SYDNEY (BLOOMBERG, REUTERS) - The popular Chinese messaging application WeChat appears to have blocked access to Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison's account, leading one senator to call for a parliament-wide boycott of the service.

Senator James Paterson, chair of the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security, said on Monday (Jan 24) the Prime Minister's team had been having trouble accessing the WeChat account for months.

It was finally taken out of the government's control in early January despite formal representations from Mr Morrison's office, he told radio station 4BC.

"My view is given that WeChat is such a closely controlled company by the Chinese Communist Party, that this amounts to foreign interference in our democracy and in an election year no less," he said. 

"There’s 1.2 million Australians of Chinese descent who overwhelmingly use this service and now can no longer access news and information from their Prime Minister," he said on Monday.

But Tencent, the Chinese tech giant that owns WeChat, has denied that the prime minister’s account was hacked or removed from its platform.

In a statement on Monday, Tencent said: "This appears to be a dispute over account ownership – the account in question was originally registered by a PRC (Chinese) individual and was subsequently transferred to its current operator, a technology services company." 

Tencent added the dispute would be handled "in accordance with our platform rules", and it would look into the matter further.

In Beijing, China’s foreign ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian told a regular press conference on Monday that "The issue of Australian politicians' WeChat accounts is between them and WeChat".

With a national election due by May, the Australian government would have aimed to use the Morrison account to promote its policies during the Chinese New Year celebrations starting Feb 1.

The prime minister’s office has made multiple fruitless requests to WeChat to regain access to the account, most recently on Jan 10, said a person with knowledge of the matter, who declined to be named because of the sensitivity of the matter.

Both the Liberals and the main opposition Labor Party set up official WeChat accounts for their leaders through outsourced agencies, posting in Mandarin in an attempt to reach out to China's large diaspora.

In the 2016 census, about 5.6 per cent of the population said they had Chinese ancestry - more than one in 20 citizens.

The Scott Morrison account was registered in 2019 using the name of a Chinese citizen in mainland China as its account operator, WeChat records show and a government source confirmed.

Featuring Mr Morrison’s photograph, it originally promoted major announcements on the economy or the Covid-19 pandemic, for example, translated into Chinese.

But in January, the account was rebranded ‘Australia China New Life’, and said it would provide information such about life in Australia, Reuters confirmed by viewing the account.

The account registration is now linked to a technology company, Fuzhou 985, in Fujian province, Reuters found.

An employee from Fuzhou 985 Technology, who only gave his surname as Huang, told Reuters by telephone he was not aware the account was previously connected to Mr Morrison.

He said the transfer of ownership was conducted with a Chinese male national living in Fuzhou, whose identity he declined to disclose.

"We thought this account had a large fanbase, so we decided to buy it," said Mr Huang, adding that the company was looking for an account whose target audience was the Chinese community in Australia. He declined to say how much his company had paid to take over the account.

Mr Fergus Ryan, senior analyst with the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, said having the Prime Minister’s WeChat account registered under the name of a Chinese citizen was "always risky and ill-advised", and appeared to be a breach of WeChat rules.

At Fuzhou 985, Mr Huang said the company planned to delete the contents of the account, but would wait.

"Originally we wanted to delete (Mr Morrison’s previous posts), now we are faced with this situation, we can only wait for Tencent’s final reply," he said.

With more than a billion users globally, WeChat is one of the most popular messaging applications in the world. Owned by parent company Tencent Holdings, China's government regularly censors sensitive content.

Mr Paterson called for all Australian politicians to stop using WeChat until the Prime Minister's account was restored.

"No one should be legitimising their censorship and their control over our public debate," he said.

Ms Gladys Liu, who became Australia’s first Chinese-Australian woman to be elected to the House of Representatives in 2019, said she would no longer use her personal or professional WeChat accounts “until the platform explains itself”.

“This sort of interference in our political processes is unacceptable, and this matter should be taken extremely seriously by all Australian politicians,” she said in a statement on Monday afternoon.

In comments to 4BC, opposition leader Anthony Albanese said he would talk with Mr Morrison over the WeChat incident, adding that it could have "national security implications".

Former diplomat Dave Sharma, who is now a lawmaker in Mr Morrison's coalition, told Sky News the decision to block access to the Prime Minister's account was "more likely than not state-sanctioned".

"It shows the attitude towards free speech and freedom of expression that comes out of Beijing," he said.