Albany votes to review sister-city ties with China

The council will now investigate in the coming months whether its various sister city relationships still serve a purpose.

Albany mayor Dennis Wellington. Picture: Lee Griffith

The regional West Australia city of Albany has agreed to formally examine if and how it should end its various sister city relationships following a push from some councillors to sever its ties to China.

A motion brought by councillor Thomas Brough – first revealed by The Australian – to end Albany’s sister-city relationship with the Chinese city of Linyi was defeated 9-3 at a packed council meeting in Albany on Tuesday night but a compromise motion, calling for the city to review all its sister-city relationships and examine how to end those no longer deemed relevant, passed with unanimous support.

Dr Brough told The Australian he was “delighted” by the outcome. He said there were cries of “shame” from the public gallery when the council voted against his original motion, with the majority of the public in attendance expressing support to cut the ties to China.

Dr Brough said many of the councillors who voted against his motion had acknowledged either publicly or privately that the Linyi sister city relationship no longer had any merit, but that the connection needed to be ended in a more formal process.

“It’s dragged the issue into the spotlight, it’s made the public aware of it, the elected members are aware of it,” he said. “We’ve set the agenda and put the CCP on notice that we’re not going to be exploited or influenced.”

Albany’s five sister-city relationships include Gallipoli and the French town of Peronne, both of which – like Albany – have strong historic ties to World War I. Albany was the final point of departure from Australia for Anzac troops headed to the battlefields of Gallipoli and the Somme.

It also has ties to the Japanese cities of Tomioka and Nichinan.

Dr Brough said the Linyi sister-city relationship should be ended because of the risk it could expose Albany to influence and infiltration from the Chinese Communist Party.

He launched the motion after becoming concerned about matters raised by a Chinese diplomatic delegation when it visited the town earlier this year, and prepared a 5000-word dossier for the council documenting Chinese trade sanctions against Australia and alleged human rights violations linked to Linyi.

Albany mayor Dennis Wellington said the council had ­chosen a more “systematic and diplomatic” approach to reviewing all of its sister-city relationships. “We don’t have a process where you can actually withdraw from any of the sister cities. We’ve got five of them, and we should have a look at all of them to see if they have gone past their use-by date or not,” he said.

City of Albany staff will now prepare a report for council on each sister-city arrangement and will investigate just how to appropriately end those relationships if the council decides they are no longer needed.

Mr Wellington said while he personally believed the Gallipoli and Peronne relationships would survive, given the WWI links, the broader concept of sister cities was past its prime. “It’s a different dynamic these days and I don’t think they serve any real purpose unless you’ve got a specific reason for them,” he said.