Coronavirus: bipartisan demand for truth on Wuhan

China under pressure from Australia on the origins of the coronavirus and how it was allowed to spread.

Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton has declared China owed it to the families of coronavirus victims to explain what happened in a bid to ensure the pandemic was never repeated. Picture: AFP

Australia’s major political parties have demanded transparency from China on the origins of the coronavirus and how it was allowed to spread, as pressure mounts on the authoritarian state to reveal what it knew about the disease before it became a pandemic.

The show of bipartisanship from senior Coalition and Labor MPs came as Trade Minister Simon Birmingham warned Australian businesses “to not have all your eggs in one basket”, amid expectations governments and companies will have to diversify their trading partners in a post-coronavirus world.

Former foreign minister Julie Bishop said diversification beyond China and a greater focus on domestic supply chains could change the global balance of power and the composition of many countries’ economies, while Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton anticipated the world would “reset” interactions with Beijing.

Mr Dutton declared China owed it to the families of coronavirus victims to explain what happened in a bid to ensure the pandemic was never repeated.

There is strong evidence the disease originated at a wet market in the Chinese city of Wuhan.

“We’ve got over 60 Australians who have died. People say that’s a low number, every one of those cases involves a tragedy of somebody very close to you being lost,” Mr Dutton told Nine’s Today show. “Look at the loss overseas. All of those families would demand answers and transparency and I don’t think it’s too much to ask. It would certainly be demanded of us if Australia was at the epicentre of this virus making its way into society.

“It is incumbent upon China to answer those questions and provide the information, so that people can have clarity about exactly what happened because we don’t want it to be repeated.”

Anthony Albanese said there was less democracy and transparency in China’s one-party system but there needed to be openness “about all the events” that led to the pandemic. “China needs to be transparent … because the world needs to know not just what happened as a matter of record, but … so it can be avoided, this happening ever again,” the Opposition Leader said.

As countries like Japan look at building their economies so they are less dependent on China, Senator Birmingham insisted Australia was not reliant on any one nation but the coronavirus had acted as a wake-up call to business.

“It’s proven, wherever the choice exists, to not have all your eggs in one basket,” he told The Weekend Australian.

“Individual businesses have to make their decisions about how they manage risk versus reward.

“Yes, individual businesses may have a greater reliance on a customer base in one country over another but Australia remains a diversified economy, our manufacturing sector has shown its ability to be able to respond and scale up in response to this crisis.”

While the UK’s acting prime minister, Dominic Raab, said there could not be “business as usual” with China after the pandemic, Scott Morrison said Australia already had an “eyes-wide-open relationship” with its largest trading partner. He said foreign interference laws and banning China from participating in building the 5G network showed Australia had been vigilant.

Swinburne University of Technology China specialist John Fitzgerald said there would likely be increased economic diversification in Australia that had been under way before COVID-19 hit.

“What corona has done is compel Australians to think a little more seriously not around decoupling (from China) but around national resilience, those key areas of manufacturing related to health and national defence, which we were not so greatly concerned about before corona,” he said.

“I doubt very much that Australia will join with the US in trying to decouple from China because our economies are complimentary, not mutually competitive.”

Former Labor foreign minister Bob Carr said a strong trading relationship with China was essential to ensure Australia’s economy began recovering. “There is precisely no scenario in which the Australian economy pulls out of a recession and our budget gets back to surplus without China,” he said.