In my recent posts, I have relentlessly excoriated the Ardern government for its Quisling stupidity regarding China. Lest BFD readers think I’m singling out New Zealand unfairly, I would point out that Australia has been there, too. Australia has learned the hard way from the same mistakes that New Zealand is making now: letting greed and willful blindness run its dealings with a Communist dictatorship.
True, not all Australians have got the memo. Too many in sub-national politics and business especially are all too happy to take the cash and pretend that China is a fair player.
But the federal government and a great deal of the Australian populations have had the scales painfully ripped from their eyes, in the wake of the Wuhan pandemic.
Opinion polls indicate that trust in China has plummeted since 2018. Three years ago, slightly less than half of Australians trusted China “to do the right thing regarding world affairs”, but many saw China as an economic opportunity. Polling last year showed that Australians overwhelmingly now want to economically decouple from China. Clear majorities now favour restricting Chinese government activity in Australia, including imposing travel and financial sanctions on officials.
The federal government has had the same attitudinal change brutally imposed on them. After years of rubber-stamping China’s buy-up of Australia’s critical infrastructure and land, the government is finally forcing the Foreign Investment Review Board to get real. It’s recently-passed “foreign influence” legislation which was also clearly aimed at China – and it’s just claimed the biggest scalp of all.
Scott Morrison will stare down Chinese threats to launch fresh action against Australia after the government tore up Victoria’s Belt and Road Initiative agreements with Beijing, saying he would always protect the nation’s interests and a world that “seeks a balance in favour of freedom”.
Naturally, bully China is not happy at copping another punch in the nose from pipsqueak Australia.
The decision by Foreign Minister Marise Payne to scrap the BRI deals sparked a furious response, with Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin accusing the Morrison government of “political manipulation and bullying”.
He called Senator Payne’s order under the Foreign Arrangements Scheme a “bad” global precedent.
This, of course, is just more of the standard two-faced bullshit from Beijing. The Chinese Communist Party colluded with the socialist Victorian government to undermine Australia’s national government and sovereignty. Grand idiot Daniel Andrews defied both the federal government and Australia’s security agencies to hand China an astonishing propaganda coup: the first sub-national government to sign on to the BRI. Andrews’s greed was exceeded only by his stupidity: there was no clear economic benefit to Victoria, with most of the work due to be contracted out to Chinese cronies – as is standard practice with the BRI.
The Australian PM is having none of it.
Following criticism from the Chinese embassy, which claimed termination of the BRI agreements was “provocative” and “unreasonable”, the Prime Minister said “there is one foreign policy of this country”.
“The Foreign Relations Act … was designed to protect our national interests by ensuring that there were no other agreements entered into by any other level of government that would conflict with Australia’s national interest,” he said. “What we have done is we have followed through. There have been four agreements the Foreign Minister has terminated in line with that Foreign Relations Act. We will always act in Australia’s national interest to protect Australia, but to also ensure that we can advance our national interests of a free and open Indo-Pacific and a world that seeks a balance in favour of freedom.”
But Australia still has its own share of greedy Quislings ready to yap on cue at Beijing’s command.
Leading Australian industrialist Malcolm Broomhead on Thursday launched a blistering attack on the Morrison government for cancelling the Victoria’s BRI deal with China. The chairman of mining, oil and gas giant Orica, BHP board member and former head of a pro-BRI organisation said the dramatic axing would damage the nation’s trade relations with China.
“Like many people in business, it is just a complete mystery as to what the Australian government is trying to achieve here,” Mr Broomhead told The Australian.
That’s probably because like many people in business, he’s incapable of seeing anything over the piles of yuan he’s salivating over.
Sovereignty? Security? Human rights? Shut up and pass the money.
Mr Broomhead was the chairman of the Australia China Belt and Road Initiative, founded by self-proclaimed Chinese-born influencer Jean Dong, which lobbied Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews to sign the BRI.
The Australian
History will judge harshly the greedy traitors who fell over themselves to profit from the Nazi Germany of the 21st century.
Please share this article so that others can discover The BFD