Source — AITW Ep034 — All Things China (Again): Defectors? Sleeper Agents? MP Visas & Hong Kong¶

Episode Metadata¶

Field	Value
Episode number	34
Title	Ep. 34: All things China (again)! Defectors? Sleeper agents? MP visas & Hong Kong
Publication date	2019-11-29
Recording date	Thursday evening, 28 November 2019
Guests	None (Allan and Darren only)
Allan present	Yes
Format	Two-host; China-focused; four topics: Wang Liqiang defector story; Nick Zhao sleeper agent story; Keating speech and media/China; Hastie/Patterson visa denial and China Matters; Hong Kong district elections + US Hong Kong Human Rights and Democracy Act; reading segment

Summary¶

Dedicated China episode recorded in the aftermath of two "bombshell" stories broken by Nine Newspapers and 60 Minutes: the asylum application of self-described Chinese intelligence agent Wang Liqiang, and allegations that Chinese intelligence had attempted to install an agent in federal parliament (Nick Zhao, subsequently found dead in a Melbourne motel in March 2019). Allan's immediate reaction to both stories is characteristically sceptical — operational reasoning drawn from experience of real intelligence work. He applies the same epistemic standard to Keating's recent speech criticising Australia's China media coverage: he agrees with the underlying argument while noting the irony that Keating couldn't control the media when he was Prime Minister either.

Board of China Matters confirmed: Allan is on the board of directors of China Matters, the think tank whose Hastie-Patterson China parliamentary trip was cancelled by China. This gives him standing to discuss the visa denial from a practitioner's perspective.

Information diet confirmed in detail: Allan describes how he manages information overload — quality media, think tanks (Lowy, Brookings, CSIS, Council on Foreign Relations), podcasts (China Power/CSIS, Seneca), and above all speeches. Social media explicitly excluded: "I'm not on Twitter or Facebook or any other social media."

Immediate biographical echo: "I used to work for Keating" — said in passing when discussing whether Keating could direct media to cover China differently. Confirms the Keating's-office connection established in Ep014.

Key Quotations¶

"My antenna began to quiver" — intelligence scepticism¶

"Well, my initial reaction was to look at those sort of shadowy front page photographs of a defector. And I'm afraid my sort of antenna began to quiver at that point because few of the great espionage coups of our time have announced themselves on the front page of newspapers. And as you read the story, I thought to myself, there are a few 26 year olds in my experience who've had access to what one journalist was calling the mother load of intelligence."

— [00:08:21.920 --> 00:09:30.640]

This is Allan's intelligence-professional voice: not credulous, not dismissive, but applying operational pattern-recognition. "Antenna began to quiver" — instinctive alarm, not analysis. "In my experience" — the phrase does real work here: experience of actual intelligence coups and actual young officers. The claim that the Wang Liqiang story has the shape of a real intelligence windfall fails the test. He does not commit to either dismissal or acceptance; he simply registers that the form is wrong.

"A million dollars down the drain" — the sleeper agent as practitioner's joke¶

"Yeah, well, again, I didn't obviously know anything about it, but I did think to myself as I was watching and reading about this, that if I were in Beijing and I wanted to place a long term sleeper in the Australian Parliament with the objective of rising to the top of the tree and being able to do my bidding, I would not choose a 26 year old luxury car dealer with business problems and dodgy connections as part of my plan. Anyone who knows Australian politics knows how hard it is to get pre-selection. And so I thought to myself, well, there's a million dollars down the drain if the story is true."

— [00:17:12.680 --> 00:18:07.040]

One of the sharpest witticisms in the corpus. The construction is classic Allan: enter into the premise ("if I were in Beijing"), apply operational logic ("I would not choose"), produce the reductio ("anyone who knows Australian politics knows how hard it is to get pre-selection"), deliver the punchline ("a million dollars down the drain"). The humour is inseparable from the argument — it is a genuine analytical point delivered as comedy. The laughter arises because the logic is irrefutable.

Gordon Samuel on journalists and security organisations¶

"I'm always reminded of something that Gordon Samuel, who is a judge of the New South Wales Supreme Court, who conducted an inquiry into [ASIS] in the mid 1990s — in the report which he wrote at the end of it, he said something like: the fascination which journalists apparently feel for security organisations tends to expel judgment and restraint."

— [00:23:02.720 --> 00:24:27.880]

Note: The transcript renders "ASIS" as "ISIS" — this is clearly a transcription error; the reference is to an Australian security intelligence inquiry in the mid-1990s (likely the 1994 Samuels Report on ASIS following the 1983 Sheraton Hotel incident). The quote is rendered here corrected; listeners should verify against audio.

Allan's citation of a judicial inquiry report — not a journal article, not a news piece — is characteristic. He reaches for primary-source authority: a formal finding by someone with standing. The content of the Samuel observation is empirically precise ("tends to expel" — not "always causes") and becomes Allan's diagnostic for evaluating media coverage of intelligence stories throughout the episode.

"I used to work for Keating"¶

"I used to work for Keating and I'm sure there were many times when he would have liked to be able to direct the Australian media to do what he wanted, but he must know by now that this is not possible."

— [00:15:33.400 --> 00:15:52.160]

Said in passing, with the same self-effacing casualness as all his biographical fragments. Confirms Keating's office (already established in Ep014). The point he makes is real: Keating's call for more responsible China media coverage runs up against the structural impossibility of directing coverage, which Allan knows from having watched Keating try.

"We support Australia"¶

"My response to Neil — I don't know what the PM said — but my response would be: we support Australia. We don't support either China or the United States."

— [00:38:58.720 --> 00:39:21.920]

Context: Darren poses the question that Neil Mitchell asked the PM on radio — "Do we support the United States or China?" on Hong Kong. Allan's answer is a clean structural refusal of the binary. "We support Australia" is not a dodge; it is the correct formulation of Australia's interest-based foreign policy. He does not say "we support both" (which would be incoherent under the premise of the question) but reframes the entire frame. This is the structural-reasoning move: replace the false dichotomy with the actual question.

US absence filling a gap — "the China stories are beginning to fill"¶

"I think there's another issue which we don't think about as much, and that is the absence of the United States from international stories. The focus of US attention is so intensely on what's going on inside Washington and the American engagement in the world so much less frequent and intense than we've seen in the past. And I think there's a sort of gap that the China stories are beginning to fill."

— [00:02:42.080 --> 00:04:45.520]

A structural diagnosis: China's dominance of Australian media is not only about China's growth and salience but about US withdrawal from international attention. The "gap" framing — structural rather than conspiratorial — is typical. He immediately turns the question back to Darren, inviting his view rather than holding the floor.

Information diet — "I make the assumption that things that are important will eventually reach me"¶

"As you and I talked about before, I find it very, very easy to ignore social media. I'm not on Twitter or Facebook or any other social media. I make the assumption that things that are important will eventually reach me and sooner rather than later through the filter of the regular Australian and international media, through think tanks like Lowy and Brookings and CSIS, Council on Foreign Relations, through podcasts — things like China Power from CSIS or Seneca. But speeches, I think, are really important and mostly ignored... The thing I'm always looking for is ways of thinking about the subject — that points me in the direction usually of longer reports and essays rather than immediate news summaries."

— [00:31:45.040 --> 00:33:30.680]

The most detailed statement of Allan's information diet in the corpus. Key features: (1) deliberate exclusion of social media — not incapacity but a principled filter; (2) trust in quality gatekeepers over real-time feeds; (3) explicit hierarchy: speeches > think tank reports > media; (4) the meta-criterion: "ways of thinking about the subject" — Allan reads for analytical frameworks, not just facts. The named sources (Lowy, Brookings, CSIS, CFR, China Power, Seneca) are all serious, institution-backed, analytically dense.

China Matters and the "repent" translation¶

"Linda Jacobson, who's the founding director of China Matters, knows more about China than many people in this country... it was a really great shame when the Chinese embassy decided to pull the plug on this. I really can't understand why they've had far more negative publicity out of cancelling... and then, of course, you point to the press statement and that odd expression asking to repent. As you know, XC Chong, who helps us with research, pointed out very interestingly that the accurate Chinese translation is more something like 'reflect upon' — it's the sort of thing that parents say to their recalcitrant kids. But 'repentance' has this sort of theological dimension to it, which just made it seem even odder and wilder."

— [00:28:23.720 --> 00:30:45.640]

Allan is identified here as a board member of China Matters. His confidence in the programme's quality rests on Linda Jacobson's expertise — a characteristic move: institutional credibility is rooted in specific named expertise, not prestige or funding. The "repent" vs "reflect" translation note is credited to XC Chong (the podcast's research support), demonstrating the research collaboration that underpins the podcast's analytical quality.

Biographical Fragments¶

Evidence type: Confirmed (reinforcing prior evidence)

"I used to work for Keating" [00:15:33.400] — said in passing. Confirms the Keating's-office connection established in Ep014 (June 1994 Indonesia trade mission). Ep034 adds no new detail. (Ep034)
Board of directors, China Matters — Allan is described as being on the board of China Matters, the Australian think tank founded and directed by Linda Jacobson (later Jakobson). This is the first confirmed board membership of a think tank post-ONA. Relevant to understanding his institutional role in the policy ecosystem 2018–2023. (Ep034)
Social media abstention confirmed again — "I'm not on Twitter or Facebook or any other social media" [00:31:45.040]. Consistent with Ep012 ("conscientious objector to social media"). (Ep034)
Named information sources: Lowy Institute, Brookings Institution, CSIS, Council on Foreign Relations, China Power podcast (CSIS), Seneca podcast. Allan's intellectual diet confirmed in detail for the first time. (Ep034)

Style and Method Evidence¶

Intelligence professional's pattern-recognition: "My antenna began to quiver" — instinctive reading of the formal shape of an intelligence claim against operational knowledge. He registers alarm before analysis.
Wit as argument: The "million dollars down the drain" construction is not mere humour but the logical conclusion of applying practitioner knowledge to a public story. The comedy is the proof.
Judicial citation: Gordon Samuel's inquiry finding — Allan reaching for primary, formal authority rather than secondary commentary.
Information triage: Deliberate exclusion of social media; trust in quality gatekeepers; hierarchy from news → think tanks → speeches. A professional model of managing information overload.
Binary refusal: "We support Australia" — the structural move of replacing a false dichotomy with the actual question.

Reading, Listening and Watching¶

Allan — Mick Herron, Jackson Lamb thrillers (third book)

"Your reference to spies before led me to think of John le Carré and prompted me to recommend Mick Herron's Jackson Lamb thrillers, the third of which I'm reading at the moment. These are set among a group of intelligence service discards and failures located a long way from the glittering palace of the Central Intelligence Service in London and headed by a person who is almost the exact opposite of James Bond. Anyway, look, they're intelligent and witty and enjoyable and page-turning and we're coming up to summer. So I can't recommend a beach read more highly."

— [00:43:03.120 --> 00:44:00.800]

The "Jackson Lamb" series by Mick Herron (Slough House novels) features a dysfunctional MI5 outpost staffed by failed and disgraced officers. Allan's enthusiasm for this series is consistent with his intelligence-world background — he responds to authenticity and wit rather than glamour. "Almost the exact opposite of James Bond" is the recommendation. He is reading the third book: Real Tigers (2016) or possibly Slow Horses (2010) and Dead Lions (2012) in sequence. The timing (late November 2019, "coming up to summer") confirms Australian context.

Darren — China Neican newsletter (Yuen Yuen Ang and Adam Ni) — Australia-focused China analysis newsletter. Not Allan's recommendation.

Open Questions¶

Which specific Mick Herron book is Allan reading? If the third in order: Real Tigers (2016). Does the series appear again in later episodes?
The Gordon Samuel / ASIS inquiry reference: which specific report is this? The 1994 Samuels review of ASIS (following the 1983 Sheraton Hotel training incident) is the most likely candidate. Confirm against audio.
When exactly did Allan join the board of China Matters? Is he still on the board throughout the podcast period?
Keating's "Australian Strategic Forum" speech (18 November 2019) — does Allan comment on it more fully in later episodes? He seems broadly sympathetic to the media critique while sceptical of Keating's ability to change it.
Does Allan develop his view of Nick Zhao or Wang Liqiang in later episodes once more information became public?