Wong defends China sensibilities

Penny Wong’s strange pro-China admonitions, claimed by a former Japanese ambassador and one of her former Labor colleagues, raise important questions about her attitude to the Chinese Communist Party and its regime. The alleged interactions were extraordinary, especially in view of her kid-glove treatment of Iranian ambassador Ahmad Sadeghi over his offensive social media posts earlier this year when he said he hoped the “Zionist plague” would be “wiped out of the holy lands of Palestine” by 2027. Instead of calling Mr Sadeghi in for a dressing down by the Foreign Minister, the Albanese government summoned him to the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade “as a protocol”.

That wet-lettuce rebuke contrasted sharply with Senator Wong’s reported behaviour, when she was still in opposition, in calling in former Japanese ambassador to Australia Shingo Yamagami in 2021 to caution him over his public criticism of China. In a new book published in Japan, Mr Yamagami claims that being cautioned by “a heavyweight MP of the Labor left” who was not even in government was “extraordinary and unacceptable”. He claims he was told to come to Senator Wong’s parliamentary office “promptly” because his “remarks were being used politically”. As he recalls in the book: “In a plain language, it was meant to be that since my remarks are so controversial that I must shut up my mouth. The choice of the word ‘caution’ smacked of lecturing.’’

A former head of Japanese intelligence, he was outspoken, quite reasonably, in urging a strong line from both Australia and Japan on containing Chinese aggression in the South China Sea and over trade sanctions.

And as former Labor MP Michael Danby told Dennis Shanahan, he too was called to Senator Wong’s office and given a “dressing down” in 2017 for a speech ­opposing an extradition treaty with China because it would “upset Beijing”. Would that matter?

Labor ultimately voted with the crossbench to sink the treaty, which had been proposed by then-Coalition foreign minister Julie Bishop. But Mr Danby said when he was called into Senator Wong’s office, he was reprimanded for a parliamentary speech in which he said all criminal prosecutions in China had a 99 per cent conviction rate and the proposed treaty posed a danger to one million Australians of Chinese ancestry.

Stabilising Australia’s relationship with China, especially over trade, is one of the Albanese government’s important achievements, although major tensions over strategic issues remain. But the recollections of Mr Yamagami and Mr Danby suggest Senator Wong’s regard for the CCP far exceeds that of most Australians. It will be legitimate to scrutinise her future dealings with Beijing in light of those and any future revelations.