While it went down a treat with the press gallery and right-wing media at the time, Scott Morrison’s hasty and furious response to the trolling of a junior Chinese official last week now seems increasingly ill-judged. Even extreme reactionaries in News Corp have begun questioning whether Morrison has any plan for the escalating dispute with China.
Morrison would have better off leaving the response to Marise Payne, or noting that the Brereton report was something literally impossible for the Chinese government to ever produce given its incapacity to acknowledge wrongdoing or tolerate questioning.
The real response should have taken the form of actions, rather than words. Fortunately, with the imminent passage of the Australia’s Foreign Relations (State and Territory Arrangements) Bill, the government has a useful option on that front.
The impact of the bill on universities is deeply concerning: the government despises universities and refused to assist them in the pandemic, while steadily increasing the amount of control it exercises over them on the basis of national security. The new bill is that latest such extension of control.
But its provisions in relation to state and territory governments are amply justified by the Victorian government’s obnoxious Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) agreement with the Beijing tyranny.
The agreement dates from 2018, when the federal government itself was still in thrall to the Abbott-era idea of truckling to China in order to secure more trade and investment opportunities. There was little complaint about it back then; Andrews was merely doing what a gung-ho Abbott government had encouraged us all to do when it signed us up to a trade deal with China.
More than two years later, of course, we’re supposed to forget everything the government said about the joys of being ever closer to Beijing.
The Andrews deal is bureaucratic waffle about consultation, coordination, cooperation and connectivity. Its primary benefit appears to be to add to the number of memorandums of understanding (MOUs) the Chinese dictatorship can boast of having signed in relation to the BRI, which is little more than straightforward colonialism aimed at securing Chinese control of extractive resources. Neither the Liberals nor federal Labor support Australian involvement in the BRI.
With the MOU already a dead letter, the government has an opportunity to do more than fulminate from the Lodge about nasty tweets. Overruling the agreement will send a signal that Australia’s federal system is not an opportunity for China to leverage Australian governments against one another. It would have been far more effective to let the tweet be addressed at officials’ level and let the cancellation of the Victorian agreement serve as a response.
Critics and the China lobby might say this is unnecessarily provocative, but every olive branch extended by the government has been rebuffed by the Xi regime — indeed, met with escalations of rhetoric and trade sanctions.
Other options exist for pushing back against China. Beijing still blocks any participation, even as an observer, by Taiwan in the corrupted World Health Organization, despite Taiwan’s remarkable success in dealing with COVID-19. Australia should be much louder in support of a role for one of the Asia-Pacific’s most successful democracies in planning for future pandemics.
Then there are the 2022 “Genocide Games” — the winter Olympics to be held in Beijing while China continues its brutal campaign of oppression of Uyghurs, its crushing of dissent in Hong Kong and its long-running suppression of Tibetans. Why Australia would participate in an event deliberately overlooking atrocities on a mass scale is a question that should be asked increasingly loudly.
Fetch your first 12 weeks for $12
Here at Crikey, we saw a mighty surge in subscribers throughout 2020. Your support has been nothing short of amazing — we couldn’t have got through this year like no other without you, our readers.
If you haven’t joined us yet, fetch your first 12 weeks for $12 and start 2021 with the journalism you need to navigate whatever lies ahead.
Peter Fray
Editor-in-chief of Crikey
Leave a comment
Thanks for ASPI press release Bernard
Even freakin’ Hardaker’s touting that foreign government and foreign weapons’ manufacturer funded you-know-what pit of frauds, today, GL.
Did you know Pete’s ASPI concession to ‘diversity’, the ‘Asian woman’, was offered a gig after she crashed and burned at her highest aspiration, to be a comedian?
Extreme reactionaries at News Corp? Now, that’s tautology!
“While it went down a treat with the press gallery and right-wing media at the time, Scott Morrison’s hasty and furious response to the trolling of a junior Chinese official last week now seems increasingly ill-judged”
It really did, for example, one press gallery journalist wrote a fanfic of DFAT being really snarky in response.
Kudelka’s cartoon Draco? It was a better response than anything produced by the government, and funny too. Kudelka has been so good since drawing for the Saturday Paper. Probably long before that too.
I was talking about the “satire” piece from last week in Crikey, but unfortunately I had read the byline wrong at the time and it was written by a completely different Bernard.
I’d feel really owned about this, but I’m more relieved that it wasn’t Keane who wrote that.
Morrisons melty really did go down well with the press gallery. For example, one journalist wrote a fanfic of DFAT being really snarky in response.
this will show up as a double post later because i had to do a minor rewrite to get around the bot that banishes posts to the shadow realm for a day or so.
“Vic Govt’s obnoxious deal with the Beijing tyranny”. Come on Bernard, you can do better than that. If you’re indigenous in Australia, had your land swiped and then your kids incarcerated at a rate 20 times Anglo kids would that also be a tyranny? Or the US founded on religious fundamentalism, bigotry and slavery? Yes, treatment of Tibet and the Xinjiang Uyghur autonomous region has been disgracefully tyrannical. But piling on just now doesn’t cut it, I don’t reckon.
Yes, treatment of Tibet and the Xinjiang Uyghur autonomous region has been disgracefully tyrannical.
And it’s not as if our treatment of refugees is anything to be proud of. Manus Island, Nauru and that family of four who have now spent 1007 days on Christmas Island are reminders of incarcerations that shame Australia’s name.
Tibet has been a part of China for longer than Australia has been around and the Uighers concerned were all linked to the East Turkmenistan Islamic Movement which is a terrorist organisation. Strange how Australia hasn’t called out India for Kashmir, Myanmar for its HR breaches, Saudi Arabia for its ongoing breaches and last but not least, the US for its extensive human rights breaches, journalist oppression, illegal detention etc etc. You cant just be seelective on your “Australian values” and only single out non-white countries for criticism. Obiously its OK for “Democracies” to commit HR breaches, foreign interference and illegal wars otherwise the US would be getting the same treatment as Hillsong Scotty gives to China. This “journalistic” article is nothing more than a Newscorp/ASPI policy document.
Not to mention Israel.
Thank you. Lexu. As someone who has many Uighers XiJiang friends, and personally lived in China for more than 15 years, I am amazed about the misinformation and double-standard and feel very much violated. Yes, this is appalling unprofessional journalism.
Oh dear – once again Palestinians brutalised by zionist Israel and US with Audtralia helpinh in UN dont even get a mention
I find the obsession of highlighting the darker aspects of Australia’s past as justification to diminish any outward (and politically current) commentary, quite perplexing. If the BRI deal with the Vic Govt. is indeed obnoxious, your opposing argument then is that the deal must stand, given that European colonisation of Australia from 1788 was messy?
The rate of imprisonment of indigenous people is a “past” issue, eh?
No. But your remark is completely beside the point and exploits the succinctness of my response to Gerard. We’re going down a rabbit hole here Draco.
Current issues brought up in the post you originally replied to are ‘beside the point’? Only if your goal wasn’t to engage with anyone and make a point unrelated to what you are replying to.
You are hard work Draco, and the tactics are obvious. That’s two loaded questions and a straw man. Word games are cheap.
It is Australia’s present, not its past. Sovereignty was never ceded and there has been no treaty.
Australia is built upon stolen land and treats its first people abominably, imprisoning them at a rate that far exceeds their representation.
I’m also bemused by how much of the Crikey commentariat have rushed to sugarcoat China’s human rights record and frame the discussion as some kind of zero sum contest.
Really makes me suspicious of the underlying motivations.
I’m appalled by our colonial history and hold the Morrison Government in utter contempt, but I don’t feel the need to invoke this as a reason for not calling out brutal and repressive regimes in other countries.
Its hypocrisy to only call out HR violations of non-white countries. Australia is a racist nation underneath.
Its ok to call out brutal and repressive regimes in other countries. Just don’t come the confected rage when those countries point out our deficiences.
Unjust wars, war crimes, 7 years of detention for asylum seekers, holding whole families in detention for 1000 days, indigenous incarceration rates, treatment of whistle blowers etc
There is nothing suspicious about my motivation. Just wish we could lift our game to justify the holier than thou pedestal that we so enjoy speaking from.
totally agree Gerard. “Vic Govt’s obnoxious deal” is all waffle and at least an attempt to continue some sort of communication. The biggest risk is a flood of self-satisfied Sister-City signs scattered around Victoria.
There are any number of fronts where we could stick it up China – “human rights abuses” isn’t one – that’s a boomerang.