Australia has not joined the United States and several other countries in banning Chinese-made vehicles from military sites, Defence Minister Richard Marles said on Wednesday. "We obviously continue to monitor all the safety around our bases in every respect, but we haven't taken that step," Marles said, as reported by Reuters.
The decision leaves Australia out of step with a growing list of governments that have restricted connected Chinese vehicles near sensitive defence locations over concerns about data collection and recording.
Why other countries moved first
The United States announced earlier this month that BYD vehicles would be barred from Kadena Air Base on Okinawa island in Japan. Brigadier General John Gallemore said the decision followed "a thorough, consultative process which determined that these vehicles present an unacceptable and unmitigable risk to our personnel and our mission".
Poland this year banned Chinese-manufactured vehicles from secured military facilities unless specified recording or connectivity functions were disabled, and barred military personnel from connecting work phones to their infotainment systems. The UK and Czechia have introduced similar restrictions.
In Switzerland, connected vehicles are not permitted to drive near sensitive defence locations. Serge Bavaud, director of the Federal Intelligence Service, told Swiss outlet SRF: "These cars are smartphones on wheels. The authorities in this country are working with the manufacturers. And the intelligence services can access the data recorded by the cars, for example, conversations".
The traffic has not been one-way. China has previously banned Tesla vehicles from sensitive locations.
No request from Washington
Marles said the US had not asked Australia to follow suit with a ban of its own. That matters because it means the question is not being forced on Canberra from outside. Australia's position is a deliberate choice to keep monitoring rather than to restrict, and the minister framed it as a continuing assessment of base safety rather than a settled verdict on the vehicles themselves.
For drivers, the practical effect is simple: a Chinese-branded electric car or SUV can still be driven onto an Australian defence base. Owners are not being asked to switch off recording functions or disconnect phones, as Polish military personnel now are.
The data security debate behind the decision
Concern about connected Chinese vehicles reached a wider Australian audience when the ABC's Four Corners ran a report on data security in such vehicles in September 2026. The program showed how certain vehicles could be remotely accessed, though only once a hacker had physically obtained access, and highlighted Leapmotor's use of cameras from Dahua.
Dahua also supplies building security cameras, and those were banned from Australian Government buildings in 2023 after similar bans in the US and UK over spyware fears. Shadow Minister for Defence James Paterson told Four Corners it was "extraordinary" that vehicles fitted with these cameras are allowed to drive around.
That contrast is the sharpest argument against Australia's current stance: the same brand of camera is considered risky enough to remove from government offices but not from cars visiting defence bases. Marles's answer is that base security is under constant review, which keeps the door open without committing to a ban.
What is still unannounced
The reporting does not name which specific brands or models would be caught if Australia changed course, beyond the Chinese-manufactured vehicles that other countries have targeted and the Leapmotor example raised by Four Corners. No Australian list of affected models has been published.
Nor has any future review been scheduled. Marles said only that Australia continues to monitor safety around its bases, so there is no announced date for revisiting the policy.
The Kadena ban applies to BYD vehicles at a US base in Japan, not to Australian operations, and no equivalent Australian restriction on BYD or any other brand has been declared.
