A Soviet diplomat and KGB spy, Valery Ivanov, was expelled after he was found to have compromised a senior Australian Labor Party (ALP) figure, David Combe.
The affair also claimed the political scalp of a minister, Mick Young, and resulted in a Royal Commission being established under Justice Robert Hope to review Australia's security and intelligence agencies.
Soon after the formation of the Hawke government in March 1983, the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO) raised concerns that Combe, still closely aligned to the ALP, might be being compromised by a Soviet citizen with KGB links.
On 17 May, Justice Robert Hope was commissioned to investigate the affair but also to review the general progress of the intelligence agencies he had inquired into in 1974-77 at the behest of Gough Whitlam (his first reports were handed down in 1975, during Malcolm Fraser's premiership).
Mick Young, the Special Minister of State and Vice-President of the Executive Council (and himself a former ALP National Secretary 1969-72), was forced to stand down from the Ministry on 14 July when it was revealed he had breached Cabinet security, having talked to a journalist immediately after the 21 April Cabinet decision to expel Ivanov.