X owner Elon Musk has previously sparred with Australian officials over internet regulations.

X owner Elon Musk has previously sparred with Australian officials over internet regulations.Credit:AP,Dion Georgopoulos

Asked in an interview about Musk’s interventions,Albanese said his job was to focus on Australia’s national interest.

“We have foreign interference laws in this country and Australian elections are a matter for Australians,” Albanese said. “I have no intention of being a ... commentator on what people overseas want to engage in. People will make their own judgments and have their own views about that.”

The prime minister did not specify which of Australia’s laws protecting from foreign interference would apply to Musk. The laws – passedby the Turnbull government in 2018 largely in response to allegations of Chinese Communist Party involvement in Australian politics – were mostly targeted at foreign governments.

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They include a transparency scheme that requires people lobbying Australian politicians on behalf of foreign interests to register,and laws that make it a crime to influence a political or government process at the behest of another country’s government.

One section of the laws would apply to Musk:a ban on donations from non-Australians to political parties. His company,X,has a local Australian subsidiary.

The Tesla boss’s donations and public support for Trump’s campaign have secured him a place in Trump’s inner circle,but Musk has also involved himself in overseas elections.

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Musk has reportedly promised the UK minor conservative Reform party $157 million,despite later clashing with its leader,Nigel Farage. And Musk has pushed discussion about adecades-long grooming gang scandal in northern England – that was exposed in newspaper reports,official inquiries and the courts from 2013 – to the top of national attention.

In Germany,Musk has endorsed the Alternative für Deutschland (AfD),a far-right party that has experienced a rapid rise in popularity but includes figures accused of using Nazi-linked phrases and gestures.

Musk has not endorsed any parties or political figures in Australia.

But he has been critical of the bipartisan push,floated by Opposition Leader Peter Dutton months before Labor adopted it last year,to restrict Australians under 16 from using social media.

Muskhas also been highly critical of Australia’s eSafety Commission after it unsuccessfully attempted to force X to remove all videos of a church stabbing in the western Sydney suburb of Wakeley last year.

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“Seems like a backdoor way to control access to the internet by all Australians,” he wrote in November of the under-16 ban.

Coalition senators Matt Canavan and Alex Antic led the argument against the under-16 policy,which was also opposed by One Nation leader Pauline Hanson.

Canavan and opposition communications spokesman David Coleman have both praised Musk’s Starlink internet service,while the government this week announced it would put $3 billion towardsan upgrade of the NBN.

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