Push to cut more Chinese accords

Marise Payne urged to tear up China’s agreements with universities and the NT government’s 99-year Port of Darwin lease.

Marise Payne in Wellington on Thursday. Picture: Getty Images

Foreign Minister Marise Payne is being urged to tear up China’s Confucius Institute agreements with universities and the Northern Territory government’s 99-year Port of Darwin lease with Chinese firm Landbridge under Australia’s new foreign arrangements scheme.

Senator Payne’s decision to terminate Victoria’s Belt and Road Initiative agreements with Beijing under the scheme, which came into effect late last year, has sparked calls for the Morrison government to move against other Chinese deals.

Australian Strategic Policy Institute executive director Peter Jennings, a former Defence Department deputy secretary, said the government should take “decisive steps” to end the 99-year lease of the Port of Darwin.

Writing for Inquirer, Mr Jennings said “high on the government’s list for consideration must surely be the dozen or so secret agreements bringing Confucius Institutes on to Australian university campuses”.

“The way these institutes function is surely an anathema to what should be a central university value for fiercely independent research,” Mr Jennings wrote.

“To sustain the funding flow from Confucius Institutes, universities run the risk that courses on Chinese history or international relations cannot discuss Taiwan, Tibet, Xinjiang, Hong Kong, the illegal annexation of the South China Sea, human rights and other topics discomforting to Beijing. It’s way past time the institutes were closed.”

Under the foreign arrangements scheme, Senator Payne has reviewed more than 1000 arrangements between foreign national governments and universities, local and state governments.

In addition to cancelling the BRI agreements on the grounds of working against the national interest, Senator Payne scrapped two other deals involving Iran and Syria.

Mr Jennings argued that ending the Port of Darwin lease would be “well received domestically, by our key allies and in the region, which looks to Australia to play a strengthening role in security during troubled times”.

Beijing reacted with fury during the week to the cancelling of its BRI agreements with Victoria. Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin said China reserved the “right to take further actions” against Australia.

He said it was the first time a BRI deal had been torn-up and that the Morrison government had stooped to “political manipulation and bullying”, urging Australia to abandon its “Cold War mentality and ideological bias”.

Defence Minister Peter Dutton on Friday said Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews had done the “wrong thing” in signing the BRI deals and pushed back against criticism from the Chinese Foreign Ministry and Embassy.

“He shouldn’t be entering into agreements that aren’t in our national interest and I want to make sure that people hear that message very clearly. We are standing up for who we are and we’ve got very important diplomatic relations with many countries, including China,” Mr Dutton said.

“But we aren’t going to be compromised by the principles of the Communist Party of China and the government’s made that very clear.”

Mr Dutton said China’s increasingly aggressive behaviour in the region was a “real problem”.

“When you look at our part of the world, you look at militarisation of bases, when you look at the cyber attacks, all of that is not the action of a friend,” he said.

Labor leader Anthony Albanese said the Opposition supported the government’s Foreign Relations bill but suggested a proper explanation was needed about why Victoria’s BRI deals were cancelled when nothing had happened on the Port of Darwin 99 year lease to Landbridge.