Yesterday the government learnt the same lesson Malcolm Turnbull learnt in politics: sections of Australian business will back Beijing rather than Canberra in any dispute between China and Australia because of the economic benefits.
“If an Australian government quite reasonably stands its ground,” Turnbull wrote in A Bigger Picture, “and China quite unreasonably overreacts negatively (as it often does), Australian business will inevitably blame their own government.”
The government under Turnbull was perfectly happy to demonise Labor’s Sam Dastyari for his links with China while downplaying its equally extensive links with Chinese donors like Huang Xiangmo.
But it consistently turned a blind eye to its prominent friends in the business community who happily line up with Beijing rather than Australia. Liberal backbenchers like James Paterson and Andrew Hastie are left to call them out.
Kerry Stokes and Andrew Forrest are prime examples of business figures quick to take Beijing’s side.
Similar figures feature regularly in The Australian Financial Review, lecturing us about the need to pander to Beijing and perfectly exemplifying Turnbull’s observation.
In only the past few days, Mark Allison, of Elders, has criticised the criticism of China over its handling of the virus, Australian entrepreneurs in China and local investment bankers have criticised the government as “unhelpful, unproductive” and adding to “acrimony” between the countries, and the Australia-China Business Council called for a special envoy to China to repair relations because “Australia can ill afford to be collateral damage in the strategic rivalry between the United States and China”.
Yesterday the government discovered that its willingness to turn a blind eye to the pro-Beijing sympathies of business counts for nothing, when Forrest ambushed the Health Minister, Greg Hunt, by having the Chinese consul-general in Melbourne speak at a media event intended for Hunt and Forrest over testing equipment he had sourced from China.
The Chinese diplomat extolled the virtues of China’s handling of the pandemic and, under pressure, Hunt made a crucial blunder, walking back the government’s statement that COVID-19 had begun in a wet market in Wuhan.
The Beijing regime would have been delighted with this, and with Forrest for engineering it. He has served the Chinese leadership well, at the expense of the government and at the expense of a proper effort to determine the causes of the pandemic, which are crucial to preventing or more effectively dealing with future ones.
Forrest is hooked up to China like no other Australian business figure. Fortescue is the third-ranked Australian iron ore miner after RioTinto and BHP and fourth in the world when Brazil’s Vale is included.
Unlike BHP, which has significant other mining (and oil) assets, Fortescue is a pure play iron ore miner and more directly exposed to China than its peers.
For the six months to December 31, it earned a record interim profit of US$2.45 billion (A$3.66 billion at exchanges in February) and Forrest, as owner of 36% of the company, was paid more than $698 million in interim dividends. That was after he was paid $1.24 billion for the 2018-19 financial year.
So strong is Chinese demand that on Thursday in its third quarter report Fortescue said it was lifting its guidance for full year shipments slightly. At about US$80 a tonne average, it will mean about US$350 million extra for Fortescue in higher revenues.
“Fortescue is a core supplier of iron ore to China and we see strong ongoing demand for our products and anticipate a steady recovery in economic activity in that market,” its chief executive, Elizabeth Gaines, said in today’s quarterly report, summing up how much Forrest and his company depend on staying in China’s good books.
Such figures form the plutocratic arm of the China lobby, in the same way a number of former ambassadors form its diplomatic arm and a range of academics in higher education — with its enormous dependence on Chinese students — act as advocates for Beijing in that sector, all attempting to skew Australian policy in favour of China.
As Turnbull recognised with his laws aimed at shedding greater light on foreign influence, such attempts to wield influence have real implications for Australia’s sovereignty and national security.
Labor’s Anthony Byrne, deputy chair of the powerful parliamentary joint committee on intelligence and security, is concerned about the role of business in such efforts: “The difficulty with billionaire business people when they get up and try to advise on international relations is that they have a conflict of interest given their economic interests — one they never declare.
“And these business people are turning a blind eye to extraordinary human rights abuses. The Chinese government has imprisoned a million Muslims based on their faith alone. How can anyone overlook that, no matter how much money they make?”
After yesterday, the government has no reason to soft-pedal on business allies of Beijing any more.
What arrant nonsense this column espouses with its “After yesterday, the government has no reason to soft-pedal on business allies of Beijing any more.”. We all serve a ‘Master’ of one description or another and those same Billionaires are so far into the LNP government that they cannot see daylight. At last however the likes of Forrest and Stokes are bringing some moderation to the debate particularly when the ‘foghorn diplomacy’ being practiced by Morrison and Dutton and Porter is obviously taking place to the delight (and most probably the inspiration) of Trump. That Australia’s foreign policy is being dictated by the Likes of Hastie (and Byrne) and Dutton and Wilson and Paterson and Lewis and of ASIO and of course the partially CIA funded ASPI and the IPA is a downright disgrace. Notice no mention here of the complete bypassing of the experts in DFAT or the female Portfolio Ministers in the Cabinet, but then again we have known for a very long time the attitude towards women by the LNP (ask Julie Bishop if you are in any doubt). This column was obviously written by a couple of high-minded fellows who have little appreciation that someone pays the bills at the end of the day and that ‘savagely biting the hand that feeds us’ is not going to make much sense in the real world and in the long-term
Couldn’t agree more Terry. I’m no friend of Stokes or Forrest but they are speaking some sense here. The anti-China lobby in Nine Media, the Murddoch press and the hard right of the LNP are going down a particularly dangerous path feeding into the Trump narrative around this pandemic.
Allan Behn has a good paper on this posted by The Australia Institute today. Far more rational and nuanced than the outright Sinophobia propogated by the likes of Hartcher in the ex Fairfax papers.
‘The ’knock on’ effect of the blame game is a lack of cohesion and coherence in problem
solving strategies. Allocating responsibility is a distraction when the first order issue is
‘what to do’ rather than ‘who did it’. That is one of the many difficulties confronting
governments everywhere in dealing with this pandemic. It is as much a problem for
President Trump as he seeks to transform a national calamity into political advantage as
it was for President Xi whose tardiness transformed an epidemic into a pandemic. But they are both external actors, neither of them causing the pandemic and neither of them
resolving it.’
Well said Terry.
While COVID-19 has forced most of us into isolation it has emboldened all sorts of China-haters-at-all-cost to come out (from the closet?) and vent their spleen. Who would have expected Crikey to be lining up with Hastie, Dutton and the like.
Totally agree – it’s outrageous that Australia’s policies are being formed in the USA – a War Mongering country that flouts International Law when it suits. The same Aust Govt that is buying Oil for so called Strategic purposes BUT storing it in the USA. On both these issues it doesn’t make sense.
OK Terry. That’s a load of nonsense, conspiracy theories and just plain ignorance. Regardless of what you think about various pollies, Twiggles misbehaved very badly yesterday … a show of uncontrollable arrogance which only served to undo the good work he did getting the masks (for which, by the way his recompense should be a great big thankyou – not repayment of his outlays, which he originally actually donated.)
What Twiggles deserves is a kick in the arse twice a day before meals for at least a week. What that bungling, arrogant, lying chinese diplomat deserves is a quick deportation to Beijing and then up country for some serious reeducation.
I agree wholeheartedly. In truth I had to check if I was really reading Crikey or had mistakenly clicked to The Australian or an article by Peter Harcher at SMH.
Sure China deserves some criticism and yes they are overly sensitive to such. But this megaphone diplomacy (from both sides) is not intended to solve a problem its intended for domestic consumption to gee up
the supporters.
I would be a lot less concerned if our side was less amateurish in its diplomacy, and that goes for Forrest
as well.
Forrest is just another in a long line of the super rich that will sell out their country, their felow citizen and/or thier morals for money in pursuit of even greater wealth and power.
corporations and millionaires are not patriotic.
they care only for the dollar and profits
I wonder if someone switched the bylines. We have Michael Sainsbury offering constructive engagement with China while the rest of Crikey’s editorial is lining up behind Trump to flush out those potentially infected with the CCP virus. Richard McGregor from the Lowy Institute is far more level-headed about the need to engage with China.
“Kerry Stokes and Andrew Forrest are prime examples of business figures quick to take Beijing’s side.”
And while we’re mentioning those two can we have the reasons that allow those two to fly in and out of the country and across the country in direct contravention to the isolating rules that are applied to the rest of us? Stokes flew in to WA from Colorado, self-isolated at home for 14 days, while everyone else was forced to hotels, flew to Canberra for Anzac Day and then on to his home in Sydney.
And Forrest is an essential medical worker? He was at the press conference because the government was going to pay him for some medical supplies he’d managed to locate?
And then there were the planeloads of PPE and masks that were purchased in Australia and then flown to China early in the epidemic. Who arranged those? And where do their allegiances lie?
All alliances are complicated. Burt follow the money is a good rule when searching for applications of self-interest, especially when they are masquerading as altruism.
This is drivel, and the fact your whole contention hangs off regurgitating Morrison & Co’s ‘belief’, that the pandemic began in a wet market in Wuhan – which you do (by suggesting Hunt ‘made a crucial blunder by walking it back’), makes it exactly that.
Gawd only knows how many times people who follow the actual science will have to point out the progress in scientific investigations, before it will penetrate the skulls of people who only follow the ‘politics’.
Simply put, AGAIN, Chinese scientists had mapped the virus’ genome by Jan 11th or 12th (in a week!), provided it to the WHO, and they jointly invited every scientifically credible outfit on the planet to avail themselves of the genome map, and have a crack at working out where it came from, and how it might behave.
One such group of researchers came from Cambridge University. About 3 weeks ago, those Cambridge researchers published their initial findings, here; pnasdotorg/content/117/17/9241
“Phylogenetic network analysis of SARS-CoV-2 genomes”
Quick summary: Didn’t come from Wuhan, or a wet market. It was around as least as far back as Sept, well south of Wuhan, and didn’t begin to manifest with serious symptomology until a couple of months later.
And, they doubt they’ve got to its origins. Work is ongoing. No credible scientific body has stumped up any evidence, or even ‘opinion’, those Cambridge researchers are wrong.
Too many heads are stuck up their own political ar**s round these parts.
Basing international relations on bull**** ‘beliefs’, of someone like Morrison, is a really dumb idea.
As I noted under another regurgitation of Morrison’s beliefs, at UnFairFacts;
‘Who cares what Morrison ‘believes’?!
He’s from ‘marketing’, not ‘medicine’
There are any number of virologists working on particular virus isolates from different populations, it basically straight forward Science once you have enough claves for comparison.
French virologists have just published a major revue they have undertaken.
http://biorxiv.org/
If you want a synopsis of the paper try this from the SCMP.
The coronavirus outbreak in France was not caused by cases imported from China, but from a locally circulating strain of unknown origin, according to a new study by French scientists at the Institut Pasteur in Paris.
Genetic analysis showed that the dominant types of the viral strains in France belonged to a clade – or group with a common ancestor – that did not come from China or Italy, the earliest hotspot in Europe.
“The French outbreak has been mainly seeded by one or several variants of this clade … we can infer that the virus was silently circulating in France in February,” said researchers led by Dr Sylvie van der Werf and Etienne Simon-Loriere of the Institut Pasteur.
The Covid-19 pandemic has infected more than 128,000 people in France and caused more than 23,000 deaths.
France detected the virus in late January, before any other country in Europe. A few patients with a travel history that included China’s Hubei province were sampled on January 24 and tested positive.
The French government took quick and decisive measures to trace contacts of the infected people and shut down the chance of further infection.
However, these strains were not found in patients tested after the initial imported cases, suggesting “the quarantine imposed on the initial Covid-19 cases in France appears to have prevented local transmission”, the researchers said.
The Pasteur institute collected samples from more than 90 other patients across France and found the strains all came from one genetic line. Strains following this unique path of evolution had so far only been detected in Europe and the Americas.
The earliest sample in the French clade was collected on February 19 from a patient who had no history of travel and no known contact with returned travellers.
Several patients had recently travelled to other European countries, the United Arab Emirates, Madagascar and Egypt but there was no direct evidence that they contracted the disease in these destinations.
To the researchers’ surprise, some of the later strains collected were genetically older – or closer to the ancestral root – than the first sample in this clade.
The researchers also found that three sequences later sampled in Algeria were closely related to those in France, suggesting that travellers from France might have introduced the virus to the African country and caused an outbreak.
France is the latest in a growing number of countries and areas where no direct link between China and local outbreaks could be established.
The dominant strains in Russia and Australia, for instance, came from Europe and the United States, respectively, according to some studies.
These findings have drawn fire from some politicians who have tried to deflect domestic anger over their handling of the crisis by blaming China.
US President Donald Trump lashed out on social media after two separate teams in the US found the strains devastating New York came from Europe.
According to some estimates, the ancestor of Sars-CoV-2, the virus causing Covid-19, might have left bats between 50 and 70 years ago. A recent study by a team of geneticists in Oxford University estimated the first outbreak of the current pandemic could have occurred as early as September last year.
They found that the dominant strains circulating in China and Asia were genetically younger than some popular strains in the United States.
Excellent, John, much appreciated, hadn’t come across that.
So, in the interests of reciprocity (and proximity), a little something that got a coupla noses out of joint, here (‘Grow up!’), when I first provided a look;
Late 2017 – bmcvetresdotbiomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12917-017-1307-x
“Coronavirus and paramyxovirus in bats from Northwest Italy”
This is what I submitted at The Age, moments ago, in response to someone who ‘enjoyed’ that news from Italy;
“Here’s one to thicken up the mystery soup, Hanno, once again in Italy.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-italy-timing/italian-scientists-investigate-possible-earlier-emergence-of-coronavirus-idUSKBN21D2IG
“Italian scientists investigate possible earlier emergence of coronavirus”
“Italian researchers are looking at whether a higher than usual number of cases of severe pneumonia and flu in Lombardy in the last quarter of 2019……..
Adriano Decarli, an epidemiologist and medical statistics professor at the University of Milan, said there had been a “significant” increase in the number of people hospitalized for pneumonia and flu in the areas of Milan and Lodi between October and December last year.
He told Reuters he could not give exact figures but “hundreds” more people than usual had been taken to hospital in the last three months of 2019 in those areas – two of Lombardy’s worst hit cities – with pneumonia and flu-like symptoms, and some of those had died…….”
Now, line that up with the work of the Cambridge research team. The folks from Cambridge found the virus wasn’t manifesting with severe symptoms, until a couple of months after their ‘initial sightings’ in China, in September.
If the Italian scientists’ suspicions are borne out, and those cases of severe pneumonia (and deaths), back as far as October, in Italy, were due to COVID-19, that would suggest the virus was further developed in Italy, than China.
Again, too early to conclude much at all. But, questions do come to mind, such as;
Was it in Italy, before it was in China?
Or, a very different strain, with the origins going a lot further back than currently thought?
Remember, the strain(s) in New York have been traced to Europe, but the strain(s) in Washington have been traced to China.
And, thus far, the strains traced to Europe appear to have a higher Mortality Rate, than those traced to China.”
I just went back and read your submission again, John.
The last line from yours, from the ‘chaps’ (and chapesses) at Oxford;
“They found that the dominant strains circulating in China and Asia were genetically younger than some popular strains in the United States.”
To quote my own head scratching over the Italian suspicions;
“…Now, line that up with the work of the Cambridge research team. The folks from Cambridge found the virus wasn’t manifesting with severe symptoms, until a couple of months after their ‘initial sightings’ in China, in September.
If the Italian scientists’ suspicions are borne out, and those cases of severe pneumonia (and deaths), back as far as October, in Italy, were due to COVID-19, that would suggest the virus was further developed in Italy, than China.
Again, too early to conclude much at all. But, questions do come to mind, such as;
Was it in Italy, before it was in China?
Or, a very different strain, with the origins going a lot further back than currently thought?
Remember, the strain(s) in New York have been traced to Europe, but the strain(s) in Washington have been traced to China.
And, thus far, the strains traced to Europe appear to have a higher Mortality Rate, than those traced to China.”
Wagging the accusatory finger at China was never going to engage China in an international effort to discover the origin of the virus, but rather was hitching our wagon in support of Trump’s attempt to cover his incompetence and flagging popularity. It seems Trump serves our national interest more than maintaining our relationship with China.
We are a democracy with a capacity and responsibility to express our considered views on any manner of international issues, and, as well, accept the consequences of our forthright views, hard as they maybe, for holding and expressing such views and the way we express them.
The loudest howlers and finger pointers are most often least likely to suffer the consequences of their words and actions. Australia is, of course, well known for our own considered responses to external criticism regarding refugees and honouring our First Nation people among others.
I just went back and read your submission again, John.
The last line from yours, from the ‘chaps’ (and chapesses) at Oxford;
“They found that the dominant strains circulating in China and Asia were genetically younger than some popular strains in the United States.”
Emphasis: “genetically younger”
To quote my own head scratching over the Italian suspicions;
“…Now, line that up with the work of the Cambridge research team. The folks from Cambridge found the virus wasn’t manifesting with severe symptoms, until a couple of months after their ‘initial sightings’ in China, in September.
If the Italian scientists’ suspicions are borne out, and those cases of severe pneumonia (and deaths), back as far as October, in Italy, were due to COVID-19, that would suggest the virus was further developed in Italy, than China.
Again, too early to conclude much at all. But, questions do come to mind, such as;
Was it in Italy, before it was in China?
Or, a very different strain, with the origins going a lot further back than currently thought?
Remember, the strain(s) in New York have been traced to Europe, but the strain(s) in Washington have been traced to China.
And, thus far, the strains traced to Europe appear to have a higher Mortality Rate, than those traced to China.”
Whoops!
Guys, you haven’t gone back far enough. Did you know that at the end of the 13th century the Polo family visited China and Asia several times and that a few decades later the Black Death spread first through Asia and then Europe??? The Polo family was from, wait for it…..VENICE which is not a million miles from where COV-ID took off!!! I reckon there has to be some connection there!! Can you two super sleuths investigate for me???
Thanks.
Nup, you’d just bitch because it’s obviously taking too long for the electricity to hop across the synapses.
Robert Redfield from the US CDC alluded in answers to a possible earlier presence of the COVID19 in the US. His replies were ambivalent enough to be open to interpretation as to the reasons for the spike in US ‘flue’ deaths in late Autumn 2019
WATCH LIVE: NIH, CDC testify before House committee on …www.youtube.com › watch
Mar 12, 2020 – The House Oversight Committee holds a hearing on coronavirus … and Infectious Diseases; Robert Redfield, director, CDC; Robert Kadlec
Lombardy and Wuhan have very strong economic links that include daily flights and a significant number of Chinese workers based in the Milan fashion industry. so bio-security could be an issue though you need to remember that the virologists say the infective agents are two different clades. Lots of puzzles yet to be resolved.
Absolutely, John. Idjits who assume the ‘science is in’ need to be placed in rudderless craft, and propelled into the middle of the Pacific.
Plus, there have been 2 doctors in California, in recent weeks, both operating in ‘official capacities’, who have pointed at the virus being in California back in early December. One even said it had been “freewheeling” since at least then.
And, when you do a timeline of one case, used by one of those 2, the virus had to be ‘live’ in mid-November.
P.S. Kadlec has a long history in bio-lab ‘management’, going back to Fort Detrick in the ‘anthrax times’.
Remember the ‘anthrax times’?
A very interesting comment, John. I wonder if you’d be able to provide a direct link to the paper by the French virologists.
…ou les virologues français!
Try this chillywinds. It is a full scientific paper not a journalist read so I hope it works.
https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.04.24.059576v2.full.pdf
Thank you!
What is it good for? Absolutely nothing. Yeah.
And an investigation would use this information. China appears to be against having an investigation. They should be for one, and make sure it doesn’t turn into a kangaroo court.