Julie Bishop raps minister for China spray

Julie Bishop has refused to endorse her international development minister’s criticisms of China.

Foreign Affairs Minister Julie Bishop. Picture: AAP

Julie Bishop has slapped down her International Development Minister, refusing to endorse Concetta Fierravanti-Wells’s criticisms of China amid concern within the government over the tensions they have created with Beijing.

The Foreign Minister’s move comes after China lodged a formal diplomatic protest, the country’s official newswire labelled ­Can­berra an “arrogant overlord” in the Pacific and experts warned that Australian diplomats would be now in damage control, trying to mend relations.

The rebuke was in response to an interview with The Australian in which Senator Fierravanti-Wells accused China of lending funds to Pacific nations on unfavourable terms, constructing “useless buildings” and “duchessing” local politicians.

A government source said while Canberra was concerned about international development projects in the region, it did not want to be seen as directly criticising China’s aid program, and the minister’s comments were out of step with the government’s ­approach.

In response to questions from The Australian, Ms Bishop declined to repeat her colleague’s remarks, simply saying Australia did not support development projects that placed “onerous debt burdens” on developing nations.

“The Australian government welcomes investment in developing nations in the Pacific that supports sustainable economic growth, and which does not impose onerous debt burdens on ­regional governments,” she said.

Asked whether she agreed with Senator Fierravanti-Wells’s criticisms, Ms Bishop said: “Australia works with a wide range of development partners, including China, in pursuit of the goal of eliminating poverty in our region and globally.”

Australia has been branded in Beijing “the daring vanguard of anti-China forces” in the Chinese edition of the nationalistic Global Times. And in a commentary piece ­published online late on Wednesday night, an Australian correspondent for Xinhua accused Canberra of ­arrogance.

“If Australia really cares about its Pacific neighbours, it should first learn from China to treat those much smaller neighbours as equals and refrain from behaving like an arrogant overlord,” wrote Xu Haijing.

“The Australian government’s ‘default policy’ for all issues is to blame China.”

Cabinet minister Josh Frydenberg was asked yesterday whether Senator Fierravanti-Wells’s views reflected the government’s position. He replied by saying she was the minister responsible for the Pacific region, working closely with Ms Bishop. Mr Frydenberg added that there needed to be a focus on “sustainable debt management and infrastructure investments”.

“Now she’s also made very clear that Australia works closely with China in the region,” Mr Frydenberg said.

Late last year, the federal government was prepared to take flak from Beijing over the introduction of foreign-interference laws and the Coalition’s political attack on former Labor senator Sam Dastyari, which ignited a ­diplomatic storm. Malcolm Turnbull responded to Beijing’s fury, declaring that Australia had “stood up” to China’s meddling.

Graeme Smith, from the Australian National University’s Department of Pacific Affairs, said there were problematic projects in the region. He said the Pacific Marine Industrial Zone in Papua New Guinea, built with a $US156 million loan from the Exim Bank of China, was a particularly poor financial deal for the Pacific nation.

“China has been trying to improve its aid program, because no one is more aware of what a waste of money it is,” Dr Smith said.

He said most of the projects that were white elephants were reverse engineered by Chinese companies and Pacific politicians.

“China is doing its best to rein in the worst of these, but the difficulty is that they lack the diplomatic or aid personnel to provide any oversight, both during the sel­ection and the implementation phases of aid projects,” he said.

He added that the minister’s comment would have exacerbated tensions with Beijing.

Peking University professor of international studies Zha ­Dao­jiong said he would be surprised if someone said every Australian aid project turned out to be “totally blemish-free”.

“My suspicion is the Australian government would prefer not to see aid projects from China in the South Pacific, period,” he said

“Projects viewed as white elephants are part of the reality on the ground. The main culprit behind this is the companies and sub-­contractors, which understandably benefit from the size of the budgets involved.”

He said Western governments began, as a result, to turn away from project aid to sectoral aid and that China’s foreign aid projects today were roughly what Western aid projects to China were in the 1970s and 80s.

Development Policy Centre director Stephen Howes said Australia’s aid program had also funded problematic projects, a point repeated by Dan McGarry of the Vanuatu Daily Post in an opinion piece published yesterday.

Professor Howes said the efficacy varied across Pacific nations, with projects in Samoa and Cook Islands more effective than those in Vanuatu and Tonga.

“The main determinant of foreign aid was not the country giving the aid but the quality of recipient government,” he said.

Labor Treasury spokesman Chris Bowen accused the government of “megaphone diplomacy” and of mismanaging relations with China. “Minister Fierravanti-Wells needs to take a good look at herself but the government needs to take a good look at themselves in terms of its management of the bilateral relationship with our largest trading partner”.