Australia's Albanese Falls Victim To A Chinese Burn

2025-02-28 05:10:18

(MENAFN- Asia Times) As the Albanese government struggles to stay on its political feet, who would have thought the China issue would suddenly insert itself into the campaign, leaving the prime minister looking, at best, flat-footed?

Improving and stabilising what had become a toxic bilateral relationship under Scott Morrison has been one of the Albanese government's major pluses in its foreign and trade policy.

China has taken off all of the roughly A$20 billion (US$12.4 billion) in barriers it had enacted on Australian exports. Australian lobsters are back on Chinese menus. And who can forget the prime minister's visit to China, when he was lauded as“a handsome boy.”

But now, almost on the eve of the formal campaign, a Chinese military exercise in the Tasman Sea has not just reminded Australians of Chinese military power, but has left the prime minister appearing poorly informed. Or not wanting to offend the Chinese.

Of course, China did not set out to force Anthony Albanese into what were publicly misleading comments. That was all his own doing. The China incident was on the morning of Friday last week, when its navy commenced the live-fire exercise.

Albanese was briefed on Friday afternoon. Later in the day, a reporter asked him about an ABC report of“commercial pilots [being] warned about a potential hazard in airspace” where three Chinese warships had been sailing.

The prime minister said:“China issued, in accordance with practice, an alert that it would be conducting these activities, including the potential use of live fire.” This told, at best, a sliver of what was a rather alarming story.

The government says the Chinese had acted in accordance with the law, but the amount of notice they'd given (which was not provided directly to Australia) was inadequate. Representations about this were made by Foreign Minister Penny Wong to the Chinese.

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