Suddenly Australia is back in fashion, via the AFR:
Beijing has signalled it is willing to rebuild its relationship with Australia under the Morrison government, and says there is no conflict between the two nations in the South Pacific despite concerns about China’s growing influence in the region.
The upbeat assessment of Australia’s relationship with its biggest trading partner followed a meeting between the countries’ foreign ministers in New York.
China’s Foreign Minister Wang Yi said he was confident the relationship could “get back on track”, after meeting his Australian counterpart Marise Payne on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly on Tuesday (AEST). Mr Wang talked up the two countries’ “highly complementary economies”.
More on gas at The Australian:
China is prepared to open up more markets for Australian LNG sales as a result of its trade war with the US, a senior trade official in Beijing said yesterday.
“The US is a major supplier of LNG to China, but because of its trade restriction measures, China is compelled to adopt counter-measures,” China’s vice-minister of commerce and deputy international trade representative, Wang Shouwen, said at a briefing on Beijing’s latest position paper on its trade war with the US.
“Australia is an important source of China’s LNG. The trading between China and Australia in LNG is pretty sizeable and there is huge potential.
So, it seems protecting our democracy has actually paid dividends as China is the first to blink. How about that Davos wankers!
The gas bribe should not be taken until we’ve broken the back of the east coast gas cartel. Until that problem is fixed we don’t know where our own gas will come from. That means that local energy prices will keep rising and hollow out non-resource (non-China dependent) exports.
That is NOT in the national interest given the divergence between our strategic and economic goals.
