Penny Wong shows admirable backbone in refusing to be cowed

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and Foreign Minister Penny Wong welcome Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi to Parliament House. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Martin Ollman

The Chinese government, this time in the person of Foreign Minister Wang Yi, is working hard to manage the Australian government and Australian politics. It is having considerable success.

But it’s not all going Beijing’s way. The default style of Beijing ­diplomacy is bullying – a diplomatic style trait they share with Donald Trump and Paul Keating, by the way – and it’s fortunate for Australia that the person they choose most to bully is Foreign Minister Penny Wong.

For Wong is surely the toughest and most capable of the ­Albanese government’s cabinet ministers.

She made this clear on Wednesday by three times reiterating exactly what Canberra objects to in Beijing’s contemporary behaviour. Explicitly, she repeated to Wang that Australians were “shocked” at the death sentence imposed on Australian citizen Dr Yang Jun. She raised human rights in Tibet, Xinjiang and Hong Kong. She said Australia wanted peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait. She emphasised the need for the South China Sea to be “governed by international law, particularly the UN Convention on the Law of Sea”. (Beijing doesn’t recognise UNCLOS jurisdiction.)

She called for the removal of Beijing’s remaining trade barriers against Australia and called out Chinese manipulation of the international nickel market.

This makes Wong’s performance – in public in the company of the Chinese Foreign Minister, in private in her meetings with him, and in her press conference – the strongest we’ve seen from any minister in the Albanese government for a long time.

Wang Yi addresses a bipartisan meeting on Wednesday. Picture: AFP

The Albanese government has grown increasingly timid in actually disagreeing with Beijing, instead reflexively resorting to its vague formula that it would disagree when it must, without actually doing so.

What will be the effect of Wong’s words? On Beijing’s actions, they’ll have no effect at all. But they’re the opposite of useless. For in forming Beijing’s view of Wong, and of the Albanese government, this willingness to make the public case against Beijing’s behaviour will be very important.

Australia, as Wong says, it turns out is still Australia.

Her frankness in Canberra contrasts with the strange speech she made at ASEAN, which had a substantial section on Beijing’s maritime aggression but didn’t mention China by name.

Even this was too much for Keating, who went into one of his characteristic personal attacks on Wong for failing to show his level of public reverence for Beijing.

The Albanese government makes a tremendous mistake in not answering Keating. It means the government’s position is under attack but not defended. My guess is that this is not only a misjudgment but cowardice.

Luckily, Wong is the least cowardly of our cabinet ministers. Wang deliberately chose to insult and humiliate Wong and the Albanese government by holding a special meeting with Keating. Every time Keating attacks Albanese and Wong, especially when the ­attack is personal and vituper­ative, he is praised in the Chinese nationalist media as a source of wisdom and insight.

Beijing has made the defeat of the AUKUS agreement a key objective of its regional diplomacy. Keating is the most abusive critic of AUKUS in Australia. Therefore he is useful to Beijing in dividing Australia and weakening the Labor government.

Similarly, the Chinese embassy made sure another opponent of AUKUS, Hugh White, was one of only two academics invited to lunch with Wang.

Successful nations with self-­respect stand up to bullies. Don’t needlessly provoke, but don’t give in. We shouldn’t give in to Donald Trump’s bullying over Kevin Rudd, who is doing a perfectly fine job in Washington. It’s good to see Wong refusing to be bullied by the Chinese government.

Would that such backbone were more common in the Albanese government.