The first person to be charged under Australia’s ground-breaking foreign interference laws is in court defending allegations he was “preparing for a foreign interference offence.”
Duong Di Sanh, a Melbourne-based Asian community leader, appeared in Melbourne Magistrates Court on May 17 after being under surveillance in a year-long investigation by the Australian Federal Police and the domestic spy agency, the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation.
The court was presented with several tapped phone conversations—authorised by the federal attorney-general—involving Duong, one such call involved the Asian community leader and the office of then-federal education minister, Alan Tudge.
Duong, who was also a Liberal Party member at the time, spoke to a staffer at the office in March 2020, where he offered to procure COVID-19 testing kits from Hong Kong and donate them to Tudge….