By ROWAN CALLICK
The Fifth Column
The ABC’s 4 Corners program on Monday night, by sheer weight of evidence — assembling connections and stories that have emerged over the last year or so — presented a powerful case for reforming the political donation rules, and for watchfulness of China’s influence in general.
The strongest new information was that Duncan Lewis, not long after he had taken over as head of ASIO, had in 2015 warned the federal directors of the Coalition parties and the general secretary of Labor, about the risks involved in receiving funding that ultimately — or even directly — derived from China.
The parties have simply ignored his advice, and grasped whatever donations that came their way, in the lead-up to last year’s election especially.
The problem in achieving appropriate reform when the country’s political class stands united in opposition, and in favour of self-interest, was highlighted by Professor Rory Medcalf, the head of the National Security College at the Australian National University, who said: “There’s an awareness of a problem, but the agencies themselves don’t have the mandate or the wherewithal to manage the problem.”
Popular pressure needs to be brought to bear — but is difficult to arouse in the lack of a scandal notorious enough to provoke political action, especially self-denying action in this case, in response.
The evidence of gathering Chinese influence has been steadily unearthed, step by step, with the latest ABC/Fairfax efforts acting to underline the issue.
The 4 Corners program didn’t have time to cover some of the other areas of considerable interest within this concern, including the takeover of Chinese language media by the Chinese party-state itself or by its supporters, the role of the business community some of whose future is invested in China, and also the effect on universities’ research and role in public debate, of such heavy financial dependence on full fee-paying Chinese students.
Senator Sam Dastyari’s loss of his opposition frontbench role, and the stepping down of Chinese businessman Huang Xiangmo from the chairmanship of the Australia China Relations Institute at the University of Technology Sydney that he funded, appear to have been the sole significant responses to the revelations to date.
It must then be presumed that otherwise, the thrust of strengthening the capacity “to safeguard China’s influence” as Huang put it, is continuing largely unaffected.
The 4 Corners program featured an appropriately shadowy Australian security team raiding the home of Sheri Yan, who was jailed in the US on a corruption charge involving a UN official, and her husband Roger Uren.
But this proved something of a red herring, the only new information emerging from the raid comprising a document that Uren brought home while he was working with the Office of National Assessments, which he left in 2001.
It is almost certainly an offence to take such documents out of the office, but was probably not a rare event 20 or so years ago, and this thread doesn’t connect clearly with the core issue of contemporary influence except for Sheri’s generalised role as an entrepreneurial go-between.
The program began by referring to a “concerted campaign by the Chinese government and its proxies” to target Australia and its role in the world.
The biggest gap still, in public understanding of the issue, is in how such a concerted campaign is conceived and delivered, beyond the embassy providing transport, food, drinks and T shirts for Chinese students to demonstrate their patriotism and to oppose “splittism” and other anti-party evils — of course, in a way inconceivable in reverse, if Australians were to demonstrate in China.
Leading China-expert John Fitzgerald explained in the program, that a core issue is the secrecy with which the Chinese institutions involved, operate.
There are some clear trails, such as through the Australian Council for the Promotion of Peaceful Reunification of China which has included many leading politicians of both main parties among its patrons over the last 15 years, and whose line of accountability clearly leads to the Politburo Standing Committee in Beijing.
But otherwise, we remain in the territory of hints and conjecture.
The parties have simply ignored his advice, and grasped whatever donations that came their way, in the lead-up to last year’s election especially.
The problem in achieving appropriate reform when the country’s political class stands united in opposition, and in favour of self-interest, was highlighted by Professor Rory Medcalf, the head of the National Security College at the Australian National University, who said: “There’s an awareness of a problem, but the agencies themselves don’t have the mandate or the wherewithal to manage the problem.”
Popular pressure needs to be brought to bear — but is difficult to arouse in the lack of a scandal notorious enough to provoke political action, especially self-denying action in this case, in response.
The evidence of gathering Chinese influence has been steadily unearthed, step by step, with the latest ABC/Fairfax efforts acting to underline the issue.
The 4 Corners program didn’t have time to cover some of the other areas of considerable interest within this concern, including the takeover of Chinese language media by the Chinese party-state itself or by its supporters, the role of the business community some of whose future is invested in China, and also the effect on universities’ research and role in public debate, of such heavy financial dependence on full fee-paying Chinese students.
Senator Sam Dastyari’s loss of his opposition frontbench role, and the stepping down of Chinese businessman Huang Xiangmo from the chairmanship of the Australia China Relations Institute at the University of Technology Sydney that he funded, appear to have been the sole significant responses to the revelations to date.
It must then be presumed that otherwise, the thrust of strengthening the capacity “to safeguard China’s influence” as Huang put it, is continuing largely unaffected.
The 4 Corners program featured an appropriately shadowy Australian security team raiding the home of Sheri Yan, who was jailed in the US on a corruption charge involving a UN official, and her husband Roger Uren.
But this proved something of a red herring, the only new information emerging from the raid comprising a document that Uren brought home while he was working with the Office of National Assessments, which he left in 2001.
It is almost certainly an offence to take such documents out of the office, but was probably not a rare event 20 or so years ago, and this thread doesn’t connect clearly with the core issue of contemporary influence except for Sheri’s generalised role as an entrepreneurial go-between.
The program began by referring to a “concerted campaign by the Chinese government and its proxies” to target Australia and its role in the world.
The biggest gap still, in public understanding of the issue, is in how such a concerted campaign is conceived and delivered, beyond the embassy providing transport, food, drinks and T shirts for Chinese students to demonstrate their patriotism and to oppose “splittism” and other anti-party evils — of course, in a way inconceivable in reverse, if Australians were to demonstrate in China.
Leading China-expert John Fitzgerald explained in the program, that a core issue is the secrecy with which the Chinese institutions involved, operate.
There are some clear trails, such as through the Australian Council for the Promotion of Peaceful Reunification of China which has included many leading politicians of both main parties among its patrons over the last 15 years, and whose line of accountability clearly leads to the Politburo Standing Committee in Beijing.
But otherwise, we remain in the territory of hints and conjecture.
For instance, Huang said when buttonholed by the ABC team, “I don’t have a relationship with the Chinese Communist Party,” despite his glowing remarks on party anniversaries.
It is between hard and impossible to pin any of this down from the Chinese side.
It is between hard and impossible to pin any of this down from the Chinese side.
This is in itself cause for caution, but our major parties have yet to show willing to walk away from the money-trail.
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