Andrew Bolt: Premiers are useful idiots to Chinese dictatorship

The dirty work of appeasing China is being done by two Labor premiers, Daniel Andrews and Mark McGowan, who has disgraced himself on his China trip.

Kimberley, you were right. See what a fool Mark McGowan has just made of himself in Beijing, trashing the dictatorship’s critics.

A few days before she died last year, I had my friend Kimberley Kitching, the Labor senator, over for lunch.

She was a human rights hawk and had warned for years about the Chinese dictatorship, even back when Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull was so naïve that he pushed for an extradition treaty to help China grab people it wanted in Australia.

At the end of the lunch, just two months before Anthony Albanese swept to power in Canberra, I asked Kimberley a question troubling me: would Labor be as tough on China as the Liberals were under Scott Morrison?

Mark McGowan has made a fool of himself in China. Picture: Philip Gostelow

She stared and said two words. “Hell, no.”

To be fair, the Albanese Government has largely held the line on China, even if it’s gone quiet on human rights.

But the dirty work of appeasement is being done by two Labor premiers, Victoria’s Daniel Andrews and West Australia’s Mark McGowan, who on Tuesday disgraced himself on the first day of his five-day trip to China.

McGowan, was at a lunch thrown for him by the China-Australia Chamber of Commerce, sitting near Australia’s Ambassador, Graham Fletcher, the chamber’s chair, Vaughn Barber, and other guests.

Daniel Andrews visiting the Nanjing City Wall in China in 2015. Picture: Instagram

He must have known he was being filmed. In fact, the film was then sent around by his office.

And what it showed was an Australian premier in communist China attacking the former Morrison Liberal government and especially the Liberals’ defence spokesman, Andrew Hastie, for being a critic of a dictatorship that’s banned democracy, locked up innocent Australians, hit Australia with trade bans and cyber attacks, and threatened war over democratic Taiwan.

McGowan is recorded saying he’d liked Liberal Finance Minister Mathias Cormann, who “had the same view as me” but Cormann “was the odd one out” among the Liberals.

McGowan then turned on Hastie, a former SAS officer and Assistant Minister for Defence who prizes freedom: “He swallowed some sort of Cold War pills back … when he was born, and he couldn’t get his mindset out of that.”.

How the Chinese dictatorship would have loved that. All said in Beijing, and in front of a camera! Here was one of its useful idiots, come crawling for China’s trade and attacking Australians back home who see this dictatorship as a threat to our freedom.

It’s disgusting. To me, it’s like a premier visiting Nazi Germany and announcing Robert Menzies was deluded to resist Germany.

Of course, it’s not surprising that McGowan doesn’t prize freedom. He’s a bit of an autocrat himself, locking away Western Australia for so long during the pandemic.

Hastie himself made that point in an unusually angry response from a serious Christian: “The truth is that he’s a prison guard looking for work now that the pandemic has finished.”

Andrew Hastie says McGowan is a ‘prison guard looking for work’. Picture: Gary Ramage

Hastie added: “I’m not surprised he’s running down Australian MPs in China … What’s he really saying when the cameras aren’t running?”

Indeed. And what really rankles is that this patsy is such a hypocrite.

Before McGowan left for China, Nick Coyle tried to reach him. What followed says a lot.

Coyle is the partner of Cheng Lei, the Australian journalist who has so far spent two years in a Chinese jail on bogus charges that she leaked state secrets. In truth, she seems a hostage, to warn Chinese Australians to shut up and to force our politicians to kowtow.

Coyle wanted McGowan to ask Chinese officials to help Cheng, who hasn’t spoken to her children since her arrest.

You’d think McGowan might show sympathy, especially since Cheng’s father lives in his state, but Coyle didn’t even get the courtesy of a response.

McGowan is a patsy and a hypocrite. Picture: Martin Ollman

Pushed by journalists, McGowan’s office issued a bland statement saying Cheng’s nightmare was not their business: “The Premier will not raise specific foreign policy matters as they are the responsibility of the federal government.”

Coyle got the same treatment when he appealed personally to Premier Andrews for help, ahead of Andrews’ mysterious suck-up tour of China last month.

No response, even though Cheng’s children are Victorians. And journalists were again told that foreign policy was for the federal government, not for a mere Premier.

Yet here was McGowan on day one in China, publicly offering his unsolicited opinions on foreign policy – how the Liberals had it wrong, and we should smile more at the dictator.

Hypocrite. Sellout. Useful idiot. Who else would McGowan sell out for the sniff of the dictatorship’s trade?