Anthony Albanese really needs to stop bringing up China
Opposition Leader Anthony Albanese’s attempts to outplay the federal government on China is a terrible idea that brings up bad memories, writes John Rolfe
Opinion
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Inside Team Albo the boss is considered the “leading parliamentary tactician of his generation”. But if that were true Anthony Albanese would not be talking about China.
He wouldn’t bring it up. If some pesky journo asked a question on it, he’d play a dead bat. The standing advice to any Labor MP from him would be the same.
Why?
Because China plus Labor equals an Aldi bag containing a fat wad of cash.
China plus Labor equals Sam Dastyari, taking China’s line on the South China Sea and Chinese cash to pay his bills.
It equals the xenophobic remarks of recently axed NSW leader Michael Daley about Chinese migrants as well as the fawning of former premier Bob Carr and ex-PM Paul Keating telling us, against a growing mountain of evidence, that Beijing’s plans are of no worry to us.
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Unlike the people in Team Albo, I’m not paid to offer him advice. But I will.
Anthony, shut up about China.
If you are the Master Tactician — and I have yet to see much evidence you are — then China is not the issue with which to wedge Scott Morrison.
Why on earth would you want to look like you are defending China? Your party’s associations with China stink.
S-T-O-P.
It’s just dumb politics.
A senior adviser to a former Labor prime minister told me the aim of the game was to have the media spend as much time as possible talking about the issues “in your column” and as little discussing those in the other mob’s column. The issues in Labor’s column have long been health and education.
The NDIS and aged care can be added to that list.
The recent parliamentary Question Time session during which Labor focused on aged care was its strongest this term.
That’s also a view inside the party.
What is definitely not in the Opposition’s column is China.
Yet at seemingly every available opportunity, Albo tries to use anything to do with it to attack the Prime Minister.
Recent examples include his attempt to infer Scott Morrison was racist for calling Dastyari “Shanghai Sam”.
That sure shifted votes.
The person who should never use that phrase again is Anthony Albanese, not the PM.
Then last week Albo criticised the Prime Minister for saying China should be treated as a “newly developed economy” in trade and environment policy.
China accounts for one in four of the world’s people but its economy doesn’t, so it should still be considered developing, the Master Tactician said.
For his information, China actually now accounts for 19 per cent of world GDP, up from 15 per cent in 2012, according to the IMF.
Regardless, Albanese’s complaint wasn’t so much with the substance of the argument but rather that it was being made from Chicago.
So the optics weren’t great.
“It would have been better sent from Australia so that there was no confusion that the Prime Minister was advancing Australia’s national interests,” he told the ABC.
Was there any confusion?
In the speech Morrison had said “there’s no need to engage in a heavily polarised debate on this issue, there’s a much more practical issue at the heart of all this and we just have to reset to ensure that can provide the same peace and stability and prosperity that will last.”
The PM continued: “We’re totally up to it, we still have the wisdom and capability to achieve it and so Australia won’t be a bystander in that process, we’ll be involved. We’ll be rolling our sleeves up, we’ll be playing our part and just in case you think we’re doing that because we’re terribly friendly and wonderfully affable people, which we are, the real issue is it’s in our national interest.”
Still, there was some backing for the Master Tactician’s take on these things. Some of the strongest support came from Wang Yiwei, a Renmin University professor of international relations and Communist Party member, at the Chinese embassy in Canberra. Wang told Fairfax the PM should not expect an invite to visit China without offering a compromise on tensions including the ban on Chinese tech giant Huawei being part of the Australian rollout of 5G mobile infrastructure.
The ban on Huawei was announced in 2018 by the Turnbull government, before Morrison became Prime Minister.
Another lecture came from that embassy this week, with Ambassador Cheng Jingye reminding the PM of China’s role in Australia’s economic success. “You have been talking about your continuous economic growth, for the past 28 years,” Mr Cheng told The Australian newspaper.
“You have talked a lot about your trade surplus. It seems sometimes, some people forget what are the reasons behind that.”
There was a need for greater “mutual respect” between the countries and a reduction in “prejudices and suspicions”, he said.
China’s emergence from poverty is terrific for its people and, frankly, the world.
In the process it’s become the world’s second economic superpower.
But there’s nothing wrong with the PM siding with the first — the United States. It’s in our national interest.
And it’s what the public want — by a margin of more than two to one, according to a Newspoll published just days ago.
The Coalition cannot claim to be lily white when it comes to Chinese donations and influence.
But the problem is not borderline endemic in the way it is for the ALP, which is why the Opposition Leader should find other things to talk about.