Michael Danby (Melbourne Ports, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary to the Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

In dealing with a foreign power like China, Australia needs to balance its commercial interests with its national security and democratic ethos. A recent report by the Kissinger Institute on China and the United States said:

In June 2017 the New York Times and The Economist featured stories on China's political influence in Australia. The New York Times headline asked "Are Australia's Politics too Easy to Corrupt?," while The Economist … referred to China as the "Meddle Country." The two articles were reacting to an investigation by Fairfax Media and ABC into the extent of China's political interference in Australia, that built on internal enquiries into the same issue by ASIO and Australia's Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet in 2015 and 2016. The media … concluded that Australia was the target of a foreign interference campaign by China "on a larger scale than that being carried out by any other nation" and that the Chinese Communist Party … was working to infiltrate Australian political and foreign affairs circles, as well to acquire influence over Australia's Chinese population.

According to a recent Herald Sun front page, donations amounting to $6 million over the last five years were made by the Beijing-influenced business front the APPRC. The head of the APPRC, Mr Huang Xiangmo, withdrew $400,000 from the opposition when Labor supported Australian naval patrols in the South Pacific.

Of course, we value Chinese Australians and investment from China, which is now our leading trading partner, but fears about prospective damage to Australian trade or investment by China must not deter us from clear-eyed opposition to Beijing's political intervention, such as its buying control of almost the entire local Chinese language press. The Foreign Investment Review Board reports that in the financial years 2010-11 to 2015-16 there was $169 billion of investment in Australia from China. Investment rose from $16.91 billion in financial year 2010-11 to $47 billion in financial year 2015-16. This is nothing to be alarmed about, but there are pitfalls to such investment.

In 2014 Australia's then Minister for Communications, Malcolm Turnbull, proposed that the Chinese telco Huawei bid for the NBN. Australian agencies feared a Huawei-engineered technological back door to our secret communications. The proposal was dropped. Then a myopic Northern Territory government sold to Beijing interests a 100-year lease to the port of Darwin for a mere $500 million. After that 'own goal', former ASIO director-general David Irvine was appointed to the Foreign Investment Review Board. The FIRB then recommended against Beijing based investment in Ausgrid, Australia's largest electrical network, owned by the government of New South Wales. Striking the right balance, however, a state based interest in China won a 25 per cent interest in the successful bid of $9.7 billion for a 50-year lease of the Port of Melbourne. The $169 billion investment in Australia over the past five years is the big picture. It debunks the alarmism of comrades Drysdale and Denton in the Financial Review that 'opportunities will be squandered if Australian policy towards China is bungled'. Investors and traders from China are treated fairly and are not scapegoated. They are judged on commercial and national interests, the same as other investors.

Attempts to influence local academia are less easily countered. Even before Frances Adamson, the Secretary of the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, put this issue on the front page, Professor Allan Fitzgerald, in an AFR essay 'Red pen on academic freedom', argued, 'Universities jeopardise intellectual integrity when they collaborate with Chinese institutions that do not share a commitment to liberal values or open inquiry.' It's a bit like Admiral Lord Nelson putting his blind eye to the telescope to claim that China is an upholder of international rules based order. Beijing flouts the international law peacefully sought by ASEAN to stop the militarisation of the South China Sea, where 60 per cent of Australian maritime trade transits.

Canberra's Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters will recommend, and I believe the parliament will endorse, the banning of foreign donations to parties. The Foreign Investment Review Board will continue to prevent imbroglios like the sale of the port of Darwin.

Finally, Beijing's interference in universities, think tanks, institutes and parties will be subject to media and parliamentary scrutiny. Nervous Nellies who advocate a hands-off policy for investments in China should be reassured that commercial arrangements will continue to prosper, but pro-Beijing academic and business interests should never override Australia's national security, firmly rooted in our ANZUS alliance and our deeply democratic ethos.