Australia’s Democratic Coordination in an Age of Foreign Interference

When the UK government introduced the Representation of the People Bill earlier this year, it acknowledged that existing laws did not meet current foreign interference threats and promised the reforms would ‘safeguard the integrity of UK elections for the future’. The ambition to ‘futureproof’ elections through new legislation is understandable against the backdrop of declining trust in democratic institutions and increasing interference from hostile actors. However, while updating regulatory frameworks is essential, it is only half the story. As the Australian experience demonstrates, these fast-moving threats also require an institutional architecture that combines information, coordination and agility.

Electoral Mission Control

At the heart of Australia’s approach to protecting its elections from foreign interference is the Electoral Integrity Assurance Taskforce (EIAT). The EIAT brings together a cross-section of agencies whose responsibilities span national security and intelligence, law enforcement, cyber security, foreign affairs, financial regulation and domestic policy. It operates as a form of mission control, with agencies sharing information across all elements of the election security environment.. The EIAT Board then provides consolidated advice to the Electoral Commissioner on threats to the real or perceived integrity of Australian elections.

This whole-of-government approach is necessary because foreign interference rarely presents as a purely electoral problem – a political donation may require intel from the financial intelligence unit (FIU) to establish its origin, a disinformation campaign may require an intelligence assessment to determine its source, disrupting an influence operation may require policing powers, and attributing hostile activities to a foreign state can have diplomatic consequences. It is critical for these lines of sight to be consolidated if a foreign interference threat is to be effectively detected and disrupted.

The EIAT does not attempt to create an electoral ‘super regulator’, where individual agency mandates are collapsed into a single entity. Instead, it works to close institutional silos by providing a melting pot for each agency to share information within its remit. Under the taskforce, the Australian Electoral Commission (AEC) brings electoral expertise, intelligence agencies assess the national security picture, the Attorney-General’s Department provides the legal understanding, Australia’s FIU AUSTRAC supplies financial intelligence, the Australian Federal Police hold investigative powers, and the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT) apply a diplomatic lens.

Since it was established in 2018, the EIAT has continued to evolve in two significant ways. First, its membership has gradually widened, drawing in the financial expertise of AUSTRAC and the diplomatic experience of DFAT. The relevance of including these agencies had not been immediately apparent when the EIAT was created – a time when foreign interference policy tended to focus on cyber-attacks and disinformation. However, as the threat picture widened, it became clear that the taskforce needed visibility over financial flows and an understanding of the wider international consequences of attributing hostile-state activity.

This connective approach is also beginning to extend beyond government. Through AUSTRAC’s Fintel Alliance, Australian authorities are exploring how financial institutions can help identify the typologies and indicators associated with foreign financial interference. This work remains in its early stages, but it points towards the next frontier of coordination – connecting public agencies not only with one another, but also with the private sector institutions that have deep expertise in mapping suspicious financial behaviour.

Second, although the EIAT began as a mechanism only activated during federal election periods, it has become a permanent standing capacity that provides support to all levels of Australian elections. This reflects one of the most important lessons emerging from foreign interference cases globally – by the time an election period and the corresponding regulation is activated, much of the influencing activity may already have occurred. A 365-day threat therefore requires a 365-day response.

Governing the Grey Zones

A permanent coordination mechanism is particularly important because foreign interference deliberately exploits the grey zones between legal frameworks and institutional mandates. Domestic actors use overseas AI platforms in ways that make disinformation activity appear to come from foreign sources; cryptocurrencies create new pathways for obscuring political finance provenance; and social media influencers and think tanks shape public debate without falling neatly within political communication regulation.

For members of the public, these legal and institutional distinctions are understandably obscure. When something appears to threaten an election, citizens expect the electoral regulator to act, whether or not the matter falls within its powers. This places electoral commissions around the world in an increasingly difficult position. The public’s expectation of their role is expanding faster than their mandate, and, at the same time, their work is increasingly a target of foreign interference, with disinformation campaigns attempting to politicise and delegitimise election regulators.

Left unmanaged, these pressures can push governments towards one of two blunt policy responses – overreach that may compromise their integrity or paralysis that erodes public confidence. The Australian model offers an alternative way forward. The EIAT allows a potential threat to electoral integrity to be identified and assessed without requiring the AEC to assume responsibility for every element of the response. A concern can be dealt with by the agency that has the relevant mandate, and a coordinated response can take shape while each institution remains within its remit. The structural independence between the participating agencies and the Australian Electoral Commissioner further helps preserve the impartiality of all involved.

Moreover, the institutional coordination provided by the EIAT shines a light on the grey zones of foreign interference activity. Where an issue repeatedly falls between agency competencies or outside legal frameworks, this highlights a gap for future reform. In this way, the EIAT not only helps Australia respond within its existing system, but it also creates a feedback loop for identifying how the system itself needs to evolve.

An Architecture Built to Adapt

None of this is to suggest that Australia has solved the problem of foreign interference. Its political finance regime remains complex and contested – for example, earlier this year, the High Court of Australia struck down the state of Victoria’s donations cap, forcing policymakers back to the drawing board only months before a state election. Australia is also grappling with a rise in political influencers who do not sit comfortably within existing regulations and the potential security risks from cryptocurrencies in political donations – both topics were discussed at a recent roundtable the author attended in Canberra as possible areas of reform.

Yet these shortcomings reveal another important feature of the Australian approach. Foreign interference, political finance and electoral laws are revisited frequently at both the state and federal level. Australia has not had a recent political cycle that did not bring some form of legislative adjustment and a corresponding change in regulatory capacities. This is often a messy process – new rules reveal new loopholes, political compromises create unintended consequences and, as Victoria has learnt, constitutional challenges sometimes require legislation to be rewritten.

But imperfect iteration has an advantage over inertia. A willingness to reconsider the rules creates opportunities to respond as the threats, technologies and political behaviour evolve. By contrast, the UK has traditionally pursued larger and less frequent electoral reforms – the 2026 Representation of the People Bill currently before the UK Parliament is intended to update a political finance regime whose core statutory framework rests on legislation enacted in 2000. The problem is not the ambition of these large legislative packages, but the expectation that they can provide durable, decades-long solutions to threats that are developing on a very different timetable.

There is also an important distinction between creating a coordination mechanism on paper and building one that works in practice. The EIAT’s value rests on relationships, protocols and institutional familiarity that have been carefully developed over time. Agencies engage on an ongoing basis and have escalation, incident and public communication protocols in place before they are needed in a crisis. The Australian experience demonstrates that effective democratic coordination cannot be switched on overnight, it takes patience, regular reflection and adaption, and sustained investment that extends beyond political cycles.

Futureproofing the System

The ways in which hostile actors use AI, cryptocurrencies, online platforms and new forms of campaigning will continue to evolve faster than the laws designed to counter them. Governments cannot predict every new vulnerability, but they can build mechanisms to quickly identify emerging threats, effectively bring together the right expertise and coordinate responses, while also exposing gaps requiring regulatory or legislative action. Futureproofing democracy therefore needs more than robust rules, it requires long-term investment in institutional architecture equipped to keep pace with a threat environment that never stands still.

© RUSI, 2026.

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