Scott Morrison is a naturally cautious, if ruthless, politician who is not prime minister by accident. Almost every significant step in his career has been carefully — mostly successfully — gamed with close political colleagues.
He’s obsessively secretive, of course, so no one expects he will explain as he goes alone. Still, his worst enemies on either side of politics accord him the respect of thinking that he knows what he is doing, and expecting that he has thought it through with care.
Damned if I know, however, what he is expecting to gain, either in the domestic or the international sphere, by his play on China. Just why did he take up the gibe of an unimportant middle-level Chinese bureaucrat about the involvement of some Australians in Afghan war crimes? Leave aside any offensiveness, and intention to offend, and discard the fact that the cartoon, showing Australian soldiers slitting an Afghan’s baby’s throat, appears on a government website. The preconditions existed, perhaps, for any proud Australian to be provoked.
But prime ministers choose when, and by whom, they will be provoked, particularly when it is clear that an official reaction of some sort is expected. Not necessarily from a prime minister, of course. Or even from a foreign minister, given that the insult came from a pipsqueak, would-be tiger or not. An angry formal note from a minor diplomat at the embassy — not the ambassador — would probably have been appropriate.
Morrison has been in high level politics for more than a decade, and has been insulted by experts. No doubt he loves the country he leads — though his career has been full of occasions in which he has shown himself very careless of its reputation. But he has never been accused of being an emotional, hand-on-the-heart Tennessee-type who loses it when someone spits on the flag or disrespects the military. There is absolutely nothing spontaneous or out of control about any political anger he confects. His reaction to the provocation was deliberate and intentional. He knew he was responding in a predictable way to a stimulus applied for just that effect.
He could not have been unconscious of the likelihood that a furious response, particularly at his level, could only aggravate serious tensions that some, at least, were trying to cool down. He must have considered the possibility — even the probability — that the ratcheting up of hostilities would lead to a widening of the categories of goods now facing discrimination from Chinese markets. He would have known that the damnable thing about that sort of retaliation was that the form the penalty would take was out of Australian control. He could not even expect it to be proportionate to any rage expressed.
Beyond that, of course, he knew that China was pitching the ball right at a tender wound. The implication of the gibe — that the murder of innocent Afghans had been conscious Australian policy — was false and, to many people, including thousands of ADF veterans of Afghanistan, offensively so.
But the sore point was that Australia had just completed, and published to the world, a report showing credible evidence that some Australian soldiers had murdered Afghan civilians. It may be a tribute to our open society — and a rebuke to China’s closed one — that the allegations, facing further investigation, were now on the public record. But it made Australia vulnerable. Many an Australian cartoonist — indeed many an Australian politician — has, over the years, extrapolated from an incident far more hurtful generalisations than in the Chinese tweet.
Usually an over-reaction of this sort — often with trade penalties, or some terrorism — would follow some alleged insult to Islam, criticism of the personality of a Malaysian prime minister, or the deliberate humiliation of a PNG prime minister by a Border Force official. That would usually cause our politicians to tell the “victim” to grow up, or take a pill or, ruefully, remark that being pilloried and mocked was part and parcel of Australian life, only occasionally shared with foreigners.
Morrison is not usually reckless or crazy-brave. One has to assume that he had considered the consequences of any sort of Australian response, including one by him. He is simply not impulsive, in the manner that Tony Abbott was when he wondered aloud about an Australian invasion of Ukraine after the shooting down of a Malaysian airliner with Australians on board. Nor is he given to applying the onion, in the manner of a Bob Hawke, after the Tiananmen Square massacre.
He may well understand the attraction, to Cronulla and RSL types, of ostentatious clutching of the heart and the flag when we can pretend the honour of the nation has been impugned. But that can be managed without intent to damage the Australian economy, or to portray us as some victim.
Even for domestic consumption, and allowing for his patriotic fury that the Chinese tweet had “gone too far”, he had just been through a difficult domestic balancing exercise over the Brereton report discussing the war crimes. He warned the nation the report would be very disturbing, confronting and damaging. He told the ADF through the chief of the Defence Force General Angus Campbell that he expected a searching examination of officer responsibility as well as criminal investigations and prosecutions against the small number of non-commissioned soldiers actually accused of murder.
He had to arrange the disappearance of himself and any relevant ministers while the ADF had a bucket of shit poured over it. He then had to carefully monitor the media, especially the Murdoch tabloids, for any popular reaction, particularly within the wider defence community, or even among the many special force soldiers who had never been accused of anything.
A pathetically loyal media faithfully reports that some other nations have noticed that Australia is being bullied by China, with the implication that they care deeply about it. Some leaders have suggested that they might buy our wine, or perhaps look over our barley or our lobsters, as a gesture of solidarity. No doubt some will speak approvingly of plucky Scott Morrison putting his finger in the Chinese dyke. Such gestures are as nothing compared with the real consequences of his actions.
Perhaps (I’m giving 1000-1 against this) the Chinese will realise they have horribly overstretched. They may give in and apologise for everything back to the invasion of Tibet. Perhaps some China-sized new customer will sign one of those terribly effective free-trade agreements to sop up our excess production. This could make Morrison seem the great statesman. In the real world, however, it would be interesting to see if there’s a “good” outweighing the loss of the 10 per cent of our GDP that our China relationship is worth in a typical year. That’s bigger than the damage done to our economy this year by the coronavirus.
John Waterford AM, better known as Jack Waterford, is an Australian journalist and commentator.
Comments
16 responses to “Morrison pitching babies into hot bathwater”
Morrison is just fuelling xenophobia against the Chinese, and he has an easy task. Most Australians know nothing about China, they avoid learning the language or understanding anything about the culture, its politics and history. It can be painted as evil because Australians only seem to be able to relate to the anglosphere with both news and entertainment. And there are goody countries and baddy countries.
There is a long history of xenophobia and racism in this country directed at the Chinese well before China even became a communist country. And we being the fools we are in happily heading off to anyone’s war, were already taking part in suppressing China as far back as the Boxer Rebellion circa 1900 before WWI. Australia was even making anti-Chinese movies in the early part of the 20th Century where Chinese men invaded the country and were stealing our wives. Heaven forbid! We also had our serve of ‘yellow peril’ accusations in the first half of last Century, and also went to another pointless war in Vietnam due to McCarthyism.
Morrison knows all about nationalism and populism while knowing virtually nothing about China. It’s a nationalist-jingoist cow to milk with such ease, and there are plenty of hairy chested fools in this country who jump to Morrison’s other claim that he shares with Dutton and others amongst the Liberals: it’s the claim that “Australia is the greatest country in the world mate”, and nowhere else is better or even equal. Only we are allowed to live here (whoever we are) and anyone else that comes here these days is exceedingly lucky. We’ll even revoke your citizenship, or send you back to NZ if you are not as crime free as all Australians are apparently. Why, we’ll even smash trade with China just to be righteous. And don’t say they didn’t warn us.
Meanwhile we suppress any other stories like the plight suffered by indigenous Australians since colonisation, or the damage done to innocent refugees and their children, and of course the unsavory actions of some of our soldiers in Afghanistan should be censored. Under the Liberals who now dominate the AWM and war history, I’m sure Morrison will succeed in forcing the head of the ADF to take a less critical approach. Real Australians never do anything wrong.
To add to the ignorance about China, it appears that the economic significance of a loss of trade with China appears to hold no threat, some calling for cutting all trade both to and fro just to show those Chinese a lesson or two. Just read readers comments in the SMH for example. Many ready to go off to fight even if we are outnumbered 57 to 1.
As yet even the newspaper economists only focus on potential export losses to the Australian economy, but what will happen when all those cheap Chinese goods disappear from our shelves? What replaces them for the same price and quality? No thought to that in the least.
Still it will pay politically in the national discussion for Scott the tough guy, with his eager media mates to stir up the fuss. Too bad for Australia’s future though.
Just to report that Mungo McCallum passed away earlier this morning
Many thanks for Jack Waterford’s ruminations regarding Morrison’s political plays, particularly those concerning relations with China.
Just noticed Gladys Liu got a question in parliament’s question time with Morrison duly thanking her for all the work she is doing for the Chinese Australian community in her electorate.
President elect Biden has publicly called Xi a thug on at least two occasions as I recall. Well that’s a pretty strong statement. Further what does one do with a thug? I don’t expect Morrison to follow suit anytime soon and denounce Xi, maybe he would like to? Marise Payne differentiated our policy regarding China from the US, recently saying no to Pompeo’s coalition of the willing. We will see how long that lasts, once Morrison has engaged with Biden.
My overall impression is that Morrison is just keeping the lid on things, ensuring at all times to keep the Liberals in office. However, in my gut I feel many Australian’s might be just itching to burst out from the same old sermon of – we’ll decide how to run the country – that preacher Morrison keeps bellowing from his bully pulpit.
“it would be interesting to see if there’s a “good” outweighing the loss of the 10 per cent of our GDP that our China relationship is worth”
The good might be that Australia learns to be less dependent, more robust, more resilient. Under the current administration (and any in prospect) pigs might fly.
I question whether the “China relationship” has a net “worth”. On the evidence right now, it’s a liability.
There was no referendum in Wales in the 16th century, nor in Ireland or Australia–ever.
The Welsh didn’t need a referendum. They had a dynasty on the throne of England for the whole of the 16th century. But your general argument is right. Hume used the same evidence to demolish the silly Whig stuff about original contracts being the origin of governments. Places like Xinjiang and Tibet have the great good luck to be part of the country that will almost certainly be the centre of civilisation in the 3rd millenium (if civilisation survives).
I think you intended to reply to me, though you didn’t answer my question.
Yes, sorry. I intended to reply to your comment.
David
Obviously Australia has done very well economically from the Chinese trading relationship, although it has seen increased dependency. However even if Australia cut ties with China completely it is very unlikely we would achieve less dependency as other nations eg Thailand, Vietnam and much of Europe would rapidly fill the manufacturing void. However these nations would not buy iron ore and coal in such huge quantities so our income would be much reduced.
The reality for Australia is simply that decoupling from China will greatly reduce national income. This will mean we have far less capacity to pay for imported goods even if they come from countries other than China.
Now if such an outcome were to stimulate Australian manufacturing, it might bring some benefits but personally I am doubtful and think it more likely that we will just have to import smaller quantities of probably inferior products from elsewhere.
“if such an outcome were to stimulate Australian manufacturing” – That’s pretty much my line of thought. That China’s behaviour is more opportunity than threat.
It’s taken a generation or so for Australia to become so dependent on China (bearing in mind that the China market didn’t open up until the Whitlam era). Weaning ourselves off that dependence will probably take similar time.
As Garnaut pointed out, Australia has substantial energy resources. According to Geoscience Australia, our solar resource alone is 10,000 times as much energy as we use at present. That energy could be used to refine metals and manufacture goods. It’s also an export opportunity itself.
A report on the ABC that I read a while back mentioned that underemployment has been growing in Australia for at least 40 years. What can we achieve if we don’t waste so much labour?
I agree with your sentiment too. Apparently China imported more dollar value even after banning Australian beef, wine etc. Since they depend on Australian iron ore isotypes their manufacturing uses and that cannot be changed soon enough.. If Australia really want to retaliate then they would block export that China depends on. effectively slowing down Mr Xi’s ambitious military and civil projects.
These fights are over peanuts – tit for tats without hurting each other ..
and to prove it, we sent heavily armed, trained killers to Afghanistan.
“I don’t see any reason why Tibet being part of China should be any more controversial than Wales being part of the United Kingdom. The periods when they were put into that position were about the same. I recall, as probably most people don’t, that the the Central Intelligence Agency, with assistance from some of China’s neighbors, put $30 million into the destabilization of Tibet and basically financed and trained the participants in the Khampa rebellion and ultimately sought to remove the Dalai Lama from Tibet–which they did. They escorted him out of Tibet to Dharamsala”. US Ambassador Chas. H. Freeman, Director for Chinese Affairs at the U.S. Department of State from 1979-1981
It was controversial for East Timor being part of Indonesia, and for Scotland being part of the UK. The answer in both cases was a referendum. Would you like to see that happen in Tibet?
Jill
There is probably a very good case for every region to be allowed a self determination referendum, but only if it were supervised by a genuinely independent body. However you would need to add as a minimum Wales, Northern Ireland, Scotland (again) possibly North England, Cornwall, Hawaii, Vermont, California, Texas, Quebec (again,) Catalonia, Basque region, Guantanamo Bay, Guam, Puerto Rico, each of the regions technically still part of Ukraine Palestine and even Tasmania and WA.
I have no doubt that there will be hundreds more places too. You really cannot pick and choose on matters such as this. Over the last 1000 years many, many places have been forcibly included into empires and “nations.” What criteria do you use to determine which have a right for independence? If you allow Tibet, do you also insist on a referendum in Kashmir (you obviously must if you are fair dinkum.
I absolutely agree with you. I was only trying to point out that there are only shades of grey in questions of sovereignty, independence and self-determination. It’s easy to justify everything one country does and criticise everything another does; easy, but not practicable in the real world.
The Chinese saw Scotty coming from a mile off. He has made Australia a convenient punching bag by the PRC for the edification and in some quarters quiet satisfaction of the nations of Asia. We are literally on a hiding to nothing.