Dan Andrews has currency of government for the CCP

It is easy to dispel any fantasy that Daniel Andrews attended Beijing’s parade of despots on Wednesday as a private business figure and not a political connection. He was an ex-state premier alongside former prime ministers Sir John Key and Helen Clark from New Zealand, posing with a roll call of the world’s most ruthless dictators. They were there shaking hands with Xi Jinping and being photographed with Russia’s Vladimir Putin and North Korea’s Kim Jong-un to provide a fig leaf of Western support for the Chinese Communist Party’s big military parade. They were invited because real politicians from liberal democracies knew better than to attend.

Anthony Albanese put things straight on Thursday when he said: “My position is very, very clear. Which is we did not send any government representative because it would not have been appropriate,” he said. “None of my people would have sat in that position, as simple as that.”

To further dispel any doubts about Mr Andrews’ capacity in the eyes of Beijing, there were no business leaders in the group photograph. There is a long list of well-known business leaders who do more business with Beijing than Mr Andrews. But China is a communist state where party political patronage has a superior currency of its own. And Mr Andrews has shown he is more than willing to use it.

There is nothing intrinsically wrong with former politicians going into business. But it is important to assess the messages that are sent by association, and how they align with our national values and policies. This is why former politicians have been required to give details of their meetings with organisations linked to foreign governments. In July 2022, former prime minister Kevin Rudd was required to register under the foreign influence transparency scheme that he had been invited to address the Global Think Tank Summit hosted by the China Centre for International Economic Exchanges on the topic of international co-operation to avoid war and address global challenges. Mr Andrews also met with the CCIEE, whose offices are located a few hundred metres from Zhongnanhai, the Communist Party seat of power and China’s equivalent to the White House in the US or the Kremlin in Russia.

Mr Andrews has been a guest of at least one forum that puts him at odds with the position of Australia and our allies on the issue that, along with Taiwan, is most sensitive to Beijing – the South China Sea. Mr Andrews was lauded by the National Institute for South China Sea Studies, a think tank dedicated to prosecuting the “fundamental fact” that the Chinese people have always been the rightful owners of the South China Sea Islands.

It says the post-World War II international order established the basis for China’s recovery of the South China Sea Islands and resumption of sovereignty over them. “As we mark the 80th anniversary of the victory in WWII, it is highly relevant now to reaffirm this truth,” Wu Shicun, chairman of the Academic Committee at the NISCSS, wrote in July.

From published reports of his exchanges, Mr Andrews is acting as a conduit for the state of Victoria and a willing Premier in Jacinta Allan, who is planning her own delegation to Beijing in coming days.

Both argue that good relations are good for business but international relations are the business of the commonwealth and Victoria has a proven history of overstepping the mark. This includes its willingness to sign up to Beijing’s Belt and Road initiative, which has been used to expand CCP influence through debt-trap diplomacy.

Mr Andrews was pulled into line by the commonwealth on that occasion. In his new career he has done everyone a service by exposing his willingness to sit with the ranks of the world’s truly awful dictators.