Liberal senator Concetta Fierravanti-Wells says slams Marise Payne’s ‘lack of action’ over China

Concetta Fierravanti-Wells says it is ‘regrettable’ that Foreign Minister Marise Payne is not doing enough to counter the influence of China.

Liberal senator Concetta Fierravanti-Wells. Picture: Kym Smith

Former international development minister Concetta Fierravanti-Wells says it is “regrettable” that Foreign Minister Marise Payne is not doing enough to counter the influence of China.

The Liberal senator, who had previously criticised the Morrison government’s position on China, said the Thousand Talents plan was “only one of the many insidious ways that Beijing loyalists have infiltrated our society and most especially the university sector”.

“The seeds of this predicament were sown over years of ‘appeasement’ of the communist regime so long as the ‘rivers of gold’ continued to flow,” Senator Fierravanti-Wells told The Australian.

“The Australian public expects that it will no longer be ‘business as usual’ with the communist ­regime. This will require a great deal of political fortitude. Regrettably, Marise Payne’s comments in Washington on 29 July that ‘the relationship that we have with China is important, and we have no intention of injuring it’ demonstrates we have a long way to go.”

Senator Payne made those comments at a high-level diplomatic meeting in Washington DC alongside US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. While Australia and the US signed a secret military co-operation framework, Senator Payne resisted US pressure to join freedom of navigation operations in the South China Sea within 12 nautical miles of disputed Chinese-claimed features.

Senator Fierravanti-Wells is backing calls from her colleagues, including Liberal MPs Andrew Hastie and Tim Wilson, for a parliamentary inquiry into the Thousand Talents plan and similar recruitment programs run by Chinese government bodies.