The Australian media is directly under attack. Its right to publish and be damned is under attack. Its right to expose the truth wherever it may lurk is under attack. Its right to hold to account governments, oppositions and politicians is under attack. Its right to unearth corruption is under attack.
In short, its entire reason for being is under attack. Here it is in black and white from Xi Jinping and the CCP:
All 14 of those conditions destroy the Australian media. If any one of them, or all, is adopted by the Australian Government, journalism is finished. You can’t simply excise China coverage and expect that ethos won’t bleed out to everything else. Not least because the only purpose of doing so is to disguise the occupation of the Australian political economy by the CCP. Where does the media think that that leads?
One of the great things about this list is that it is a honey pot to trap those in the press that don’t have the cojonies to do their job. These are people of insufficient moral fibre that should not be in journalism at all. That’s not a personal attack it’s just a professional observation. Some folks are fair weather journos and, now the rubber has hit the road, they are exposed as having enjoyed a bit of Sinefeldian celebrity in the good times but are not up to it in the bad.
At the top of this list is ABC’s Stan Grant who can’t wait to welcome the end of his profession:
If Scott Morrison wants to know how to handle the crisis with China, he need look no further than how he has dealt with another crisis — coronavirus.
From the start of the COVID-19 outbreak, the Prime Minister said this was not a time for ideology. He took a pragmatic approach and shelved conservative shibboleths abut small government and limited intervention.
The man who had preached that deficits and debts were plunging the Australian economy over a cliff, now put the economy into reverse and bailed out those Australians devastated by the lockdown.
The latest national accounts figures showing we have emerged quickly from recession proves he was right.
So why not try the same approach with China?
Instead, Morrison talks more about ideology and values. He has framed this as an existential crisis.
China is targeting us, he says, because of who we are.
Beijing is certainly playing its part. This is about their values too: authoritarian and anti-liberal. The Chinese Communist Party is everything we are not.
How do we possibly restore calm when both countries are making demands of each other that neither can meet?
Australia’s place in the global order is shifting
Scott Morrison has sent a message to China that Australia will not be America’s “deputy sheriff” and Canberra won’t be making decisions based on a choice between Washington and Beijing, writes Stan Grant.
Yet the two nations cannot avoid each other and can’t live as they are without each other.
China has powered its economy with Australian resources, especially iron ore and coal.
Australia has grown rich off China’s growth. It is by a long way our biggest trading partner. And if China turns on us, ordinary Australians hurt — just ask wine makers or crayfish farmers.
One in five Australian jobs depend on exports. As much as Treasurer Josh Frydenberg says the Australian consumer is the backbone of the economy, people can’t spend if they are unemployed.
Australians will pay a price
If both sides make this dispute about ideology — about who we are — then we will pay a price.
China is a great power: an indispensable nation. It is the biggest engine of global economic growth and in this decade it will surpass the United States as the biggest economy in the world.
Donald Trump brought on a trade war with China and suffered: 200,000 Americans lost their jobs.
Australia is not going to win a diplomatic or trade spat with its biggest trading partner, a massive nation that can now project its power from Asia to the Pacific to Europe and Africa.
This increasingly toxic dispute is not in Australia’s interests and was not driven purely by standing up for Australian values.
The Morrison Government has followed an American line on China that has gone from competition and cooperation to confrontation.
Whoa. Where do I start? Read the list of 14 conditions. This is a clash of values and interests. Does Stan really think that dissolving Australian journalism is in the national interest? Is he really happy to take a few extra yuan in exchange for the end of Australian freedom of thought? If so, why is he still in the employ of the ABC? So what it if costs some money to fight for those freedoms. Other Australians have done it with their lives.
Next up is Waleed Ali who is so weak-kneed that he refuses any position, at Domain:
We haven’t had so many eggs in one basket since the late ’70s, and in that case the basket was Japanese. And before that you have to go back to the late ’50s when we were intertwined with the British.
But China was always a unique case – however much or little you might want to trust it – for the very simple reason that it isn’t one of our security partners. That has never happened before. Our economic and security relationships have always been aligned. Even if you took an optimistic view of China’s rise, to throw our lot in with China was always potentially unstable.
As a country, by which I mean as a series of governments and innumerable business, we decided to take the risk this would hold. And maybe it will in the end.
Read the 14 conditions. It hasn’t held. It’s over. Xi Jinping’s China is an illiberal force of frightening proportions. We are fighting for the life of our free system. If you’re not up to it then get out of the way.
Sadly for me, even Richard MacGregor is waffling at the AFR:
But the natural stress in the relationship cannot camouflage the government’s numerous unforced errors which have given Beijing’s own hardliners the ammunition to make an example of Australia.
The tipping point was Australia’s call for an inquiry into the origins of COVID-19. Bewilderingly touted as a diplomatic triumph at the time, it now looks ill-considered to have done on our own when multiple other countries would have joined us.
After the police raids in June on a NSW Labor MP and his staffer in a foreign interference investigation, Morrison spoke stridently to the press about how he wouldn’t “cop” outside meddling in local politics.
Morrison didn’t need to say anything, as the raids contained their own message. And to make an old-fashioned point, should a prime minister comment on a police investigation?
Even senior government figures were mystified in August by Frydenberg’s rejection of China Mengniu’s takeover of Lion Dairy. Not only does the company have zero strategic import, but a negotiated approval could have been used to manage diplomacy with Beijing.
Another opportunity was lost in October with Liberal Senator Eric Abetz’s demand of Chinese-Australians at a parliamentary committee that they denounce the communist party.
Instead of properly condemning this, government ministers repeated a robotic talking point about there being only one “loyalty test” and ignored the blatant racial profiling.
In all of this, spare a moment for businesses hit by the Chinese sanctions. They were encouraged by the government in 2015 to grab the benefits of the bilateral trade agreement, only to be sternly told now that their hard-earned success is a strategic liability and to suck it up.
The government’s hairy-chested rhetoric has flowed through to sections of the media that have turned China into a free-fire zone on a regular basis.
This week, The Courier Mail complained the decision of two Chinese cities to bid for the 2032 Olympics would “steal” the games from Brisbane. Quite how the Chinese can steal something from Brisbane that Brisbane doesn’t own was not explained.
Read the 14 conditions for harmony with China. Those have been the terms since Xi Jinping took power, it was simply never outed before so it’s taken some time for the underlying divergence of interests to manifest. Errors are certain but the fate of our freedom is at stake so who bloody cares. Why wouldn’t the Government man-up against this attack? War is always a godawful mess and that is what this is; a war for the soul of Australia. Get over it, Richard. You are needed on the side of good.
Then there is Jess Irvine, also at Domain:
Trade wars are dumb. That’s why it’s usually politicians who start them.
Because tariffs give domestic producers an artificial leg up. Great, some might say. Let’s help our own. But history shows – including the recent history of Australia’s car-manufacturing industry – that propping up domestic industries doesn’t really help them or their workers. Ultimately, workers are kept in jobs with no real long-term prospects – at least not without costly taxpayer support – and domestic consumers pay higher prices for the imported cars they clearly prefer.
Rather than sheltering unviable industries behind high tariff walls, workers and capital tied up in those industries are better off redeployed to industries where we do have a “comparative advantage” over the rest of the world – that is, where we can produce products better than other countries.
As a nation, we took a punt that we’d rather run the risk of interrupted supply than continually protect industries that weren’t truly competitive and pay higher prices as a result. We’ve enjoyed higher productivity and wages as a direct result.
To their immense credit, Australian politicians have so far held the line, refusing to retaliate against Beijing’s increasing bellicosity. That’s despite some rumblings from Nationals MPs that some retaliatory action – possibly through the imposition of tariffs on China – is required.
Read the 14 conditions. Does that sound like free trade to you? That is simply a disguised argument for letting China do whatever it wants to our economy and therefore politics. It’s pathetic.
Finally, we have Jen Hewitt at the AFR who has made a career out of flying around on iron ore purses:
This Prime Minister is particularly alert to domestic political nuance, including any suggestion from Labor he has mishandled the relationship. That is despite the Opposition’s shared outrage over the infamous tweet.
So Morrison says he is disappointed but not surprised at Anthony Albanese’s more general criticism.
“You can’t have each way bets on national security and what Australia does to protect its national interests,” he declared.
Business leaders might think a little more political nuance might have managed both. Too late now. The future beckons.
Quite right, Jen, Read the 14 conditions. Which of those do you propose ScoMo give in to? And while you’re at it, read this classic essay from Alfred Marshall on why “business” should never be heeded in policy debates. Ever.
The Australian press has every right to debate all angles of this conflict any way it chooses. But let’s not beat around the bush. We are debating its future more than any other industry or feature of our democratic system. Clever angles, Seinfeldian observations and delightful witticisms won’t cut it.
Faith, courage and ruthless intellect are now the order of the day. Those whose very job description it is to man the gates guarding our free society need to toughen up for a long and bloody struggle.
Read the 14 conditions. Anybody that agrees with any one of those should not be in journalism.
