Foreign Minister Julie Bishop has questioned whether a previous Labor government's decision to pull out of a security dialogue with the US, India and Japan in 2008 was influenced by former defence minister Joel Fitzgibbon's links to China.
In a blistering attack during question time, Ms Bishop queried whether Mr Fitzgibbon had a role in the "extraordinary about-face" on an important foreign policy position.
Australia withdrew from a four-country security dialogue in 2008 under then prime minister Kevin Rudd, who feared the grouping would upset Beijing.
Mr Fitzgibbon was forced to resign as defence minister in 2009 for failing to disclose gifts from Chinese businesswoman Helen Liu.
Ms Bishop also pointed out inconsistencies between his media statements to Fairfax and a sworn affidavit to the ACT Supreme Court, over whether he had written to Chinese officials.
"What is it? No correspondence with Chinese officials or letter after letter?" Ms Bishop said.
Mr Fitzgibbon later hit back saying there had been no accusations of wrongdoing or impropriety in the Fairfax report.
Her focus on Mr Fitzgibbon followed ongoing scrutiny this week of his colleague Sam Dastyari, who resigned from the frontbench last year after a Chinese donor paid a travel bill for him.
Ms Bishop faced a counter-attack from Labor about her appearance in photos with Chinese businesswoman Sally Zou, who is owner of the resources company AusGold and is a major donor to the Liberal party, contributing more than $400,000 between December 2015 and June 2006.
Ms Zou set up a company under the name Julie Bishop Glorious Foundation Pty Ltd in April 2016, but shortened it to Glorious Foundation soon after. Ms Bishop has denied knowledge of the venture.
Meanwhile, China's ambassador has taken aim at the ABC, accusing the national broadcaster of recycling groundless and fabricated allegations about his country's influence in Australian politics.
"In Chinese, we call it cooking up the overnight cold rice. It means repeating the same old stock again and again," Cheng Jingye told an Australia-China networking event at Parliament House on Thursday.
An ABC/Fairfax report - titled The Power and Influence of China - alleges links between Beijing and two wealthy Chinese businessmen who have made donations to Australia's major political parties.
Mr Cheng dismissed the report as politically motivated.
"Those who have fabricated those allegations really have an imagination which is wild and morbid," he said.
"If they were to apply their imagination to scientific research they might be accorded with a Nobel prize someday. Who knows?"
Their main purpose, as the ambassador saw it, was to instigate "China panic".
