Charles Wooley: Australia and China may never agree
Our strained relationship with the CCP might go better if we agree to embrace the notion of “vive la difference” - it mightn’t always stop the arguments but at least both nations would have a clearer understanding of why we might disagree forever, argues Charles Wooley.
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WHEN Wong met Wang, it was hardly the traditional Yin and Yang.
In ancient Chinese philosophy opposites can attract and interconnect. Contrary forces can actually become harmoniously linked.
In the Australia-China relationship any such harmony between governments seems unlikely, in the short term at least, in the wake of our Foreign Minister Penny Wong’s meeting with their Foreign Minister Wang Yi.
Wong ascending the blank face of the Chinese Communist Party’s diplomatic mountain, to hear Wang’s commandments, reminded me of a wonderful joke about Moses when he was in a similar situation.
The old Jewish prophet was on Mt Sinai getting the drum on the Commandments from God. It took the usual forty days and forty nights and was such a slow arbitration, the children of Israel were becoming restive.
When Moses eventually descends with a heavy armful of stone tablets, he delivers the outcome of his negotiations.
“Well, I have some good news and some bad news,” he tells the crowd.
“The good news is that I got him down from twenty to ten.”
The mob cheers but Moses soon silences them.
“But the bad news is, adultery is still in.”
Wong met Wang in Bali last Friday, for a similar outcome.
Australia’s relationship with the US is seen by the CCP as adulterous and is foremost in the Chinese government’s list of Thou Shalt Nots.
God was much clearer on Mt Sinai than was Mr Wang in Bali. The Chinese Foreign Minister made four somewhat abstruse demands of Australia.
First that we break off our relationship with you know who, which was obliquely expressed as “not targeting any third party or being controlled by any third party”.
We should also be “regarding China as a partner rather than a rival,” and concentrate on “building positive and pragmatic social foundations.”
Wang also called for Australia to “seek common ground while reserving differences,” which our government has interpreted as never mentioning Taiwan, the South China Sea, Hong Kong, the Uighurs and just about everything else you can think of that is worrying the world about China.
In their dying days of government, the Libs warned that Albo would be “a soft touch for the CCP”, but this week that threat turned out to be wrong.
When Penny Wong descended from the diplomatic mists the PM took one look at the four commandments and promptly rejected them.
“Australia doesn’t respond to demands,” he announced.
“We will co-operate with China where we can … I want to build good relationships with all countries, but we will stand up for Australia’s interests when we must.”
He was clear but hardly jingoistic.
How could he be?
We are a resources giant but also a military midget.
So, there’s no point in sabre-rattling when China last month launched its third aircraft carrier, no doubt built from Australian raw materials.
We might take some ease from the fact that Mr Wang made only four demands, wide-ranging though they might seem.
In November last year a Canberra Chinese Embassy official, oddly chose to issue a Channel 9 news reporter with an official list of no less than fourteen “grievances” with Australia.
It was quite a Chinese banquet and unfortunately the dishes were all inedible.
Those “grievances” haven’t yet been publicly rescinded and range from concerns about prohibiting CCP controlled communications technology like Huawei, foreign investment legislation in general, as well as foreign interference legislation.
The CCP demanded an end to “wanton (not a misspelling of the dumpling) interference in China’s Xinjiang, Hong Kong and Taiwan affairs” and a cessation of “unfriendly reports on China by the media.”
In short, the demands were quite unrealistic and showed an alarming lack of knowledge about how a democratic country actually functions and sometimes malfunctions.
I’m sure there are times when our elected governments would love to have control of the media but clearly, they don’t.
Here’s the thing. Our billionaire mining tycoons and white goods sellers seem to have an amiable and extremely profitable relationship with the CCP. So why not the rest of us?
I grew up thinking capitalists and communists were natural enemies, but clearly not so. Our richest capitalists last year sold the Chinese communists approximately $170bn worth of exports. Others in the rich list imported about $108bn of Chinese goods which they on sold to Australians at huge profit.
If those, perhaps not such unlikely bed fellows can get along so well backstage and behind the political scenery (even while the two nations’ trade ministers weren’t talking) then perhaps there must still be some hope for Australia’s national relationship with China.
There will have to be a lot of compromise, but could we just agree with the CCP to mutually respect the one enormous political difference which separates both our nations?
Could we sign off on this simple understanding?
That just as much as China values the power and control of authoritarian central government so too does Australia value the often-chaotic inefficiency of democratic freedom.
While this might make no sense in a firmly commanded and well-run country like China it might be just what Mr Wang ordered in “seeking common good while reserving differences”.
“Reserving the differences,” would make things a lot clearer for both parties than the sometimes-obscure lists of grievances and demands.
A lightly humorous note of “vive la difference” in the strained relationship wouldn’t always stop the arguments, but at least both nations would have a clearer understanding of why we might forever disagree.
It’s not personal. It’s just inherent.
Please take pity on us mere mortals, Mr bankers
Forget the rhyming slang. I know you are not feeling well-disposed towards any bankers, least of all Reserve Bank of Australia board members. But to be fair they all seem highly qualified and like their Governor Philip Lowe, they appear to be the most serious of fiscal stick insects.
Traditionally, after a three-and-a-half hour meeting, they all have lunch in-house at the RBA headquarters in Sydney’s Martin Place.
As much as you would love to catch them out, I really doubt they light up Cuban cigars, get on the Grange and toast that the average Australian mortgage of $500,000 (if not locked in) has just gone up another $137 per month.
And probably will do so again next month.
We shouldn’t take it personally. It is just business.
The majority of those 11 RBA board members are practitioners of the darkest of arts (economics) and the apparently careless cruelty they inflict on us makes good sense to them, if not to the average person.
They are mostly well-heeled, drawn from industry, banking and the higher echelons of the public service. Their chairman, Philip Lowe is paid more than $1m a year.
Because none of them live on Struggle Street (nor did the former radio shock-jock Alan Jones who coined that term) mere mortals might be tempted to perceive some kind of banker’s casual indifference to general suffering.
You might even suspect that in privacy they are an “unreserved bank” with their secluded but hilarious deliberations on the first Tuesday of each month going something like this:
“I say, I hear that the people are spending $10 on an iceberg lettuce.”
“Well, how ridiculous. That is the very kind of profligate and irresponsible spending that causes inflation.
“The public must be taught a lesson. How much should we increase the cash rate?
“Twenty-five points.
“Forty points.
“Don’t be such wusses. Lettuce go higher.
“Ha. How about fifty basis points?
“Yes. That will give ‘em cos to know we are serious about such overindulgence in salad.”
(They clink glasses, spilling their ’86 Grange Hermitage while laughing uproariously)
OK, probably this week’s RBA meeting didn’t go at all like that. We just felt it did.
Perhaps because we are not economists, we fail to see how gas prices can reasonably go through the roof when we are the world’s top exporter of liquefied natural gas. Nor how the price of bread goes up because of the war in Ukraine, when we are one of the biggest exporters of grain.
As for lettuce, don’t we have winter greenhouses in Tasmania?
Australians feel like they are being gamed on these price rises, especially energy costs. Even before Wednesday’s interest hike, 62 per cent of people polled did not support the RBA strategy. There is a feeling vast inflationary profits are being extorted and rising interest rates can only mean it’s the ordinary punter who is paying the price.
Occasionally the RBA meets outside of Sydney, in other capitals. I am not aware they have ventured further south than Melbourne, but we do have a Tasmanian on the board.
Her name is Alison Watkins, and since June 2021 she has been Chancellor of the University of Tasmania, which for some time now has been deflating its staff numbers and course options, while inflating the prices of commercial real estate in the Hobart CBD.
Still, it is good to see a Tasmanian on the board of the RBA even if they seem bent on making life tougher for most of us.
When Chancellor Watkins was first appointed, I heard an interview on radio in which I thought she said, “I am a Fahan Girl.”
A strange qualification for an economic mandarin to boast about, or so I misheard.
When I checked, Alison Watkins was actually telling us she was “A farm girl.” Apparently, she grew up on a Tassie farm.
So much the better. She knows the proper price of eggs. And bread. And lettuce.
And might eventually even take pity on us.
MEANWHILE PM ALBO has been flying high.
His frequent flyer cards must now have achieved Lifetime Platinum Status. In the six weeks since being swept into power Prime Minister Albanese has travelled extensively to Asia and Europe. And next week, he will go to Fiji to attend to Pacific relationships.
Unaccustomed to defeat, the Liberals are outraged, but they are always sore losers.
This week in their angry flailing around they attacked Albo for spending too much time overseas.
Would they have us assume our relationships with NATO, France and the EC, our solidarity with Ukraine and attending next week’s Pacific Island Forum are not important?
It really is sheer silliness and it’s not just on the foreign policy front. The Liberals haven’t quite pulled a Trump and claimed electoral fraud, but they’ve done the next best thing.
Peter Dutton has already forgotten why his side lost.
From day 1 as opposition leader, he has attributed every national failing, after a decade of Liberal management, to the newly installed Labor government.
Now, I’m a great believer in oppositions going hard. In Tasmania we know too well that government is never improved by weak opposition. But I’m not going to take a tip from Dutton and say that our Liberal government’s failings in Tasmania are entirely the fault of Labor. Though by not providing a functioning opposition Labor has contributed to the malaise.
With some of the best of Liberal ranks now gone (including former treasurer Josh Frydenberg) and with talented moderates like Simon Birmingham out of favour, expect to hear more silliness from the lightweight Liberal Right. Like Dan Tehan, who attacked Albo for travelling this week.
Dan reckoned, “I think what we’ve got to see is less focus on the international.”
The former trade minister must have done a bit of travel in the past but now he’s a born-again homebody. He concedes foreign policy has a place, “But you’ve got to be able to walk and chew gum at the same time,” Dan astutely declared.
It may have been just a thought-bubble-gum, but the conservative media enthusiastically chewed on it, asking the briefly returned PM whether he shouldn’t have been attending to the floods.
You will note Albo must have drawn on ScoMo’s infamous Hawaiian holiday blunder. Wisely the new PM did not say,
“Mate I don’t hold the mop.”
MEANWHILE MY CARBON footprint has diminished enormously over the past two years. I’m half-expecting a certificate of commendation from the Bob Brown Foundation.
For more than 30 years my life was like Albo’s past six weeks. After Covid I was grounded, but now down to earth for so long, I don’t miss it.
Flying to Svalbard in the Arctic Circle to report on melting ice, in retrospect now seems highly satirical.
Midweek I received a “Dear John” from the nice folk at Virgin Australia. “With your flying activity over the past 12 months being a little less” (nothing in fact) “you haven’t earned enough Status Credits to maintain Platinum membership. However, you can still enjoy a truly rewarding travel experience as a highly valued Gold Velocity member.”
No Platinum travelling. Is your life unravelling?
Hardly. As I just said, I don’t miss it at all.
Show me Platinum Frequent Flyer cardholders and I will show you people whose children hardly know them and whose dog bites them late at night as they sneak in the door.
Albo has a dog called Toto. “I’m not in Ukraine any more Toto,” I can hear the PM telling the First Dog, when he dropped in at home this week.
Dogs hate you leaving home. They know you are going even before you’ve packed your flak jacket or your hula shirt.
So, advice to the PM: Don’t stretch the best-friendship. Take Dan Tehan’s gratuitous advice and stay home.
Or do a Johnny Depp and take Toto with you.
Look at me. I’ve had Dusty for two years and he has never bitten me.
But come to think of it, I haven’t heard from the kids for a while.
Charles Wooley is a journalist, writer, TV personality and a former reporter with the Channel 9 program 60 Minutes.
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