CIA contacts, as shown by Wikileaks. He wasn’t in both cases. You must be a putative enemy to warrant Burgess’s notice. Frankly, I do not regard such interchanges as inherently sinister, and think that ASIO is, (as it showed in the 1983 Combe-Ivanov case) naive about life in the real world. But Taiwanese and Israeli spooks are active in the conference and interchanges they organise, just as I assume the Chinese (or, say, the Indonesians) are. They want to know what Australian perceptions and intentions are.