Michelle Grattan: Peter Dutton changes China tack

[Pelican Press 0]

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Michelle Grattan: Peter Dutton changes China tack

When Peter Dutton was asked this week whether a Coalition government would continue to foster trade relations with China, he declared unequivocally that “the relationship with China will be much stronger than it is under the Albanese Government”.

Two points stood out: Dutton’s own positive rhetoric, and his apparent confidence about the future of Australia-China relations.

It’s not unusual for opposition leaders to undertake a makeover, to their person or policy, as an election approaches. Dutton is simultaneously attempting a softening on some fronts — while retaining the “hard man” image on others.

Mid-last year Dutton said: “I’m pro-China and the relationship that we have with them . . . We need to make sure we strengthen the trading relationship because there are many businesses here who rely on it. But we have to be realistic about working to keep peace . . . we live in a very uncertain time.”

Contrast Dutton as defence minister in 2021. “Does the ******** government wish to occupy other countries? Not in my judgment. But they do see us as tributary states.”

It’s not that Dutton has changed his views on China. Rather, he’s camouflaged them with a softer tone, and in what he chooses to emphasise. Of course circumstances have changed — Australia now has a much better relationship with China. But significantly, Dutton needs to appeal to the local ********-*********** voters.

At the 2022 election, the Liberals took a big hit among voters of ******** heritage.

The party’s review of its election performance, undertaken by former party director Brian Loughnane and frontbencher Jane Hume, said: “In the top 15 seats by ******** ancestry the swing against the Party (on a two party preferred basis) was 6.6 per cent, compared to 3.7 per cent in other seats. There are more than 1.2 million people of ******** heritage living in Australia today. Rebuilding the Party’s relationship with the ******** community must be a priority during this term of Parliament.”

Marginal Labor seats that are targets for the Liberals, where the ******** vote is significant, include Reid and Bennelong in NSW and Chisholm and Aston in Victoria.

It’s notable that David Coleman, named by Dutton last weekend as the Opposition’s new spokesman on foreign affairs, has worked extensively with the ******** community. One of the contenders for the post was the high-performing James Paterson. There may have been stronger arguments for keeping Paterson in home affairs, but his very hawkish stand on China might have been in the mix.

Talking up the positive side of the Coalition’s record on China, Dutton harked back to the signing of the free trade agreement under the Abbott government.

Over its years in government the Coalition’s relationship with China has varied between pragmatic friendship and suspicious negativity.

After relatively smooth sailing in the Abbott *******, things soured when the Turnbull government called China out over foreign interference, introducing legislation, and banned Huawei from the 5G network. Then relations plunged dramatically when the Morrison government demanded an inquiry into the origins and handling of the outbreak of COVID in Wuhan.

Despite Dutton’s confidence, it’s more than possible that managing the China relationship during the next term could be trickier than it has been in this one, no matter who is in power.

The Albanese Government can claim the greatly-improved bilateral relationship as one of its major foreign policy achievements. China has brought Australia out of the deep freeze, lifting the $20 billion worth of trade barriers it had imposed. Anthony Albanese has been welcomed in China.

But this week’s speculation relating to the new ******** artificial intelligence platform DeepSeek is just the latest reminder of perennial security suspicions about the penetration of ******** technology. (Incidentally, Dutton has an account on the ********-owned TikTok — despite it being banned from official government devices — in part to engage with the local ******** community, as well as with younger people generally.)

Australia’s minerals industry is potentially vulnerable to ******** displeasure. The Senate in the next fortnight will consider the Government’s Future Made in Australia legislation, that provides a tax incentive for processing critical minerals.

The ******** have a global stranglehold on this processing — and have shown a willingness to weaponise it, for example against Japan. China’s multi-billion dollar funding of nickel processing in Indonesia has had a dire impact on producers here in Australia.

The change of government in Australia certainly facilitated the improvement in the bilateral relationship, but that improvement was also strongly driven by China’s own interests. Similarly, the future of the relationship is more in China’s hands than in Australia’s.

China expert Richard McGregor, from the Lowy Institute, says: “Relations with China are inherently volatile.

“The day-by-day relationships have returned to a degree of normality. But all of the structural stresses which created antagonism are still there.”

These include China’s “military assertiveness in the region, competition between the US and China, Australia’s concern about foreign interference and hacking, China’s efforts to build their power in the Pacific at the expense of Australia. None of that has gone away,” McGregor says.

Separate to any hiccups in the bilateral relationship, Australia could find itself caught in the crossfire if there is a serious deterioration in the US-China relationship under Donald Trump — notably if his tariff policy leads to a trade war. Simon Jackman, from the University of Sydney, warns that if US policy hit the (already struggling) ******** economy, that would affect *********** exporters.

“US tariffs or import bans that slowed China’s economy would cause some short to medium headaches for *********** exporters,” Jackman says. “As in Trump Mark 1 and COVID, *********** export industries would find themselves looking for opportunities elsewhere, if global supply chains had to re-equilibrate in response to an upheaval in the US-China trade relationship.”

Ironically, the earlier search for diversified markets when the ******** imposed their restrictions on *********** producers would have helped prepare exporters for such a contingency.

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