The Horse’s Mouth: Did Israel bug a Coalition defence minister?

This article has been co-published with Crikey.

Open Politics has a juicy update to our story in June about a foreign power that eavesdropped on Coalition defence minister John Moore by giving him a calendar with a covert listening device.

Our source for that story, a senior person in the Howard government, told us they didn’t know who gave the calendar to Moore beyond the gift being from a “friendly” foreign government.

Well, a big cheese in the Howard government claims “it was the Israelis” that gave Moore the calendar, which was hung in his house before the bug was later detected.

When I first heard elements of the incident in the mid-2000s, my understanding was Moore put up the calendar in his Brisbane home office and that Defence technicians discovered the bug during a security sweep of his property.

But my source, who was very close to Moore, said the calendar was actually hung at his rural property in Dalby on the Darling Downs west of Brisbane, and that Borneo Barracks — home to the Army’s electronic warfare unit in Cabarlah — picked up Moore’s voice while conducting radio frequency (RF) spectrum monitoring to check for anomalies.

A Defence official immediately called Moore, telling him, “Minister, we can hear everything you’re saying. Do you have anything new in your house?” A calendar from the Israelis, Moore apparently said. An examination of the gift uncovered a listening device and radio transmitter.

We don't know whether the Australian government lodged an official complaint with the Israeli embassy. However, we suspect Canberra did not make a huge fuss about it. Brian Toohey, a retired national security journalist and former editor of The National Times, told Open Politics it’s “par for the course” for allies and friends to spy on each other.

Everyone watches everyone. That’s what spooks do.

Just what the country needs: Another landlord in parliament

Newly appointed Tasmanian Liberal Senator Chris Gatenby owns three investment properties, earns rental income, and invests in cryptocurrency including Dogecoin, his disclosures to the Register of Senators’ Interests reveal.

Gatenby, a one-time adviser to Tasmanian Premier Jeremy Rockliff and Liberal Senator Richard Colbeck, replaced retiring Liberal senator Wendy Askew last month.

He and his wife Libby own a residence in West Launceston, investment properties in nearby Newstead and Newnham, and a property in St Helens on Tasmania’s spectacular north-east coast.

Gatenby has mortgages on all four properties.  

He’s nothing out of the ordinary compared to his parliamentary colleagues, with our analysis last year showing 30 politicians or their family members own four or more properties and at least 27 are landlords. Top of the pops is Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke, who co-owns six properties with his partner Skye Laris.

Gatenby has declared an investment in Dogecoin, a joke cryptocurrency created in 2013 to take the piss out of the investor mania around Bitcoin. But, as The New York Times reported in 2017, “investors didn’t get the joke and bought Dogecoin anyway, bringing its market value as high as $400 million.” Dogecoin’s market cap is now touching US$13 billion.

Seven other pollies have declared owning cryptocurrency: Richard Dowling, Tom French, Jess Teesdale, Cassandra Fernando, Sally Sitou, Matt Burnell and Ross Cadell.  

Seller’s remorse?

We were shocked to see new Liberal MP Tom Venning from South Australia has backflipped on his decision to get rid of all his shareholdings after being elected to parliament last year.  

As we reported in 2025 in our analysis of politicians’ shareholdings, Venning told Crikey he divested his holdings after the 2025 election to avoid potential future conflicts of interest and because he didn’t think he’d have time to trade anymore. If only other MPs followed his lead, we thought.

Alas, Venning declared on September 9 that he had reinvested in Vanguard Australian Shares Index ETF (ASX: VAS) on June 2. He also failed to declare the trade and several gifts within 28 days (30 June), as required by the register rules.  

So we contacted him to ask: what the fuck, Tom?! He acknowledged he’d changed his position but argued (correctly) that an ETF like VAS, which tracks the return of the S&P/ASX 300 Index, does not create conflicts of interest concerns or insider trading risks, as would shares in an individual company or an industry-specific ETF.

Venning told Crikey he had “no intention” of buying more shares outside of broad-based ETFs and said he was “happy for you to call me out if I do”. As to why Venning declared the shares and gifts late, he said that as a new MP he was not familiar with the disclosure system and mistakenly failed to approve and lodge disclosures prepared by his office within the 28-day timeframe. He assured he will be more diligent in future. Let’s see.  

Another tardy Tom (and Tim)

First-term Labor MP Tom French from Western Australia failed to declare his $450 post-budget lunch on May 13 at the National Press Club, care of pharma giant Eli Lilly. French should’ve declared the luncheon within 28 days — by June 10 — but he didn’t do so until September 16. That’s 14 weeks late.

He’s got form: Endeavour Group, Australia’s largest pokies operator, provided him and his partner with tickets to the Midwinter Ball on July 1, but he didn’t declare the hospitality until September 2, five weeks after the July 29 deadline.

Staying with the ball, Industry Minister Tim Ayres failed to declare receiving two tickets from Twiggy Forrest’s resources company Fortescue until 14 September, over five weeks past the Senate register’s 35-day deadline of August 5.

MPs and senators who fail to declare their interests on time can be found guilty of serious contempt and dealt with accordingly, but only if it can be proven they have knowingly done so.  

We sought comment from French and Ayres. French’s office said the breaches were due to “an administrative error” and that “the office always aims to declare disclosures within the allocated timeframe”. Whatever. MPs can’t outsource their parliamentary disclosure obligations to staff.

Ayres did not respond.