Rita Panahi: Australia must consciously uncouple from China

Premier Daniel Andrews wants a “sophisticated, nuanced” response to deteriorating relations with China, but is demanding Victoria’s Belt and Road deal go ahead.

China’s campaign of economic coercion against Australia has done little to temper the Dan Andrews government’s enthusiasm for the Belt and Road Initiative, a scheme designed to advance Beijing’s influence across the globe.

At a time when the country needs to stand united against the Chinese Communist regime’s aggression, Premier Andrews again demanded the federal government step aside and allow Victoria to proceed with its contentious and secretive deal.

This week the federal parliament passed a foreign relations bill that will give the Scott Morrison government the power to veto Victoria’s agreement with China.

Premier Andrews responded by calling for a “sophisticated, nuanced” response to the deteriorating bilateral relationship.

“There’s no getting around it — whether you like it or not, this is our biggest customer,” he said. One can only hope that “sophisticated” and “nuanced” aren’t, as is often the case, weasel words meaning “shut up and submit”.

Premier Daniel has called for a ‘sophisticated, nuanced’ response to the deteriorating bilateral relationship with China. Picture: Stuart McEvoy

Restoring our trade relationship with China isn’t worth compromising our national sovereignty and ignoring China’s gross human rights abuses, thievery of intellectual property and global aggression. Giving in to its bullying tactics will only see further bullying.

What the state government, together with the federal government, should be doing to boost economic activity is to gradually re-open our borders to overseas students, an arrangement that will not be impacted by the scrapping of the Belt and Road deal.

The international education sector has been decimated by Australia’s border closures but as long as every arrival completes compulsory quarantine, at their own expense, there’s no logical reason why students can’t return.

Education is Victoria’s biggest export, contributing $13.7bn in revenue last year. Before the pandemic hit we had around 615,000 international students enrolled in Australia, with more than 300,000 of them in Victoria. It is not only the education sector that is affected by a drop in numbers but also housing, hospitality and retail.

The sector, like many others, has become overly reliant on China and universities should work harder in attracting students from a diverse range of countries in Asia as well as other parts of the world.

Australia needs to consciously uncouple from China. We have become too dependent on a relationship that has been profitable in the short term but left us exposed on a number of fronts.

Rita Panahi is a Herald Sun columnist

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