Most people don't realize that well over 80% of "our" mining industry is foreign owned. I would bet a significant amount of foreign intelligence activity in Australia is concerned with protecting foreign commercial interests. Little old Australia bugged the East Timor government to steal their mineral wealth. Now imagine what bigger countries like the US, UK, China etc get up to. It might not be tanks on the street stuff but foreign involvement in "soft" regime change here isn't fanciful.