Australia's Quislings

The Labor Party's China problem
By Nick O'Malley

When Australia’s chief spy, ASIO boss Duncan Lewis, told a Senate estimates hearing last week that Australia faced a greater threat from espionage today than at any time since the Cold War he was careful not to specify which countries might be targeting us.
No one doubts that he was talking about China. 

The senators who were questioning him were undoubtedly talking about China.

Andrew Robb was one of the first Beijing henchmen in Australia

As evidence of Chinese efforts to influence Australian institutions mounts, both major parties have reason for self-reflection.
When he quit his role as an elected representative of the Australian people the Liberal trade minister Andrew Robb walked into an $880,000-a-year job with a billionaire closely aligned to the Chinese Communist Party.
Robb was the architect of the China-Australia Free Trade Agreement.
Tony Abbott was among a handful Liberal heavy weights who were embarrassed after they had to return a fistfull of designer watches worth around $250,000 to a visiting Chinese billionaire. 

They thought they were fake, they explained when the story went public.
An ABC investigation last year found that Chinese individuals and companies were the largest foreign donors to the two parties, pouring more than $5.5 million into Labor and Liberal coffers between 2013 and 2015.

Australia's Quisling: Bob Carr, aka Beijing Bob, is a pro-Beijing extremist paid by the pro-Beijing think tank, Australia China Relations Institute

But one faction of one party appears to be more conflicted than sections of Australian politics, the Sussex Street machine of the powerful NSW Right.
Sam Dastyari, who quit politics when it was revealed he had taken donations from Chinese businesses and then echoed Chinese government talking points, was a rising star of the faction.
Its most dominant figure is Bob Carr, aka Beijing Bob, the former foreign affairs minister and NSW premier now at the centre of the China influence controversy. 

Carr is the director of the Australia-China Relations Institute, which was established by Chinese-Australian businessman Huang Xiangmo, the prolific political donor (and a controversial source of funds to Dastyari).
The NSW Labor right’s ties to Chinese businessmen, some of whom have links to the Chinese Communist Party and its arm of international influence, the United Front Work Department, is causing increasing disquiet in the broader party, particularly members from Victoria, South Australia and Western Australia.
In writing this story Fairfax Media spoke to party members as well as figures in national security and intelligence circles who did not want to go on record for political and legal reasons.
But a common view is that the Chinese Communist Party did not specifically target the NSW Labor right -- indeed they have sought to influence both parties and other major Australian institutions -- but that the NSW faction proved to be an unusually fertile ground to seek influence.
Michael Danby, a Victorian Labor right figure said the NSW right was without political ideology and driven by a fierce sense of “whatever it takes” in the accumulation of power and the funds needed secure power.

Similarly Rory Medcalf, the head of the National Security College, Australian National University, says the NSW right has been “unusually comfortable” with donors in the business community, and in particular those in development circles.

Another security figure noted that the NSW right been a particularly fruitful target for those seeking influence because of the sheer power it wields within the party.
Medcalf believes there is now a background battle going on within Labor over Chinese influence and the NSW right’s ties to figures believed to be involved. 

Danby and Carr have gone public, trading blows over the issue in Fairfax Media this week, with Danby declaring that “Bob Carr is a pro-Beijing extremist paid by the pro-Beijing think tank, Australia China Relations Institute.”
Labor leader Bill Shorten’s Victorian background has so far inoculated him from the controversy, along with other key members of his team, such as foreign affairs spokeswoman Penny Wong.

Medcalf believes that members of the Labor left who might once have had a sentimental sympathy for the CCP are now concerned by China’s increasing authoritarianism. 

Some have resisted criticising the party’s ties with Chinese figures because they fear being labelled as racist. 

This, he says, is an unfair allegation and a propaganda victory for the CCP.

Medcalf believes not only that the threat is real, but the leadership of both parties are well aware that there are more revelations to come.
He believes that a mixture of cynicism and naivety on behalf of some Australian politicians -- particularly in NSW -- gave Chinese government access to levers of power in Australia.
Given the current public debate, he says, none can claim naivety any more.

Australia's Chinese fifth column

Australia's wake-up call isn't just hysterical
By Peter Hartcher

Former foreign affairs minister Bob Carr has said that Australia went through an "anti-China panic" and anti-China "hysteria" recently.
This was a reference to the reporting of events such as Labor senator Sam Dastyari's decision to ask a Chinese company to pay his personal bills. 

Dastyari, admitting an error of judgment, resigned his frontbench position. 

And events such as Treasurer Scott Morrison's decision to veto Chinese bids to buy control of Ausgrid, NSW's main power distributor, on national security grounds.
And events such as the decision of a pro-Beijing group of Chinese Australians to hold concerts in Sydney and Melbourne to glorify the life of Mao Zedong, only to be pressured into cancelling.
Was Australia gripped by an anti-China hysteria?
Dastyari, a close factional ally of Bob Carr's, is still a senator. 

A Chinese company has since been allowed to buy the equivalent of 20 per cent ownership of the Port of Melbourne, among other things.
The group that opposed the Mao concerts is a rival association of Chinese Australians who say they want to "protect Australian values" against the encroachments of the Chinese Communist Party, according to spokesman John Hugh.
And Bob Carr's former top diplomatic adviser, Peter Varghese, says it wasn't an anti-China paroxysm at all. 

"I wouldn't describe [the recent phase of Australia's China debate] as an anti-China hysteria," says the former secretary of the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade.
So what was it? 

In part, it was what the former chief secretary of Hong Kong, Anson Chan, calls "a wake-up call for Australia", as she put it to me. 

"By the time China's infiltration of Australia is readily apparent, it will be too late," said the dual Chinese and British national.

Varghese, who retired from the public service in July and is now chancellor of Queensland University, is anything but hysterical about China's activities in Australia.
"There's nothing unusual about one country trying to influence the thinking of another country – we all do it," he tells me. 

"The issue is transparency about the means of this and Australia needs to decide the acceptability of those means. As a community, Australia needs to make a decision about whether we are comfortable with this.
"Transparency needs to apply to any institutional funding that goes back to foreign governments or organisations with close ties to foreign governments – in politics, in the media, in universities, in schools, in cultural institutions, in politics."
Including Bob Carr's Australia China Relations Institute, which is hosted by the University of Technology, Sydney. 

The new scrutiny of Chinese Communist Party influence in Australia provoked UTS into shaking up the governance of Carr's outfit. 

Its founder, Huang Xiangmo, resigned as chairman.
"We just have to be clear eyed about what's at stake and be prepared to make tough calls," says Varghese.
Galvanised by the Dastyari affair, a parliamentary committee is now debating whether Australia needs to ban foreign donations to political parties. 

And, says Varghese: "What we see in the China debate now is the fact that some issues are getting harder for Australia in how we navigate between China and the US."
Beijing is applying broad pressure to enforce its claim to ownership of 90 per cent of the South China Sea. This claim clashes with the claims of four other claimants: Vietnam, the Philippines, Malaysia and Brunei.
And it has created wider tensions. 

The US, Japan and Australia have repeatedly called on China to settle its claims through diplomacy, not through destabilising acts.
Such as using coast guard ships to bully fishermen from other countries. 

Or declaring an air defence identification zone that intrudes on other countries' airspace. 

Or imposing an oil drilling rig in contested seas. 

Or building islands. 

Beijing has used precisely these tactics against its neighbours in recent years.
This isn't a pointless tussle over rocks and reefs, as you might hear. 

Says Varghese: "We need to recognise that what's at stake here is what kind of strategic culture we want entrenched in the Indo-Pacific.
"Does it rest on strategic norms and international law or might is right, the law of the jungle, basically? We all have an interest in a rules-based system, though China doesn't see it. There wouldn't be a China story if not for the stability the US has provided."
Under pressure from China, some countries are cracking. 

Rodrigo Duterte has declared the Philippines' "separation" from the US, its treaty ally. 

He has demanded US forces leave within two years, and pledged to side with China and Russia.
Other countries are going the opposite way, hardening their stances to resist Chinese pressure. Indonesia does not have a conflicting claim to the South China Sea. 

But China has asserted "historic" fishing rights to waters off Indonesia's Natuna Islands, and has jostled Indonesian fishing boats to make its point.
This has provoked a decisive response from Indonesia's President Joko Widodo, known as Jokowi. The Natunas are undisputed Indonesian territory, and Jokowi says the fishing grounds are, too. 

He has started an urgent building program on the islands, increased the size of the defence budget, and pointedly chaired a cabinet meeting on a destroyer in the waters off the Natunas.
And in a striking development in the past few days, Indonesia has announced that it's in discussions with Australia about operating joint naval patrols in the eastern area of the South China Sea.
"We are sure that we will soon create a plan on how to realise it," said Defence Minister Ryamizard Ryacudu. 

His Australian counterpart, Marise Payne, confirms the idea is under consideration. 

Indonesia is discussing similar joint patrols with Vietnam and Cambodia.
"It's an important step in the Australian-Indonesian relationship," says Varghese, "and to the extent that it's reinforcing international norms and rules it's an important signal to send to countries including China."
Hysteria is one thing. 

Well founded concern is quite another.

Australia's Chinese Fifth Column

Australian universities the latest battleground in Chinese soft power offensive
By Hagar Cohen

Beijing collaborator Bob Carr of the Australia China Relations Institute.

In an exclusive interview, Australia's first ambassador to China has raised the alarm about China's influence in the higher education sector.
Stephen Fitzgerald singled out Bob Carr's Australia China Relations Institute for particular criticism, saying universities need clear firewalls between donations and research.
ACRI, part of the University of Technology Sydney, was established with a large donation from the Chinese businessman Huang Xiangmo.
Mr Huang was the donor at the centre of the controversy surrounding Labor senator Sam Dastyari.
"I wouldn't have taken the funding," Mr Fitzgerald told Background Briefing.
"This is one of the really difficult issues about what is happening at the moment, because you don't want to say no to all Chinese money.
"That would be ridiculous, self defeating, but you have to put firewalls between the donation and the way it is spent, and you have to be certain about the origins of that money."

'No place' for Confucius institutes
As well as ACRI, hundreds of other language and culture centres have been established on campuses worldwide through confidential agreements between universities and the Chinese education ministry.
Mr Fitzgerald said he believed these centres, known as Confucius institutes, had no place in Australian higher education institutions.
"I just don't think they should be in universities," he said.
"Have them in Australia by all means; have them all over the country. I'd welcome them, but I don't think they should be in universities."
"There will be people who have been involved with these institutes who will say there has never been one instance of any attempt to influence what we teach and what we say.
"There will be others who might admit that there has been such an attempt."

Controversy over Sydney Uni plan
Background Briefing has revealed that at the University of Sydney, a confidential 2007 plan included a clause that would have seen the university's existing Chinese language program incorporated into a Confucius institute.
This draft agreement ended up in the hands of Professor Jocelyn Chey, the former Australian consul-general in Hong Kong and a visiting professor at the university's Department of Chinese Studies.
"I wasn't sure that the university authorities knew what they were letting themselves in for," she said.
"There's the question of academic freedom and the right of academics not just to teach but to research and publish in areas where they are not under the guidance or direction of anybody."
Professor Chey wrote a strongly worded letter to the vice chancellor outlining her concerns and saying the Confucius institute should be rejected, or the arrangement should be significantly modified to protect the integrity of the university.
"People who accept donations should be aware of the expectations and obligations that they're taking on with the finance," she said.
The university senate voted in favour of the Confucius Institute, but adopted some of the changes to the arrangement that were recommended by Professor Chey.
A University of Sydney spokesperson confirmed a proposal to establish a Confucius Institute at the University of Sydney was circulated to the senate in 2007.
Feedback from staff was considered, and it was confirmed that the university did not intend for existing university programs to be delivered by the Confucius Institute.
The spokesperson said these programs continue to be delivered by the Department of Chinese Studies in the School of Languages and Cultures.