Mitchell, who took a swipe at Turnbull on 4 August when the ex-PM claimed he was the first to raise the subject of banning Huawei from bidding to be a supplier for Australia's 5G networks, said in a blog post that Turnbull needed to "stop quoting [US President] Donald Trump and [US Secretary of State] Mike Pompeo’s talking points on Huawei".

The Huawei official did not mention the fact that myth about the lack of separation between the operational core and radio access parts of the network in 5G was begun by former ASD chief Mike Burgess in October 2018, a claim that has been debunked by iTWire.

In his post, Mitchell said Turnbull's claims about the core and RAN in 5G "is becoming embarrassing because everyone knows this is just technically incorrect".

"Huawei is not delivering our core network technology in Europe and yet we are still successfully delivering our 5G radio access technology in the UK, Germany, Portugal, Spain, Switzerland and many others – so, clearly the core and radio can and ARE being split in 5G," Mitchell explained.

He cited statements from Dr Ian Levy, head of the UK's National Cyber Security Centre, and from global telecommunications consultancy OMDIA which backed up his assertion.