The Australian Parliament passed a bill giving the federal government the power to veto agreements between local governments or agencies and foreign countries. The Prime Minister stressed that the bill is self-serving and not directed at any country. A former local legislator who participated in hearings on the amendment said the bill was clearly directed at China, and predicted that agreements for local governments and agencies to participate in the Belt and Road or Confucius Institutes would be null and void.
Australia’s Parliament on Thursday (Dec. 3) passed the Foreign Relations Bill, which gives the federal government the power to veto agreements between Australian states, state parliaments or agencies and foreign governments.
Under the new draft law, Australia’s foreign minister can veto an agreement if he or she determines that it “adversely affects Australia’s relations” or is “inconsistent with Australia’s foreign policy.
With the new bill in place, the most interesting issue is the direction of the Belt and Road framework agreement signed last year between Victoria and China. Victoria’s Premier, Daniel Andrews, has been a friend of the Chinese authorities since 2016, when the state established a provincial-level friendship with Sichuan, and in 2018 launched the Victorian China Strategy.
The Australian Parliament passed the draft Australian Foreign Relations (States and Territories) Act 2020 and draft amendments on December 3. (Screenshot from the Australian Parliament website)
Former Australian MP Yuming Hu, who supported the bill and participated in earlier hearings on the bill, said that Victoria’s Premier’s insistence on signing the “Belt and Road” agreement with China was a direct reason for the bill’s creation.
The federal government has made it clear for several years that Australia does not support the Belt and Road,” said Hu. However, the Governor of Victoria signed the “Belt and Road” bill on the grounds that it would benefit Victoria’s employment and exports. The funny thing is that recently, many Australian exports to China have been rejected, many of them from Victoria. The federal government has publicly expressed its displeasure with this agreement signed by Victoria and has communicated with the Premier of Victoria, but to no avail. Because the state has its autonomy, the federal government could only do nothing, which led to the introduction of this law.
Hu Yuming also said that China is using the independent power enjoyed by the Australian state government as an economic bait to violate Australia’s national interests in a piecemeal manner, and that it is wise for the federal government to withdraw its foreign policy powers. And it is clear to legislators and onlookers that the bill is clearly aimed at China.
The federal government only has 51 powers granted by the constitution, which it cannot exceed. Therefore, if China infiltrates the state governments, it will break every one of them. We all know this by heart and we all know that the legislation is directed at China. Now with this law, the federal government can justifiably cancel Victoria’s “One Belt, One Road”, and Australia is now at the forefront of the Western world’s fight against Chinese bullying.
Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison told reporters in Canberra on Thursday after the new law was passed by parliament that Australia’s policies and laws are based on its own interests and needs, while stressing that the new law is not directed at any country.
But Morrison declined to comment on whether the federal government would veto Victoria’s “One Belt, One Road” agreement with China. The Morrison government had earlier criticized the agreement as weakening the federal government’s ability to control foreign policy.
Australian commentator and Watch China editor-in-chief Xia Yan also pointed out that Australia’s Anti-Infiltration Act, which was introduced two years ago, was blocked by local governments and some institutions that work closely with the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), and the government was forced to introduce new legislation that would give the federal government the right to intervene in future CCP infiltration projects such as the Belt and Road Agreement and the Confucius Institute.
Xia Yan said: “The penetration of the Chinese Communist Party in Australia is too strong. It has affected Australia’s democratic values, freedom of speech, national security, and the government has to use the power to get tough measures through legislation. The
At the time of writing, the office of Victoria’s Premier Andrews had not responded to our request for comment.
Some analysts predict that the new bill will add fuel to the already strained relations between China and Australia. Among them, Melissa Conley Tyler, a research fellow at the Institute of Asian Studies at the University of Melbourne, argued that the bill would further aggravate China-Australia relations. She had earlier urged the government to abandon passage of the bill and to take swift steps to ease relations between the two countries.
China’s relations with Australia have deteriorated sharply since Morrison called for an independent international investigation into the origin of the Wuhan pneumonia virus after it spread around the world earlier this year. In recent months, China has blocked billions of dollars worth of Australian goods from entering customs, including lobster, wine, barley, and logs from Victoria, a state whose “One Belt, One Road” agreement has been called into question by the governor for failing to become a passport for the export of its goods.
And China’s most iconic diplomat, Zhao Lijian, brought relations to a frosty low on Monday (Nov. 30) when he published a cartoon of Australian soldiers holding bloodied knives to the throats of Afghan children, satirizing Australia.
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