Anthony Albanese has shifted ground again on his criticism of Scott Morrison’s handling of Sino-Australian relations and he’s entitled to do so as Opposition leader.
But he needs to be careful about the speed of his change and the basis for it.
Albanese also needs to refrain from rewriting history and to take a longer-term, cooler approach to his incursions into international relations.
He was wrong in using Kevin Rudd’s famous speech in Beijing in Mandarin on human rights as an example of the right way to criticise China’s actions and not be offensive.
While Albanese has maintained the general repugnance towards the Chinese Twitter fakery depicting an Australian soldier slitting the throat of an Afghan child his criticism of Morrison’s actions at this time will give Beijing encouragement.
Just as with his silly call for the Prime Minister to “contact Trump” and tell him to accept defeat, this shifting of focus from Beijing’s Twitter terror is a superficial act at the wrong time which will give China more grounds for propaganda.
In parliament on Monday Albanese condemned China’s outrageous slur and declared Labor wouldn’t ask questions on the issue.
On Wednesday he went on radio and dangerously conflated criticism of the Coalition with China’s reactions.
Albanese cited Prime Minister Rudd’s speech at Peking University while on an official visit to China addressed to university students, in Chinese and raised human rights issues in Tibet as not causing offence.
Wrong.
I was there. Rudd, who has maintained a close eye on Chinese affairs and correctly predicted the end of the US-China trade war as well as solidly backing Morrison’s stance on the latest outrage, did cause offence.
Rudd’s raising of human rights issues and Tibet publicly in a speech – delivered very well but with a Taiwanese accent – was considered megaphone diplomacy and an insult to the hosts.
Chinese media were ordered not to report the speech and it was the beginning of suspicion about Rudd in Beijing.
Albanese needs to be less simplistic in his international approach.
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