Victoria has gone too far down the socialist path

It is high time that Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews was held to account. Since winning office Andrews has ridden roughshod over almost everything and everyone in Victoria. He has taken the state down the socialist path with much help from a sympathetic leftist media, not to mention the inane support of social media trolls.

But with the China Belt and Road Initiative, Andrews has gone a bridge too far because there are serious international and domestic security concerns. He has displayed outrageous hubris in this saga and someone should tap him on the shoulder and tell him he is behaving dangerously.

Peter D. Surkitt, Sandringham, Vic

The Victorian Labor Party has entered the so-called Belt and Road Initiative agreement with the Chinese Communist Party. Some of the text of the agreement that has been released is full of flowery phrases, probably inserted at the request of Chinese negotiators. However, the reality on the ground is quite different.

China expert Clive Hamilton has described Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews entering into this agreement, as a naive boy scout dealing with a godfather. Andrews refuses to disclose the full details of this agreement. I wonder what was the offer the Chinese Communist Party put that couldn’t be refused?

Coke Tomyn, Camberwell, Vic

You would think that projecting a unified view of Australian values and beliefs internationally would be essential to our nationhood. Apparently not all of us feel this way. Han Yang (Letters, 23/5) feels that Victoria has every right to sign up to China’s BRI even though the federal government has not. He apparently thinks that because our federal government has not “publicly disparaged” the BRI, that in some way this means that it is acceptable for individual states to sign up.

I think most of us understand what the federal government’s view of the BRI is. Approval of foreign investment must be about the value and benefit for Australia. It should not be about another country’s ambitions.

Leigh Vinton, Balwyn, Vic

After showing himself to be inept in running the economy of Victoria, Daniel Andrews is now going to communist China for help. The Andrews government decimated jobs in Morwell and raised electricity prices by 80 per cent through the forced closure of the Hazelwood power station. This disaster has been exacerbated by his inequitable domestic solar energy subsidies which lower the electricity prices for some but raise prices for the majority of Victorians and leading to the closure of much manufacturing.

And his ban on gas exploration and development has led to the likelihood of Victoria having to import gas, going against the goal of greater independence and resilience.

Following these failures, Andrews is telling us that he is joining China’s Belt and Roads Initiative, against federal security advice, to create jobs for Victorians. This is a perfect template for Victoria becoming a victim of the CCP’s debt-trap diplomacy.

There is not much future for Australia when a maverick government of the nation’s second largest state is so irresponsible.

Ron Hobba, Camberwell, Vic

Under Stalin, an iron curtain was drawn across Europe, and the communists ruled all the countries to the east with an iron fist. When Mikhail Gorbachev took over the leadership, he took a softer line and allowed all the pent up hatred in those countries under Soviet domination to break free, with the tearing down of the Berlin Wall being the first step followed by all the countries in the east and, eventually, in Russia.

The Tiananmen Square massacre and the events leading up to it demonstrated there is resistance in the country that is suppressed by the hard line CCP. Once this hard line begins to fracture, the country could head off in a different direction. The intolerance of the CCP to the West could be a sign that there is concern within the party that Xi Jinping’s grip on power is under threat.

Raymond Watson,
Sunnybank Hills, Qld

As the Constitution in section 51 gives power over trade and commerce with other countries, foreign corporations and external affairs to the commonwealth, why hasn’t the federal government moved to have the Victorian government’s signing of the Belt and Road Initiative with China struck down as beyond its power?

Greg Baker, Mallanganee, NSW