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A former national security adviser to prime minister Malcolm Turnbull says espionage charges laid against a Brisbane couple are "very significant".
It marks the first time an espionage offence has been laid in Australia since new laws were introduced in 2018.
Here's a bit of what the Australian Strategic Policy Institute's executive director Justin Bassi told the ABC:
"This case of espionage is about harming our national security and supporting a foreign government.
"I think it clearly shows that we are up against, right now, not just the physical contest that we are seeing in Russia's war of Ukraine but we are seeing a battle for a whole range of strategic competition areas below that threshold of war and we have to be mindful, we can't just wait and react to where bullets are fired, we have to act before the contest and the competition becomes conflict.
"This is a case in point. We need to be vigilant, whether it is Russia, China, we need to protect our own secrets, we need to protect our own way of life and our intelligence agencies are a key part of that."