Talk of a “deep state” might seem all conspiratorial and tinfoil-hatty, but it’s harder and harder to deny that there is a massive, unelected technocracy, even in Australia. Regardless of changing governments, this technocracy increasingly seems to see itself as the real ruling party. Rather than answering to the minister in charge (indeed, the incumbent Minister for the Public Service is none other than the prime minister), too many of the public service seem to regard it as their role to keep the minister as far from decision-making as possible.
Above all, the public service is supposed to be apolitical. Yet it seems that tacit political activists are increasingly white-anting elected governments. For instance, it was revealed last year that the activist behind the spate of vegan attacks on family farms was backed by his mother, a high-ranking official in the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade.
Pro-China apparatchiks are even more active. Despite government policies clamping down on asset buying by CCP-connected companies, the bureaucrats at the Foreign Investment Review Board just keep on merrily rubber-stamping.
Worse, when CCP-connected companies pillaged Australia’s desperately-needed medical supplies, Austrade bureaucrats sang their praises.
Australia’s trade promotion body is conducting an audit of its website after it praised organisations with Chinese Communist Party links for sending tonnes of medical supplies to China as the Morrison government scrambled to prepare for the pandemic here.
Chinese-language content posted on Austrade’s website, dated March 4, lauded efforts of a raft of local Chinese organisations for supporting Beijing’s fight against the pandemic by sending medical supplies back to China.
“Since the outbreak of the new coronavirus, the Australian government and corporate groups have been actively devoting their love and have extended their helping hands to jointly fight the outbreak,” the Australian government website said. It said Australian overseas Chinese organisations had made “concerted efforts” to donate funds and “cheer China on with actions”.
Less than a month later, Scott Morrison declared “it’s important we crack down on this”, and announced new laws banning the export of medical equipment needed for our own coronavirus fight.
But the content praising groups with known links to the CCP’s United Front Work Department, which directs foreign-influence activities by overseas Chinese, remained on Austrade’s website until Tuesday afternoon, when The Australian alerted Trade Minister Simon Birmingham.
This is lauded as “spontaneous” philanthropy (and for the many local Chinese-Australian citizens who privately donated items, that’s no doubt true) but the reality is that it the initiative was entirely at the direction of Beijing – right as the regime was still keeping the rest of the world in the dark over the looming pandemic.
One of the organisations lauded was the Australia China Business Summit, run by Sydney man Yang Dongdong, a former associate of now-retired Liberal MP Craig Laundy who previously admitted to being part of the “United Front system”.
It said the group “purchased a variety of medical supplies for domestic shipment”, and convinced several Australian medical supply companies “to donate medical oxygen generators and breathing equipment”.
It singled out the Soong Ching Ling Foundation, a United Front organisation with branches around the world, and the Hunan Oceania Chamber of Commerce, headed by Chen Yadong.
Austrade is now trying to cover its arse, claiming the article “was posted without adequate supervision or editorial oversight”. Austrade says it is also investigating how it got posted in the first place, which is indeed the pertinent question.
Charles Sturt University academic Clive Hamilton, a prolific writer on CCP influence in Australia, told The Australian the website content “shows the tremendous naivety” of trade officials.
“Most of these organisations are demonstrably United Front organisations with direct links to the Chinese Communist Party,” he told The Australian[…]
Professor Hamilton said overseas Chinese organisations had not, of their own accord, flooded China with donations of medical equipment in February.
“Information has emerged from around the world, and from Canada in particular, that instructions came from China to these United Front groups,” he said. “It was organised without regard for the interests of other countries.”
Beijing’s bullying reaction to Australian calls for an international investigation into the Xi Plague reveal its true nature. Despite the high-falutin’ rhetoric of the Belt and Road Initiative, China regards everyone else as mere vassal-states to the Chinese empire.
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