Tom Minear: Fine line to tread over China trade
It is troubling that Victorian Treasurer Tim Pallas’s reaction is to blame the Morrison Government for China’s bullying trade tariffs when he should be calling for more respect from China instead of for China, writes Tom Minear.
Opinion
Don't miss out on the headlines from Opinion. Followed categories will be added to My News.
When Scott Morrison took the nation’s top job, some of his colleagues didn’t think he’d want to spend much time on the world stage. They thought he was more interested in domestic issues than global affairs. Now, they are impressed — if not a little surprised — at Morrison’s effectiveness in wheeling and dealing internationally.
Last year, he rallied the G20 to crack down on terror content hosted on social media. The World Health Assembly’s endorsement of an independent coronavirus inquiry this week was an even more significant victory for Australia’s strategic middle power diplomacy.
Foreign Affairs Minister Marise Payne put it on the global agenda last month, and she and Morrison worked behind the scenes to establish international support.
Morrison’s argument for the probe was largely based on common sense. The world needs to know how this crisis started, and what efforts were made to stop it, so a repeat can be prevented.
Morrison has carefully avoided singling out China, despite evidence suggesting Communist Party chiefs sought to cover up COVID-19, a response that allowed it to morph into an unprecedented worldwide catastrophe.
“It’s not directed at any one country,” he said earlier this month. “If this had happened in Australia, well, I would expect inspectors to come here and look into it.”
Who could argue with that?
Well, China for a start. Beijing’s man in Canberra, ambassador Cheng Jingye, said that suggesting the inquiry was “dangerous” and threatened retaliation on Australian exports.
He wasn’t just sabre-rattling. Chinese authorities banned meat from four Australian abattoirs because of supposed labelling issues. This week, when Chinese President Xi Jinping was telling the World Health Assembly he would support the inquiry, China slapped an 80 per cent tariff on our barley.
The Morrison Government won’t concede publicly that Australia’s role in kickstarting the coronavirus inquiry is linked to the trade crackdown. Privately, they acknowledge it for what it is — bullyboy tactics designed to put us in our place. It’s hard to argue with that. Except if you’re Victorian Treasurer Tim Pallas.
Asked about the barley tariffs, he said it would not “come as a surprise to anybody that this was the consequence of the way that the Federal Government have conducted themselves”.
“I’m not a big fan of the way the Federal Government has managed the relationship with China,” Pallas added. He mounted a similar argument when asked about the meat restrictions, saying that was “inevitably a consequence of the use of language that I think has seemed to vilify China”.
Pallas is typically a straight shooter, but on this occasion, he missed the mark by the width of the South China Sea.
Apart from unhelpful contributions from the likes of George Christensen and Sarah Henderson, Morrison and his ministers have been diplomatic about the need for a COVID-19 inquiry, despite provocation from China and encouragement from parts of Australia’s media.
And you only have to look at China’s case for the tariffs — based on bizarre price benchmarks and tainted by factual errors and procedural failings — to realise it is a trumped-up political manoeuvre.
It is troubling that Pallas’s reaction was to blame the Morrison Government, instead of standing up for Victorian farmers caught in the crossfire, and to call for more respect for China instead of from China. His comments set off a political storm, both among Liberal MPs and some Labor MPs who are growing tired of Victoria weighing in on foreign policy.
This is not the first time the Andrews Government has decided it knows better than Canberra. Its decision to sign up to China’s Belt and Road infrastructure initiative has long been a source of concern.
While Victoria is right to seek Chinese infrastructure investment, critics fear the state is turning a blind eye to how China uses Belt and Road to wedge governments, gain a political foothold in other countries, develop strategic assets and even catch out cash-strapped leaders with debt-trap diplomacy.
Victoria needs a strong and sustainable relationship with China, and Premier Daniel Andrews and his team have done the legwork to make that happen.
But there has always been a sensitivity when those efforts are questioned.
The “Chairman Dan” nickname now doing the rounds seems a bit juvenile. That said, it’s tapping into how these concerns about Victoria’s dealings with China may slip into the political mainstream in a post-coronavirus world.
There is a fine line to tread with China. If Andrews and Pallas want to stay close to Beijing, they better convince Victorians they will always put their interests first.
For instance, Victoria’s Belt and Road deal promised “unimpeded trade”. How’s that looking now?
Tom Minear is national politics editor