Prime Minister Scott Morrison
It was a reference to an obscure Cold War film from 1962 in which an American POW from the Korean War is brainwashed and sent back to the US to assassinate a US presidential candidate hostile to China.
While that cartoonish remark was withdrawn,Mr Morrison and his colleagues have repeatedly accused Mr Albanese of “appeasing China” and questioned his appearance at a gala dinner for a new museum at Sydney University sponsored by Chau Chak Wing,a prominent Australian Chinese businessman.
Mr Albanese later told Parliament that he had sought and received ASIO clearance to attend the event.
There is no question that China is trying to influence the political process in Australia in a more aggressive way than other countries. As theHeraldreported last week,ASIO chief Mike Burgess said it had recently foiled a plot on behalf of China by a rich “puppeteer” to infiltrate a political party,which theHerald understands was the ALP.
These signs of China’s growing economic and military power are one of the great challenges of our time,which certainly deserve to be debated.
Yet respected members of Australia’s intelligence community have sounded the alarm about the divisive attacks of the past week.
Mr Burgess in a television interview said that the debate was “not helpful.” He stressed that both sides of politics were being targeted by foreign interference and the problem was “equal opportunity” for all parties.
The Coalition’s attacks are based largely on innuendo rather than serious differences of policy.
The Coalition tried to smear ALP politicians for cultivating ties with China years ago,even though at the time both sides of politics saw working with China as vital to Australia’s interests. In November 2019 Mr Morrison said after meeting Chinese premier Li Keqiang,“We have a great relationship but we know it can be even better.”
By demonising contact with China,the Coalition runs the risk of alienating the large Chinese-Australian community and provoking racism against them.
The highly respected former boss of ASIO Dennis Richardson told theHerald that the creation of “artificial partisan differences” was not in the national interest. “I don’t believe it can be objectively stated that the opposition has sought to appease China.”
The Chinese Communist Party would love to be able to claim that Australia’s strong criticism of Xi Jinping’s foreign and domestic policies is not supported by the main opposition party. That would be grist for the mill of the CCP’s propaganda machine.
But in fact,the ALP has marched almost in lockstep with the federal government for the past few years even as China hit Australia with trade sanctions which have cost wine and seafood exporters hundreds of millions of dollars. It has rubber-stamped Coalition policies on foreign interference,Chinese firm Huawei’s involvement in 5G and on alliances such as the Quad and AUKUS.
In fact,the ALP’s small target strategy on China has meant that Australia has not had a meaningful debate even on some of the more extreme Coalition tactics such as its call in 2020 to appoint “weapons inspectors” to investigate the origins of COVID-19 in China.
ALP foreign affairs spokesperson Penny Wong took the sharpest line last year “We are not made safer by our leaders beating the drums of war,” she said. TheHerald agrees Mr Dutton’s comments were unnecessary.
While the Coalition started this scare campaign,the ALP also bears some of the blame for the way it bit back last week. Mr Albanese stupidly parrotted the Coalition’s lines by calling Mr Morrison a Manchurian candidate and he has attacked the Coalition for approving the lease of the Port of Darwin to a Chinese company in 2015.
While the Coalition seems to have diverted the media cycle onto the issue this week,the majority of voters are unlikely to be swayed by the China panic. Judging by theHerald’s Resolve Political Monitor,only 3 per cent of voters rank national security and defence as their highest priority issue compared to 16 per cent for the cost of living and 21 per cent for handling of COVID-19.
Voters could,however,be put off if they think politicians are trying to exploit the issue for cynical reasons.
It is in our national interest to conduct a debate about China policy and there have been plenty of robust debates over foreign policy in previous elections on everything from the war on terror to relations with Asia.
But exaggerating the threat of an enemy within,casting slurs on the loyalty of fellow MPs without any basis and playing up the minimal differences between the parties will only encourage China to stir the pot even more.
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