Wayne Swan has intervened in the foreign interference debate with a warning to intelligence agencies and the government to stop using the issue to attack Labor and instead aim to achieve a bipartisan approach to preventing foreign intervention in politics.

In a Facebook post this morning, Swan criticised “a series of leaks targeted at selected members of the Labor Party, which appear to have come from security agencies and others associated with an investigation ordered by the Prime Minister.” “It’s critical,” Swan says, “that the security agencies and the government get this discussion back onto a political framework that works in the interests of all Australians — not just the Liberal Party.”

Since the Dastyari scandal broke, it’s been clear that Australia’s security agencies have been ready to drop material about politicians’ and ex-politicians’ links with Chinese interests into the public domain as part of a campaign against Chinese influence. It has also been clear that the government — whatever the public interest in curbing the noxious influence of the China Lobby and Beijing’s proxies here — has been eager to use the issues to attack Labor.

Indeed, this morning, the government’s own exposure on China was again in the spotlight, with Defence Minister Marise Payne explicitly repudiating Trade minister Steve Ciobo at an estimates hearing. Questioned by Labor’s shadow foreign minister Penny Wong about Ciobo’s recent comments at odds with government policy on China, that China’s militarisation of the South China Sea was “a matter for China”, Payne said “no, it means the government is concerned about the militarisation of those features.” There also remain legitimate questions about the role of former journalist and, temporarily, adviser to Turnbull, John Garnaut, who seems to have miraculously transformed into an eminent national security figure on relations with China.

But the focus has primarily been on Labor, due to Bob Carr’s high-profile role as a lobbyist for better relations with Beijing tyranny, and suggestions of divisions within Labor about how to react to Andrew Hastie’s parliamentary comments about prolific bipartisan donor and Chinese billionaire Chau Chak Wing.

It remains the case that Labor tried to ban foreign donations in 2009, only to be stymied by the Coalition, before the Liberals discovered the virtues of that idea at about the same time as the Dastyari affair came to light, courtesy of drops from intelligence agencies. It was the Abbott government, via Trade Minister Andrew Robb (current Chinese company lobbyist), that negotiated a free trade agreement with China and excoriated Labor as Sinophobes for criticising aspects of it. It was the Turnbull government that sought, and failed, to pass an extradition treaty with the regime.

Swan’s comments, however, go beyond these issues to a more serious criticism that security agencies have been meddling in partisan politics, regardless of the culpability of individual Labor figures. They’re likely to prompt confected outrage from the government. It’s the Liberals, however, who’ve been happy to exploit the foreign interference issue for partisan ends while, like Labor, having plenty of exposure to the problem themselves.