Who is Scott Morrison speaking for when he recently raised the idea of Magnitsky-style sanctions to punish Chinese business and political figures?
Morrison made his comments, sure to be inflammatory, in Tokyo at a meeting of the grandly titled Inter-parliamentary Alliance on China (IPAC). Australia’s former prime minister was joined by UK former blink-and-you-missed-it PM Liz Truss, as well as former Belgian PM Guy Verhofstadt, a Liberal politician.
Morrison might be the current member for Cook in southern Sydney, but late last week libertarian US policy centre the Hudson Institute was all over his speech, uploading it to its site and billing Morrison as its “China Centre advisory board member”.
The Hudson Institute has become a new home for Morrison and a springboard to international relevance — sorely needed given the state of his relations in Australia and within his own party.
The Institute established its China Centre in 2021, appointing former US secretary of state Mike Pompeo to its advisory board. Pompeo had gone out of his way to inflame US relations with China in his final months in office. When he joined Hudson, he brought with him Miles Yu, his former China policy adviser (and professor at the United States Naval Academy), as a senior fellow.
Pompeo and Morrison have enjoyed a close personal relationship based on their shared religious beliefs — both are committed Pentecostal Christians. Their relationship appears to have blossomed when Morrison was prime minister from May 2019, and might have been kept secret had it not been for Morrison spilling the beans to The Australian‘s Paul Kelly, as part of a flattering portrait of Morrison’s evolving foreign policy expertise — particularly towards China.
Morrison revealed to Kelly that while prime minister he was in regular contact with Pompeo. Crikey‘s inquiries indicate that none of this was officially recorded. There has been virtually no media attention either on the nature of the relationship or its impact on Australian foreign policy.
Pompeo is a possible candidate for the next US presidential elections. Last week he created further headlines when he claimed Israel had a biblical claim to Palestinian lands and was therefore not illegally occupying it.
The Pompeo-Morrison relationship only truly broke cover at the end of last year when Pompeo invited Morrison to join him on the advisory board of Hudson’s newly created China Centre. Morrison described Pompeo as “a dear friend”. Pompeo’s old staffer, Yu, lavished praise on the member for Cook, giving him a hero’s billing, which many Australians might not have recognised.
“He’s very Australian, he’s very famous, he’s beloved by Australians and Americans,” Yu said.
The Hudson Institute is an influence-peddling organisation par excellence. It receives financial backing from a number of US weapons manufacturers, including Huntington Ingalls Industries, which builds nuclear submarines for the US Navy. It has close ties with Taiwan, which has reportedly provided financial backing to the institute. The country’s president, Tsai Ing-wen, sent official congratulations to Hudson on its 60th anniversary in 2021. The institute declares that it has received donations from Japanese government-linked organisations.
The institute also lists News Corp CEO Rupert Murdoch as a major donor, who also has a seat on Hudson’s chairman’s advisory board. Former prime minister Tony Abbott has had a cameo role: he was part of a Hudson panel that kicked around the implications of the AUKUS agreement in 2021.
Morrison’s IPAC address in Tokyo last week was a typically muddled articulation. He gained headlines for comparing a “benign and accommodating view” of China with former British PM Neville Chamberlain’s policy of appeasement and his misreading of Hitler’s intentions in 1938.
Morrison raised the prospect of whether sanctions should be applied to Chinese nationals for human rights abuses, especially in relation to the Uyghur population of Xinjiang. In the next breath, he appeared to shoot the idea down, citing the “practical issues to consider” within the China relationship, “not the least being the practical issues of possible impacts on Australian citizens being held by the Chinese government”.
Perhaps China pays little attention to the words of a former prime minister, but his intervention at the very least muddies the waters.
So is he the former prime minister? The humble member for Cook? Or is he mini-Mike Pompeo, man of belligerent views backed by powerful friends?
For anyone still unclear why our relations with China deteriorated so fast look no further. And he lost Australia $20 billion in annual trade with China as well as selling out what remained of our sovereignty to the US.
If only we still had public floggings. It would takes weeks in the pillory to exact Scomo’s punishment.
Hanging , drawing and quartering is too good!
The entire event sounds like a meeting of the “International Right Wing Failures and Tossers” Club given the “speakers” and doners list.
Hudson Institute is in Koch or their Atlas Network of global think tanks a la IPA and CIS.
The sooner Morrison is sent to the big house by the Federal ICAC the better………………
………the dingbat is just a loose cannon.
Who does he speak for?
Himself………. always and only.
……..and you could only hope the advisory board of the Hudson Institute all get together at the one place and time, which would only require the one Exocet.
A very inexpensive solution for all of us.
I wonder if you could crowdfund that?…………..
Why has Morrison, a man who has failed at almost all his career moves and was head of the worst government in our history, been invited to speak anywhere, particularly about China, given his bellicose comments which led to our worst Australia/China relationship in decades. The sooner he fades into irrelevance the better.
Why is Tony Abbott, who is… Tony Abbott (his own name is derogatory slander)… still trotting around and being feted by all the wealthy but irrelevant anti-environment think tanks and talk fests? The worse idiots like Morrison and Abbott get, the more the worst of the powerful demand their blessing.
Alexander Downer is another Conservative “has-been” blathering on and commenting on Boris Johnson intervening in Brexit.
Because they’re all of a like mind. Be damned to the facts and the notion of doing what’s right, my ideology TRUMPS everything.
Would the electors of the seat of Cook consider not voting for the idiot next time?
He’s well-liked at Cronulla rugby league club, gets selfies and shout-outs from the footy numbskulls there.
No accounting, eh?
The only media report that I’m interested in regarding Morrison is the one in which he is arrested, cuffed and thrown into the back of a police van.