Do-nothing China treaty captain’s call blows up

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From Domainfax

One minute, the government was moving swiftly towards the final “ratification” stage of a criminal extradition treaty signed with Beijing under John Howard a decade ago, and the next, it had been mothballed.

Cory Bernardi was cock-a-hoop, having leaned into the issue rather vigorously in the preceding hours to note inter alia the suspiciously high 99-plus per cent conviction rate of Chinese courts.

Suddenly, Bernardi was the champion of human rights – including presumably, the human rights of people actually guilty of serious crimes committed in their home country, before fleeing to the safety of Australia.

Presumably also, Bernardi had concluded that Beijing-bashing met his “common sense” benchmark and in no way fanned Australian anxieties over Chinese investment, and the overall xenophobic tenor of One Nation’s revival.

But they’re all at it. Bill Shorten told Malcolm Turnbull after 8:30am that Labor would also be opposing ratification, and by 9am, it had been scotched.

Frontbenchers from the Foreign Minister Julie Bishop down were left swinging in the breeze.

And more:

…the political danger the extradition treaty posed for the Turnbull government had been hiding in plain sight for months.

…During hearings late last year, the Law Council of Australia, Amnesty, Labor and the Greens all flagged concerns about the treaty’s safeguards to ensure people sent back to China would not face the death penalty or torture, and get a fair trial.

But it wasn’t just legal and rights groups and opposition parties who were concerned. At a November 24 hearing, Coalition MPs Chris Crewther and Andrew Wallace also raised concerns.

…On March 21, Senator Bernardi told Fairfax Media there was “no public case to justify” ratification. Then he announced he would try to disallow it; Labor, the Greens and the Xenophon trio indicated they would join him.

On Monday night, two crucial things happened: Labor’s shadow cabinet resolved to oppose ratification and Ms Bishop and Mr Keenan briefed a dozen Coalition MPs who were unhappy with the treaty.

Once again, the Turnbull government had scored an avoidable own-goal; senior ministers who publicly backed the treaty on Tuesday morning, before the decision was taken were left hung out to dry; backbenchers came away furious with the process, and the fact that they had been pushed to the point where they could have crossed the floor; and Australia’s major trading partner became the subject of a messy public debate only to be left empty-handed.

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Even Do-nothing stalwart, Paul Kelly, is judgemental:

The government was surprised by the extent of Liberal revolt and, once again, Tony Abbott’s strong public opposition to ratification has aroused internal contention and differences… he issued the following statement: “This was a process ­initiated by the Howard government so I wasn’t going to repudiate it. But I had no intention of seeing it come to a conclusion, given my concerns about the Chinese legal system.”

The truth is that three prime ministers — Kevin Rudd, Julia Gillard and Abbott — were committed to the treaty but none moved to seek its ratification, a revealing omission. What was happening? It sounds like a process of “kicking the can down the road”.

It is revealing of Turnbull that, first, he wanted to get the issue sorted and, second, that he misjudged the politics. The alliance against the treaty was extraordinary — Labor, Greens, crossbenchers, Cory Bernardi, a section of conservative and progressive Liberals. In the end, Turnbull was correct to pull the ratification.

Andrew Bolt is scathing:

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My own view is that this is right outcome. The Chinese legal system is a joke and Australia should not be aligned with it until it works with far greater transparency. As much as I’d love to see the wave of corrupt Chinese occupying the housing market deported, selling out our core values is not the way to do it. We should be getting on with policing our own market, as well as deploying the multilateral anti-money laundering rules we’ve been flouting for a decade.

The lessons of the process are as predictable as they are sorry:

  • no preparatory work done to ensure community support;
  • no policy ballast developed beforehand to carry interests;
  • fragmentation of the Right trashing the policy;
  • Do-nothing Malcolm presenting everyone with the charming face then dropping them cold when the weather turns.
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Just another day in the Do-nothing Government. It really is like this guy gets up every day with a deleted hard drive.

About the author
David Llewellyn-Smith is Chief Strategist at the MB Fund and MB Super. David is the founding publisher and editor of MacroBusiness and was the founding publisher and global economy editor of The Diplomat, the Asia Pacific’s leading geo-politics and economics portal. He is also a former gold trader and economic commentator at The Sydney Morning Herald, The Age, the ABC and Business Spectator. He is the co-author of The Great Crash of 2008 with Ross Garnaut and was the editor of the second Garnaut Climate Change Review.