As Education Minister Dan Tehan recently demonstrated, some in the Morrison government are itching to get back to political business as usual and attack the Victorian Labor government. The latter’s collaboration with the Beijing regime over its notorious “Belt and Road” initiative seemed to furnish a good opportunity for that.
Except, when it comes to China, no one’s hands are clean. Especially not those of a government that once upon a time pandered almost obsessively to Beijing.
The government has never liked Andrews’ signing up to the “BRI”, having itself declined to sign up to what Malcolm Turnbull correctly characterised as more slogan than content.
After US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo foolishly weighed in on the weekend to declare Australia might be “cut off” from Five Eyes intelligence sharing if Victoria’s participation involved telecommunications (geez Mike, who would spy on Indonesian trade negotiators to help US firms?), government spirits must have been lifted. That encouraged Morrison to suggest that Victoria had exceeded its jurisdiction on the matter.
Unfortunately for the government — and its News Corp allies — Washington’s man in Canberra, Arthur Culvahouse, had to clean up Pompeo’s mess yesterday afternoon, saying “we are not aware that Victoria has engaged in any concrete projects under BRI, let alone projects impinging on telecommunications networks, which we understand are a federal matter”.
Except, there’s a lingering sense that the Andrews government really does have a blind spot about China. It was State Treasurer Tim Pallas who stirred the issue up by launching an unprovoked attack on the federal government’s handling of relations with China in the wake of China’s decision to impose anti-dumping tariffs on barley (Victoria is a barley producer, but significantly smaller than Western Australia).
Andrews signed the BRI deal with China’s National Development and Reform Commission, the body behind the regime’s horrific “social credit” system designed to control first businesses, then individuals in an all-encompassing mass surveillance program. As Beijing plots anew to crush dissent in Hong Kong and threatens to boycott Australian products, the best thing Andrews could do would be to ditch the agreement.
Perhaps it’s something in the DNA of state Labor parties. NSW Labor, which pioneered the extensive tapping of Chinese political donors in the 2000s and produced Bob Carr and Sam Dastyari, continues to harbour in its ranks Beijing apologist Shaoquett Moselmane.
But the federal Coalition isn’t exactly in a strong position to criticise Victoria over China.
It was the Abbott government — in which Morrison was immigration minister — that signed Australia up to a free trade agreement with Beijing that delivered a few wins for some agricultural producers in exchange for allowing Chinese and Australian firms to bring in temporary Chinese workers with no labour market testing.
Objections from unions and Labor about the lack of protections for local workers were dismissed by Murdoch hacks like Greg Sheridan as “disgraceful” and “xenophobic”. Tony Abbott also played the xenophobia card, which would prove particularly ironic given his later, desperate targeting of Muslims in the dying days of his prime ministership.
Giving firms free rein to bring in Chinese workers for temporary contracts goes much further than any commitments in the wildly overblown but wholly nebulous Victoria-China agreement. So too will the accession of China to the Government Procurement Agreement, which will enable Chinese firms to compete for government procurement contracts in Australia.
Then there was the ill-fated attempt by the Turnbull government, of which Morrison was a senior minister, to sign an extradition treaty with the Beijing regime. As it turned out, even Turnbull’s own backbench had problems with the idea of agreeing to send people back to a regime with a 99.9% conviction rate and the death penalty.
As with the receipt of donations from Chinese donors, and the post-political employment of former politicians, neither Labor nor the Coalition are in a strong position to criticise the other over China.
I am heartily sick of the unspoken and unsupportable assumption of moral and cultural superiority underpinning this, and so much commentary about Australia and China. Let us be clear. We are in no position to lecture the Chinese about mass surveillance, or about fair and honourable trading, and most certainly not on human rights.
As an entirely disposable vassal of the US Empire it is quite reasonable for the Chinese government to regard us as hostile. While memories of Lambing Flat, or the sack of the Summer Palace might be faded sepia in the Antipodes, (particularly considering the rich record of subsequent atrocities we have happily joined in), in a society with thousands of years of recorded history these might well be added to the list of previous offenses.
It costs nothing to be polite.
Well said. Crikey has shown itself capable of more nuanced reporting than this. The article doesn’t make sense unless the reader presumes that China is a source of evil. Is Bernard looking for a spot on Trump’s campaign team? Too easy, mate.
Politeness is indeed cheap enough Griselda, but I could not manage it myself yesterday morning when I saw that Speers had invited that Reptile Sheridan into the ABC studios for Insiders.
I promptly switched the show off and went to do more useful things.
I did briefly relent towards the end of the show, just to check if Sheridan did indeed make an idiot of himself again, and it was gratifying to see Annabel and the rest of the panel laughing at him and his absurd lines of argument over fossil fuels.
Hard to manage politeness towards Murdoch’s paid liars.
Greg Sheridan is a miracle, he is one of the many Rupert Murdoch Sky News talking tapeworms.
I’m finding it easy to just copy from one board, to another.
A chap of “US heritage” had a far old bleat about The Age readership’s responses to a piece on Pompeo’s performance on Sky News. So much “hate” being displayed for the US, according to this immigrant. He was quite comfy with the claim Pompeo had merely been responding to a “hypothetical”.
I was one of a number;
Pompeo was asked that ‘hypothetical’ on a media outlet owned by a US citizen. And, not any ordinary US citizen;
hamiltonnewsdotcom/news-story/7228121-trump-asked-about-accusations-against-bill-o-reilly-calls-him-a-good-person-/
“…But Trump’s support on Wednesday provided more than just a glimpse into the relationship between the men. It was a U.S. president backing his network of choice, one whose founding executive, Rupert Murdoch, has close ties to the president’s family.
An initial skeptic, Murdoch drew closer to Trump in the months after he clinched the Republican nomination, and people who know them both say they speak regularly.
But the family and personal ties go deeper. Murdoch and his former wife Wendi Deng socialized with Trump’s daughter Ivanka and her husband, Jared Kushner, who now have influential roles in the White House.
Murdoch was a mentor to Kushner when Kushner started as a media mogul, after his purchase of The New York Observer. And Deng and Ivanka Trump were so close that the Murdochs made Ivanka Trump a trustee of their children’s fortune…….”
If you don’t fancy ‘The Hamilton News’, just search ‘Rupert Murdoch mentor Jared Kushner’, and you’ll find plenty more, including at the likes of the NYT’s and Washington Post.
You just won’t find any such mentions at the likes of Fox News in the US, or Sky News in Oz.”
Also please note the long term, and continuing WTF?, friendship between Chelsea Clinton (including their conversions to Judaism – she to marry “investment banker” Marc Mezvinski) and Ivanka (to marry Kushner who looks distressingly like a Botoxed 10yr old) – how weird is that?
And not forgetting the other godparents of Deng’s children, Cherie & Tony Blair.
Is this psychological incest?
I believe Wendi also ‘socialized’ with Tony Blair on numerous occasions.
Indeed. It is as if Bernard is writing in a vacuum. The Federal Govt initial demands for a COVID-19 investigation and to give the WHO ‘weapon inspection powers’, seems absent from any of his analysis of why China might be responding in the way it has.
As a small aside, what is ‘notorious’ about the BRI? Or is it just Bernard’s ‘feels’ of it?
If Keane’s “lingering sense” Is good enough for Keane it’s good enough for Keane as “Beijing plots” and others “continue to harbour within its ranks Beijing apologist …” and others are “launching an unprovoked assault.”
Perhaps it’s something in the Keane DNA that accounts for the free rein he gives himself in this article.
It seems to have been missed that the USA has declined to adhere to 2 essential components of the international boondog… sorry, enquiry, into WuFlu – specifically a refusal to share vaccine research NOR allow international enquiries, never mind with “weapons inspector” powers, to scrutinise the Land of All that Is Wonderful.
Couldn’t have put it better myself, Griselda.
And, while Keane continues his relentless bleating about Chinese ‘influence’, on ‘both sides’, he too continues to ignore a far more pervasive and worrying influence in the same corridors of power, in Canberra.
Here, I am referring to the nation’s ‘most respected’ defence and national security lobbying outfit, the “Australian Strategic Policy Institute” (“Institute”? Wot a larf), which has been run since 2012 by Johnny Howard’s favourite ‘public servant’ in such policy arenas, ‘Pete’ Jennings. Anyone who gets about the various ‘mainstream’ media outfits in Oz knows ‘Pete’ is the go-to man for commentary on anything deeeefence and national security and, more lately, the provider of much of the fuel that gets the Anti-China hawks up and at it in the morning.
What’s very, very rarely mentioned is who stumps up the funds to keep Pete so prominent.
In general, I found this piece of ‘analysis’ last week, from Q & A Man, Hamish McD, to be very much on the money;
https://insidestory.org.au/journalists-on-the-ramparts/
“Journalists on the ramparts. Has the press gallery forgotten we’re not at war with China?”
With particular kudos for this mention;
“…This threat of “trade retaliation” then blew up into a major theme of Canberra politics the following week. And instead of cool rationality, a wave of patriotic flag-waving took hold of senior members of the press gallery, urged on by China hawks in Canberra’s military-industrial circles.
The latter notably include Peter Jennings, director of the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, financed by the defence department, military suppliers including Lockheed Martin, BAE, Northrop Grumman, Thales and Raytheon, and the governments of Japan and Taiwan. It was time for Australia to diversify its trade away from China, he wrote. Just like that…..”
One wonders whether Pete’s appropriately registered his interests as ‘foreign’.
P.S. Just as an aside, the former head of ASIO, Duncan Lewis, is now employed as a ‘salesman’ for the French ‘state enterprise’, and funder of Pete’s ASPI, Thales.
I’ve just been corrected – that wasn’t written by the Q & A Hamish McD, but by;
“Hamish McDonald is a former foreign editor and China correspondent of the Sydney Morning Herald, and former regional editor of the Far Eastern Economic Review.”
The correction came from “The Mod” on “Staff” at The Age/SMH.
So, after ‘standing corrected’, I asked if that Hame McD had offered the piece to his ‘former employers’ at the SMH, and they’d rejected it, or if he had not offered them the opportunity, at all?
We shall see or, maybe not!
Thanks for the correction – I was getting worried I might have to change my mind about the tame (and lame) QandA Hamish Mcd – actually, make that ‘the tame and lame ABC’.
Horses for courses.
“Foreign Policy, the Amoral Handicap favourite. Jockey S. Morrison, Trained by Uncle Sam (giving riding instructions).”
Should win in a canter.
With a ‘winners are grinners’ smirk on its face.
We traded with China when it was ruled by Chairman Mao, a far worse regime than the current one. Since when does trade with a country imply endorsement of its government?
Yep, I remember that, while at the same time, the Libs were running election ads with red (Chinese) arrows pointing straight at the heart of the Kooyong Tennis Club.
Not forgetting the Rodent’s WBA – wheat for oil, thanks to Lord Bunter the DOWNER.
When has our trade ever been linked to morality?
Morrison was thrilled with Gladys Liu’s fundraising efforts from her Chinese mates.
Once again we hear the words from Bernard Keane, horrific, crushing , surveillance.
Every time he writes about China. Yawn,Been there done that. The social credit system works. No graffiti, no abusing service staff, basically well behaved people.
Perhaps Crikey could do an article about the poverty alleviation schemes for the very poor Chinese. Thats the China the west never reports or talks about.
Yes Hong Kong is now going to be more tightly governed. Perhaps Bernard hasn’t watched the pro Chinese people being set on fire or bashed with concrete blocks. The shops looted and burnt because they were pro chinese.
The innocent little pro democracy thugs wouldn’t do that.
Nor do Bernie and his ilk ever bother to mention the chief funders, and ‘advisors’, to those ‘pro-democracy’ protesters in Honkers, just happen to be the “National Endowment for Democracy” which now sits in the State Department in the US of A, which has them directed by Pompeo.
The NED used to sit within the CIA. But, things got a little warm, with all those pesky real journalists (remember them?) uncovering numerous ‘interventions’ (coups, assassinations, stuff like that), particularly in Latin/South America.
Ergo, time to switch to ‘diplomatic efforts’!!