The ex-politician allegedly recruited by overseas spies sold out "their colleagues, their party, but also the nation," Deputy Prime Minister Richard Marles said.
ASIO director-general of security Mike Burgess said last night he declassified the efforts of a dedicated foreign team, including that case, in an effort to show what was possible and to send a message to the rival spies.
Presenting the annual threat assessment last night, Burgess went into some detail about the efforts of the "A-team" – so dubbed within ASIO because of its focus on Australia – to recruit academics, political figures and others using everything from elaborate overseas conferences to social media friend requests.
"Several years ago, the A-team successfully cultivated and recruited a former Australian politician," he said.
"This politician sold out their country, party and former colleagues to advance the interests of the foreign regime.
"At one point, the former politician even proposed bringing a prime minister's family member into the spies' orbit.
"Fortunately that plot did not go ahead but other schemes did."
This morning, Marles said he was not aware of the "specific facts" of ASIO's operation but backed Burgess' decision to go public.
"We've got to be really focused about those who seek to influence what we do, and that what we do has always based solely on Australia's national interest," he told Today.
Burgess said the unit was trawling networking sites for Australians with access to classified information and could fire off hundreds of messages a day.
He said the spies posed as consultants, head-hunters, local government officials, academics and think tank researchers, and usually offered consulting opportunities paying thousands of dollars for information on trade, politics, economics, foreign policy, defence and security.
Burgess shared one exchange he said was an approach from a real spy – claiming to be Sophy from Data 31 – to a real Australian, given the pseudonym of Ian.
Despite "multiple red flags", Ian engaged and asked "how much do you pay?" in an exchange that ultimately "did not end well for Ian", Burgess said.
"This form of espionage is low-cost, low-risk, low-effort – and can be conducted at scale. Hundreds of friend requests can be sent each day," he said.
"At the same time, though, the cut and paste approach, the out-of-the-blue friend requests and the offers that are too good to be true should all raise red flags with recipients."
Burgess said he declassified the efforts of the A-team for two reasons.
"First – awareness. Australians need to understand what the threat looks like so they can avoid it and report it," he said.
"The second reason is more complicated. We decided to confront the A-team and then speak about it publicly as part of a real-world, real-time disruption.
"We want the A-team to know its cover is blown. We want the A-team's bosses to know its cover is blown.
"If the team leader failed to report our conversation to his spymasters, he will now have to explain why he didn't, along with how ASIO knows so much about his team's operations and identities."
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The ASIO boss pleaded with people with access to valuable information to avoid making themselves an "easy target".
"On just one professional networking site, there are 14,000 Australians publicly boasting about having a security clearance or working in the intelligence community," he said.
"Some even out themselves as intelligence officers – even while proving they're not particularly good ones."
But threats to Australia are obviously not limited to social networking sites. Burgess highlighted various examples of a diverse range of threats from a foreign government trying to harm an Australia-based critic of the regime to a country scanning critical infrastructure.
He pointed to the chaos of the Optus network outage last year - which he stressed was not due to foreign sabotage - to drive home how much damage an attack on essential services could do.
"That's one phone network not working for one day," Burgess said.
"Imagine the implications if a nation-state took down all the networks? Or turned off the power during a heatwave?
"I assure you, these are not hypotheticals – foreign governments have crack cyber teams investigating these possibilities right now, although they are only likely to materialise during a conflict or near conflict."
Terrorism also continues to be a concern for Australia's spies, along with an increase in the number of nationalist and racist violent extremists.
Burgess said private conversations about sabotage to power networks, electrical substations and railway networks among "extremists who want to trigger a so-called 'race war'" was largely "big talk" for now but authorities remained concerned about a "lone actor" moving without warning.
