21/02/2023

Our political system has never dealt with the results of mass immigration from a country whose intentions and policies are now often regarded as hostile to Australia’s interests.

The iron ore industry remains gloriously impervious to diplomatic friction due to the absence of readily available alternative supplies. Almost every other Australian export is clearly at ever greater risk from a regime determined to demonstrate the high price of offending China.
The latest salvo from Beijing against barley exports from Western Australias CBH Group is insultingly spurious, with allegations of harmful weeds in the grain despite meeting Australian high quality testing standards.
The reaction in Australia ranges from bluster in Canberra to bewildered dismay in business. But the Morrison government repeating its line that Australia will never trade away its sovereignty in face of threats to its economy wont resolve anything.
We have never dealt with mass immigration from a country whose intentions are now regarded as often hostile to Australia’s interests.
The harsh tests from an increasingly aggressive China will just keep coming. Australias economic prospects will keep being damaged as a result. No graceful exit seems possible from a rapidly worsening climate.
The only policy argument can be over how best to manage this dilemma, both in public and in private. Public denunciations will always tend to escalate, especially when it involves a highly sensitive Chinese leadership.
But for the past several years theres been no ability to negotiate differences quietly. Beijing banned high-level ministerial contact with Australia due to its unhappiness with the Turnbull governments foreign interference legislation in 2017.
Any possibility of a thaw in the diplomatic deep freeze under Scott Morrison quickly evaporated on both sides.
In this context, Morrison wont ever concede Australias decision to get out in front of other nations with a call for an independent inquiry into the origins of the coronavirus was not worth it, for example.
Yet the result, a lengthy inquiry by the World Health Organisation, was always the most likely outcome, no matter what Australia had said initially. Chinas immediate show of irritation by hitting other Australian exports from wine to beef to barley, so far was also predictable.
Having to manage a very difficult relationship with its most significant trading partner is now any Australian governments lot. Canberra is facing a much more powerful and intolerant regime, determined to extend its economic and political and military authority as far as possible including through coercion and intimidation.
Manoeuvring the national interest across such dangerous terrain is high-risk. But Canberra’s messages can seem more contradictory than consistent.
It also presents a new social challenge for a country with more than 1.2 million citizens of Chinese ethnic origin. Australia has always been a proud, extremely successful immigrant society, and has accommodated the huge increase in Chinese students and other visa holders over the past several years.
Yet the political system has never previously dealt with the results of mass immigration, temporary and permanent, from a country whose intentions and policies are now effectively regarded even if not officially as too often hostile to Australias interests.
China’s arrest of a journalist who is an Australian citizen even if she is also Chinese, and working for Chinese state media will be seen as another marker of the erosion.
General community sentiment against China has also turned strongly and understandably negative, even if the government tries to distinguish between Chinas people and the activities of its government.
Instead, the antagonism to the evidence of Chinese interference and potential security threats now means any links with China or Chinese institutions risk being regarded as suspect. It’s becoming a vague form of guilt by association.
This can translate into a peculiarly Australian form of McCarthyism, such as the new government inquiry into Chinese funded or joint university research projects, as well as any agreements with Chinese institutes.
Its true Australian universities avid pursuit of Chinese money has meant totally inadequate checks on research projects, particularly those tied to defence and security. That is part of a flawed business model that gave precedence to an influx of foreign students to fund research and improve rankings, rather than maintain quality of teaching standards for domestic students.
Universities argue they had no choice, given lack of government funding. Now that strategy has imploded, thorny issues should be matters for quiet, sensible discussions based on trust between university leadership and the government.
The idea of bureaucrats and politicians policing all university research involving China or Chinese students will clearly lead to clumsy overreach. But Canberra distrusts universities leadership and lack of reform as much as the universities distrust the government and lack of support. Its a recipe for confusion.
Ditto for all those Australian businesses alarmed about their prospects in a China market now full of potholes and absent any road map.
The Morrison government’s strong rhetoric can’t help.