Card-carrying China groveler Geoff Raby is like a weathervane of Chinese influence in Australia.
His return to the AFR tells us that his tailwind is growing, as we have seen around Albo’s China pivot, and it is safe to re-emerge and argue for a further selling out to Beijing.
He doesn’t have much to say beyond a call to rally other grovelers to come forth and debate—James Laurenceson, Hugh White, Wanning Sun and James Curran—not to mention anything written at Shits and Giggles.
I agree wholeheartedly with Raby. We urgently need to debate a whole range of issues about the China/Australia relationship.
Thankfully, we still have the Foreign Influence Transparency Register, where Raby still comes up as a director at Yancoal.
As usual, the corrupt AFR refuses to divulge this conflict of interest.
What kind of other intellectual input do we need on China?
First, we need to debate…at all.
The Albanese government has committed to the 14 conditions to end democracy, which are all about silencing debate around China.
Second, we need to ask, why has this happened?
- Labor has a rump of senior China grovellers in its ranks, running right up to the level of ex-PMs. They never stop whinging and have influence.
- Chinese immigration remains very strong.
At the end of June 2023, 655,790 Chinese-born people were living in Australia. This is 51.7% more than the number (432,400) at 30 June 2013. This makes the Chinese-born population the third-largest migrant community in Australia after the United Kingdom and India. This is equivalent to:
- 8.0% of Australia’s overseas-born population
- 2.5% of Australia’s total population.
This community sticks together, which is fair enough.
But, for the rest of us, it’s not very fair, even bloody unfair, because a CCP-aligned community has effectively taken control of seven federal electorates, making it impossible to ignore at the policy level.
Nobody can afford to tell the truth about China in Canberra any more for fear of upsetting CCP-aligned migrants.
Is this a plan? Probably not. Chinese-born migrants are beholden to the CCP, mostly not by choice but by coercion, both here and in the mother country, via relatives.
But it is happening nonetheless.
Raby is right. We need to talk about China and its malign influence over our politics.
We should be banning WeChat and injecting robust debate into all corners of the relationship. Maybe we should be debating cutting the Chinese migration flow as well, if this influence cannot be curbed.
Yet, ironically, we can’t do so because China says so, making Raby little more than a fig leaf covering a fig leaf.
Third, what is Albo about to give away? AFR.
The federal government has rebuffed Beijing on two of its key asks – a push to incorporate artificial intelligence into an updated free trade deal and a demand to loosen foreign investment rules – ahead of Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s six-day visit to China.
My guess is the Groveller-in-Chief is about to invite China into the CPTPP as some bogus commitment to free trade, which Albo has previously refused to rule out. This is going to piss Washington right off, given the TPP was designed by it to exclude China.
Fourth, why is Albo refusing to lift defence spending even as he deliberately uses Rudd to upset ANZUS? And China’s nuclear-capable flotillas are running missile drills off our cities?
A country that cannot debate something so basic is already lost.
