Australia and China

[steve_bank]

Australia and China show up in the news occasionally.

Australian minister accuses China of election interference

A senior Australian minister is suggesting that China deliberately announced its security pact with the Solomon Islands during an election campaign to undermine her government’s chances of reelection

abcnews.go.com

Australian minister accuses China of election interference​

A senior Australian minister is suggesting that China deliberately announced its security pact with the Solomon Islands during an election campaign to undermine her government’s chances of reelection

CANBERRA, Australia -- A senior Australian minister on Wednesday suggested that China had deliberately announced its security pact with the Solomon Islands during an election campaign to undermine her government’s chances of reelection.

Home Affairs Minister Karen Andrews’ accusation is consistent with her conservative Liberal Party’s argument that Beijing wants the center-left Labor Party to win the May 21 election because Labor lawmakers were less likely to stand up to Chinese economic coercion.

Labor has described the government’s inability to prevent the deal announced by the Chinese and Solomons governments last week as Australia’s biggest foreign policy failure in the Pacific since World War II.

Andrews — who is responsible for the Australian Security Intelligence Organization, the nation’s main domestic spy agency, and has access to classified secrets from other intelligence agencies — said Australians should be “taking notice of and paying some attention to” the timing of the Solomons' announcements.

“Beijing is clearly very aware that we’re in a federal election campaign here at the moment. Why now? Why, right in the middle of a federal election campaign is all this coming to light?” Andrews told Brisbane Radio 4BC.

"We talk about political interference and that has many forms,” Andrews added.

Australia angered China in 2018 by passing national security laws that ban covert foreign interference in domestic politics. The Chinese Foreign Ministry said at the time the government was prejudiced against China and had poisoned the atmosphere of China-Australia relations.

 

[bigfield]

China has good reason to see this government stay in power. The LNP sold the Port of Darwin to China and have botched diplomacy in the South Pacific for the last nine years.

 

[Patooka]

Australia and China show up in the news occasionally.

This is coalition dog whistling.
To provide a bit of context, the Minister for Home Affairs is like the Secretary of the Interior. Currently everyone is in campaign mode for the upcoming Federal Election and the Coalition represent conservative views in Australian Politics. Think on how Republicans try to smear Democrats in your elections. They call Dems socialists, they say Dems are promoting a Marxist ideology, typical Alex Jones conspiracy crap right? Conservatives in Australia are no different. This accusation that China is meddling in Australian elections is a not too subtle way of saying "China wants Labor to win! Vote for us instead, we're the good guys honest!" Honestly, in the next few weeks I expect to see ads saying how unions are stopping the economic recovery from Covid and Labor and the ACTU are part of the same organization.

I've got the say, the most confusing/entertaining part of this election is the ads from the Australian Citizens Party. The people in their ads sound as though this upcoming election is an inconvenience for them and that they just want to be left alone. They're like a more boring version of Clive Palmer's Clive Palmer's United Australia Party (that is led by Clive Palmer).

 

[bilby]

China made this announcement revealing the incompetence of the government in Canberra, because they want us to lose the election, so that we end up with an incompetent government in Canberra.

Yeah, that's logical.