Albanese says trip by federal MPs to Taiwan is ‘not a government visit’

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has played down a visit to Taiwan by a bipartisan delegation of Australian politicians amid concern the trip will anger China after relations between the two countries have improved in recent months.

In the first visit by Australian MPs since 2019, the six federal MPs from the Coalition and Labor will fly out of Australia for Taiwan on Sunday.

Queensland Liberal National MP Scott Buchholz is among the MPs going on the trip.Credit: Alex Ellinghausen

The group will include former deputy prime minister Barnaby Joyce, Labor MPs Meryl Swanson and Libby Coker, Liberal National Party members Scott Buchholz and Terry Young, and Liberal Gavin Pearce.

China regards Taiwan as a renegade province and any attempt at diplomatic engagement with the island usually infuriates Beijing. A trip in August by US Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, resulted in threats of retaliation by Beijing and the Chinese military conducting live fire exercises around Taiwan.

The trip by the Australian MPs is not expected to be put in the same class as Pelosi’s visit given that she was second in line to the presidency under the American system.

Albanese on Saturday morning said there have been visits by backbench MPs for a “long period of time”.

“This is another one,” Albanese said at a press conference in South Australia.

“It isn’t a government visit; there remains a bipartisan position when it comes to China and when it comes to support for the status quo on Taiwan.”

Asked why the Australian MPs were going, Albanese said: “I have no idea. I’m not going. You should ask them.”

In 2018, Albanese visited the self-governing territory alongside three other Labor MPs, where they met Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen.

Anthony Albanese pictured visiting Taiwan in 2018, alongside Labor MPs Jacinta Collins, Kimberley Kitching and Milton Dick, meeting Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen.

Albanese last month met with Chinese President Xi Jinping in a significant breakthrough in relations after China imposed more than $20 billion of trade strikes on Australia during years of acrimony between the nations.

It is unclear how China will react to the visit after the recent diplomatic breakthroughs.

Justin Bassi, executive director of the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, said allowing longer gaps between visits to Taiwan sets a reverse precedent that becomes harder to break.

“Regular visits by politicians ensures they become routine, which they should be, instead of being seen as groundbreaking or beyond the norm,” he said.

“Beijing was able to portray the recent visit by then US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi as provocative in part because it had been more than 25 years since the last Speaker visited.“

Bassi said Australia’s strategic interests in engaging with Taiwan “range from economic prosperity through trade and shared democratic values, to the importance to our societies of critical technologies such as semiconductors, through to discussions on our First Nations people”.

Unlike the former Coalition government, the Albanese government has been able to engage directly at a ministerial level with Beijing. But there are no signs that the billions of dollars in trade sanctions have been formally lifted.

Chinese authorities are still holding Australian citizens Cheng Lei and Yang Hengjun in prison.

While Australian officials engage with the Taiwan government at an informal level, Canberra has repeatedly baulked at coming to formal agreements with Taipei such as a free trade deal.

Taiwan was last year Australia’s eighth-largest trading partner, putting it ahead of any single European country.

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