Andrew Bolt: Scott Morrison deserves credit for standing up to China’s bullying

It wasn’t Anthony Albanese who did most to stand up to China’s bullying and call its bluff. It was the despised man he replaced.

Can we give Scott Morrison credit? Last week’s breakthrough meeting with China’s dictator wasn’t a “triumph” for Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, but for the despised man he replaced.

It wasn’t Albanese who did most to stand up to China and call its bluff. It was Morrison.

Albanese is now praising himself for having told the suddenly friendly President Xi Jinping in Bali that “Australia won’t resile from our interests or our values”, but it was Morrison who drew that red line.

So where’s the credit for his courage? For showing the limits of Chinese bullying?

No Australian Prime Minister in decades has been so shunned and trashed as Morrison since losing office. Even Kevin Rudd had his defenders.

But not even Liberals will say a good word for the man who was their leader for four years and gave them their miracle win in 2019.

Yet surely now is when they give Morrison the credit Labor and the media is stealing for Albanese, after Xi Jinping finally paused his campaign to bully Australia into submission.

For six years Xi refused to meet any Australian prime minister. For two years, he’s hit Australia with trade bans, issuing an impertinent list of 14 “grievances” through his ambassador.

Morrison meets with Xi during the G20 in Osaka in 2019. Picture: Adam Taylor Adam Taylor/PMO

Most of those 14 involved alleged sins of Morrison’s government.

Morrison maintained the ban on China building our 5G network, imposed for security reasons. He restricted Chinese investment and cracked down on Chinese spying and covert influence. He resisted China’s theft of the South China Sea. He protested against China imprisoning a million Muslims.

Every step Morrison took to defend Australia as China grew more threatening triggered blustering complaints from Xi’s “wolf warrior” diplomats.

How dare Morrison tighten military ties with Japan? How dare he make a new security deal with the United States and United Kingdom that included nuclear submarines instead of diesel ones from France?

And how dare he ask for an independent inquiry into how the Covid-19 virus started in China, killing 16,000 Australians?

At home, too, Morrison was attacked. Pro-China business lobbyists complained of Morrison’s “tone” and the loss of trade.

China stirred up the anti-Liberal vote among the 1.2 million Australian Chinese, particularly in key marginal seats the Liberals could not afford to lose – and did.

Then Albanese won the May election. China sent its congratulation and, now, an invitation to meet Xi, who in Bali praised him to his face for saying he’d handle China “in a mature way”.

Xi clearly meant Morrison had not, and Albanese joined him in running down his predecessor, telling journalists: “I try to act in a mature way.”

Too many commentators bought this bad-Morrison, clever-Albo dichotomy, kicking the former prime minister who’d actually dared to defy the powerful Chinese dictatorship – and won.

But what has Albanese done that Morrison hadn’t done first, in tougher times?

It was Morrison who resisted China’s theft of the South China Sea. Picture: AFP

As Mike Green, former Asia director of US president George W. Bush’s National Security Council, put it: “The new government did not fundamentally change the strategic pillars of Australian policy.”

Other commenters joined in praising Albanese for sticking to Morrison’s script. Said one: Albanese had not “conceded a single one of Beijing’s 14 demands” – demands Morrison rejected first.

Just last week, defence minister Richard Marles even said Morrison’s planned new nuclear submarines were “the heart of our nation having impactful projection”.

So Morrison was right, and now China has had to switch tactics, using Albanese’s election as an excuse to take us out of the freezer. (That said, it hasn’t yet dropped one trade ban.)

Yet even now, journalists berate Morrison. His anti-China rhetoric had been “bellicose”. His government’s talk of China starting a war had been “immature”.

But Xi had indeed threatened war, openly, and how could Morrison explain his urgent alliance building, increased military spending and switch to nuclear submarines without pointing out this danger?

Albanese going quieter carries the opposite risk – encouraging complacency and China’s aggression.

Albanese has said nothing since the election about China’s growing grip on the Solomon Islands, just 2000km off Queensland, training Solomons police on crowd control, donating water cannon, and ratifying a defence deal with a prime minister who’s since banned US and British navy ships and cancelled next year’s election.

Albanese even followed his meeting with Xi by saying Taiwan couldn’t join the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership because it wasn’t a real country – which is exactly China’s line.

China now knows for sure Scott Morrison is gone, and freedom has lost a champion. Give Morrison that due.