Julie Bishop denies rift with Barack Obama over China bank

JULIE Bishop has denied a rift with Barack Obama over Australia’s potential involvement with the China-led infrastructure bank.

Foreign Affairs Minister Julie Bishop after talking to the media at Parliament House in Canberra.

JULIE Bishop has denied a rift with President Barack Obama over Australia’s potential involvement with the $50 billion China-led infrastructure bank, saying talks with Beijing are proving “very constructive” and “very cooperative”.

The Australian this morning revealed the federal government is close to reversing its opposition on strat­egic grounds to Australia joining the Asia Infrastructure Investment Bank, with Tony Abbott having reassessed his ­earlier worries.

Treasurer Joe Hockey strongly advocated joining the bank late last year, but was outgunned at a cabinet National Security Committee meeting that saw the Foreign Minister carry the day with strategic arguments about China and against our involvem­ent that reinforced US concerns.

The Prime Minister is now seized by the regional potential of the bank, more confident that China will pledge to a genuine multilateral institution and aware that Australia must be a proactive participant in Asian infrastructure decisions.

Abbott switch on China bank

Mr Abbott has become distinctly less impressed with warnings from the US president’s administration about the potential dangers of excessive accommodation of China.

Asked if the government’s willingness to consider joining signalled a substandard relationship with the Obama administration, Ms Bishop told ABC Radio: “Not at all, we’ve always been considering this.”

“Currently under the arrangements China would have a shareholding of around 49 or 50 per cent. Any other equivalents multilateral organisation would have a shareholding of up to say 20 per cent for the major shareholder.

“I argued very strongly that we had to put in place certain requirements before we would consider entering into it and we are continuing to discuss those issues with China in a very constructive way, a very cooperative way.”

“It’s not a question of changing our mind. We set out a number of requirements that we would want to see and a number of changes we would want to see before Australia would consider it to be in our national interest to join it.

“We continue to inform the United States of what we’re doing and I’d like to see the United States involved in the discussions as well.”