Born in 1965 in Lebanon, Shaoquett Moselmane arrived in Australia as a 12-year-old with 10 siblings. He trained as a solicitor but was quickly drawn to politics.
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Shaoquett Moselmane sat on an ornately-carved dark-wood chair alongside a Chinese Communist Party figure in a grand room in Shanghai and held court.
Beaming and gracious, the NSW upper house MP was on a charity mission in 2015 to deliver wheelchairs for needy children. It was one of more than 10 trips he had made to China over the previous decade.
Looking every inch the international statesman, Mr Moselmane was among friends.
The woman seated alongside him was Jie Ju, an official with a Shanghai Chinese Communist Party political forum that operates under the control of the party’s opaque influence-peddling agency, the United Front Work Department. The UFWD's aim is to increase the party’s power and influence in China and abroad.
Shaoquett Mosemane meets with CPPCC chairwoman Jie Ju.Credit:Facebook
While the meeting was ostensibly about Mr Moselmane's charity work, her presence suggested some in the UFWD considered the politician a man who could help advance its aims.
A Chinese community leader in Sydney and close associate of Mr Moselmane, John Zhang had extolled a similar view the year before on his blog.
"China's power rises, but its political influence overseas has yet to catch up, and still has room for growth. To strengthen our political influence, we must have more politicians like Shaoquett with pro-China sentiments to be our friends," Mr Zhang wrote.
"In the past ten or so years he's travelled to China over ten times, and he's made even more Chinese friends than I have."
Shaoquett Moselmane and John Zhang.Credit:Facebook
Mr Zhang is no stranger to the Chinese government's influence game of making friends abroad to achieve the strategic aims of the CCP. He participated in a 2013 propaganda training course run by the Overseas Chinese Affairs Office, which merged with the UFWD in 2018. Mr Zhang has also held senior roles in groups aligned to the UFWD, including the Shanghai Overseas Friendship Association.
Alex Joske, who studies Chinese government influence operations with a leading defence and foreign affairs think tank, says the Shanghai Overseas Friendship Association is "clearly, 100 per cent, black and white, run by the United Front Work Department".
Before and after the 2015 trip, Mr Moselmane's dealings with Chinese officials often involved Mr Zhang, who joined his office as a part-time staffer and speechwriter in early 2019. It is a pairing that has not only opened doors in China, it is also attracting intense scrutiny at home.
An investigation by The Sydney Morning Herald, The Age and 60 Minutes, has discovered that Mr Moslemane's office has been the focus of a probe by Australia's domestic intelligence agency, the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO).
Multiple sources have confirmed that this scrutiny has dramatically escalated over the last few months, morphing into one of the most significant investigations in ASIO's recent history. ASIO is investigating whether Beijing is behind a covert interference operation targeting Mr Moselmane's office and which aims to advance the Chinese Communist Party’s aspirations in Australia.
On Friday morning in Sydney’s south, Australian Federal Police officers working with ASIO executed warrants, seizing potential evidence connected to the Labor politician.
Mr Moselmane lives on a quiet street lined with 1950s brick houses and neat lawns in Rockdale, a suburb in south Sydney.
At 6.30am, a dozen plain-clothed federal agents raided his two-storey home and began conducting an extensive search for evidence.
An hour later, six forensics officers arrived and assisted with the search.
At 9am, detectives searched three cars — an Audi, ute and Volvo — outside Mr Moselmane’s house. His lawyer arrived during the search and was let into the home by federal agents. The agents searched the house and were seen carrying bags and folders.
Sources have also confirmed that Attorney-General Christian Porter signed off on the ASIO operation, enabling the close tracking of Mr Moselmane’s activities, suggesting that ASIO suspects there may be evidence that the NSW Labor politician’s office has been badly compromised. (The federal police must seek judicial approval before conducting a search).
Attorney-General Christian Porter.Credit:Photo: Alex Ellinghausen
NSW Labor leader Jodi McKay said Mr Moselmane's membership was "being suspended as we speak" and he would no longer sit in the party room.
Veteran intelligence and security expert Neil Fergus, who formerly worked as an Australian diplomat, said the investigation is unlike anything Australia has seen since the Cold War.
The Herald, The Age and 60 Minutes do not suggest the allegations that Mr Moselmane or his office have been covertly influenced by Beijing are true, simply that they are being investigated.
Neil Fergus.Credit:Photo: Andrew Quilty.
Still, the revelations are political dynamite for the Australian Labor Party. The party was warned in 2017 by then ASIO chief Duncan Lewis that both Labor and the Coalition were being targeted by the UFWD as part of its efforts to covertly influence Australian politics. The fall in 2018 of NSW Labor senator Sam Dastyari — who later admitted he had been cultivated by CCP operatives — was a further wake-up call.
Yet Mr Moselmane’s speeches and choice of associates suggest he may have done little to safeguard his office against the sort of threats that ASIO and even Mr Dastyari have warned of publicly.
"He had spoken out so vociferously in support of Beijing policies, and controversial Beijing policies, in stark contrast with ALP national policy," Fergus says.
The question ASIO would be asking, says Fergus, is: why?
‘A new world order’
Mr Moselmane was born in 1965 in Lebanon, arriving in Australia as a 12-year-old with 10 siblings. He trained as a solicitor but was quickly drawn to politics, elected to Rockdale Council in Sydney’s south as a 30-year-old. He served three stints as mayor before being elected to the NSW upper house in 2009 as the Parliament’s first Muslim member.
Shaoquett Moselmane.Credit:Photo: James Alcock
His career has been mostly low profile, save for contributions to controversial causes. He voted with Liberal and National Party members to block an abortion decriminalisation bill in 2017, while his speeches on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict have attracted headlines and claims of "anti-Israel" bias from the Jewish community and Labor politician Walt Secord.
Prior to joining Mr Moselmane’s office as a part-time staffer, Mr Zhang described his future boss as an "amiable" politician who had helped Mr Zhang’s Australian Shanghainese Association challenge Coalition efforts to discard section 18c of the Racial Discrimination Act.
"His build is sturdy, his complexion is rosy and joyful," Mr Zhang would write on his blog in 2014.
"Shaoquett is also an honest and kind-hearted politician."
In June 2018, Mr Moselmane was attacked by commentators and fellow politicians after giving a speech at a function in NSW Parliament House in which he said "the only way for China to reach its potential is for China to force a change to the rules and create a new world order."
In an interview with a Chinese news website in mid-2019, Mr Moselmane gushed about "the revolution led by the Chinese Communist Party" under Mao Zedong and the controversial Belt and Road infrastructure project championed by President Xi Jinping.
Shaoquett Moselmane.Credit:Facbook
"Today, China is the engine of world economic growth and the world's superpower. It is highly respected by the region and the international community," he said.
In late 2019, Mr Moselmane was again making headlines, with reporting on parliamentary disclosure records showing his transport and hospitality costs were often met by Chinese government officials or agencies during the nine privately-funded trips Mr Moselmane took to China since entering Parliament in 2009.
Months later, in early 2020, NSW Labor leader Jodi McKay criticised Mr Moselmane after he praised China's "unswerving leadership" in handling the coronavirus crisis on his personal website.
The comments led former Rudd government minister Stephen Conroy to describe Mr Moselmane as an "absolute disgrace to the Labor Party" and said it was "astonishing he's still in Parliament".
Days later, the Herald and The Age revealed that Mr Moselmane had written a February 5 opinion piece for the East China Normal University warning that "the obsolete scum of white Australia" has re-emerged, attacked Australia’s "mainstream media" as anti-Chinese and praised Beijing’s leadership during the coronavirus crisis. Aspects of the essay mirrored Chinese state propaganda.
In it, Mr Moselmane endorsed the much-maligned praise by the World Health Organisation of "measures adopted by China ... to stop the virus from spreading".
"At the same time, the Australian government was hesitant, lacked direction, and responded slowly and confusingly," he wrote.
"We appreciate the serious attention, timely and effective countermeasures against the threat of coronavirus taken by the Chinese authorities and the Chinese community in Australia."
The Chinese government has been widely criticised by academics and health experts for downplaying the extent of the outbreak in Wuhan, the original epicentre of the pandemic, and silencing whistleblowers such as doctor Li Wenliang, who later died from the virus.
Mr Moselmane went further in his February article, savaging Australia’s "mainstream media" for having "publicly played racist cards, offending and insulting many Australian citizens, especially Chinese residents" in actions that "further deepened the already great suffering of the victim".
"Today, the obsolete scum of 'white Australia' is once again flooding, and the theory of yellow fever has once again surfaced," he wrote.
Following the article, Mr Moselmane resigned as assistant president of the upper house, but he retained his Labor party membership and place in Parliament.
The translator of Mr Moselmane’s February 5 opinion piece for the East China Normal University was his staffer Mr Zhang.
Mr Moselmane is separately listed as a guest professor by the university and Mr Zhang as a researcher.
A prominent university staffer, Professor Chen Hong, is known for making pro-CCP headlines and is a leading Chinese government-aligned critic of Australia’s foreign policy.
In June 2018, Professor Chen interviewed Mr Moselmane in a filmed talk in Shanghai at the East China Normal University. Professor Chen criticised efforts by the Australian government to criminalise foreign interference.
Professor Chen Hong interviews Shaoquett Moselmane.Credit:Source: East China Normal University
The Australian laws, introduced by former prime minister Malcolm Turnbull after the Dastyari scandal, target interference carried out in Australia by any nation. In contrast to soft power diplomacy, the laws attack foreign interference efforts carried out clandestinely or coercively.
In February, ASIO Director-General Mike Burgess warned in a landmark speech that Australia was currently the target of "sophisticated and persistent espionage and foreign interference activities from a range of nations". China has previously been blamed by security agencies for large-scale hacking in Australia, while ASIO is investigating a suspected Chinese military intelligence operative in Melbourne who had approached a Liberal Party member to run for Parliament.
Mr Burgess has warned foreign interference can cause "to significant harm to our national security," amplifying comments made by Mr Lewis that such interference posed an existential threat to democracy.
John Zhang (left) and Professor Chen Hong.Credit:Facbook
In an interview Professor Chen conducted with Mr Moselmane in 2018, the pair discussed Australia's counter-foreign interference laws, which were passed that year with bipartisan support. Professor Chen said reporting about interference had "singled out" China. Mr Moselmane agreed and also described scrutiny of Beijing's influence campaign as a "witch hunt".
The comments were analysed closely by CCP influence expert, Alex Joske, who is a researcher at the Australian Strategic Policy Institute. Over time, Mr Joske has become increasingly alarmed at Mr Moslemane’s public comments about the CCP and dealings with Mr Zhang and Professor Chen, describing Mr Zhang as someone working closely with a Chinese group involved and "dedicated to building an alliance of people working towards the Chinese communist party’s goals".
Of Mr Zhang, Mr Joske says: "He is clearly trying to build his influence across both sides of [Australian] politics."
Exactly what triggered ASIO’s concerns about Mr Moselmane’s behaviour is unclear — the agency rarely comments on ongoing investigations—but Mr Fergus says the extraordinary decision to launch an inquiry targeting his office’s dealings with the CCP wouldn’t have been made lightly. Mr Fergus says the decision is likely to cause a political scandal and prompt questions for the ALP about why Mr Moselmane has retained his place in the party and in Parliament given his affinity for a foreign power whose interests often clash with those of Australia.
Similarly, Mr Fergus says the decision of the federal police on Friday morning to raid properties connected to Mr Moselmane to search for evidence of foreign interference would have required the authorisation of a judge and detailed affidavit explaining why there were reasonable grounds to suspect evidence may be at those properties.
Shaoquett Moselmane.Credit:Photo: James Alcock
Mr Fergus says the counter-interference operation will be searching for communications showing if anyone in Mr Moselmane’s office has been taking instructions from the CCP to carry out certain tasks.
If such communication exists "that becomes key, because it means that they are not using their own independent thought processes or working within their own political structure, they are a tasked individual," he says.
For more on the story read The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age on Friday and watch 60 Minutes on Sunday.
Nick McKenzie is an investigative reporter for The Age. He's won eight Walkley awards and covers politics, business, foreign affairs and defence, human rights issues, the criminal justice system and social affairs.
Joel is a producer for 60 Minutes.
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