While in an interview on 5AA Radio the same day, Dutton said, “Of course we are not going to be deviating off course from dealing with a very serious issue. We aren’t going to be held to ransom or succumb to threats from anybody.”
The comments came after the Chinese embassy in Canberra leaked its version of an April 28 conversation between high-level Australian diplomat Frances Adamson and China’s Ambassador Cheng Jingye.
In addition to the inquiry, Australia has been seeking international support for reform of the World Health Organisation in order to prevent any future repeat of actions that contributed to the Wuhan outbreak becoming a global pandemic. This includes the United Nations organisation’s dissemination of the catastrophically incorrect information that the virus was not transmissible from human-to-human.
The following morning on April 29, the embassy released a response that accused Australian officials of leaking information and the contents of the phone call to the media.
The embassy said that China doesn’t “play petty tricks,” but then went on to contradict this statement by saying, “But if others do, we have to reciprocate.”
“I think some of the comments are very much out of line and regrettable,” the home affairs minister told 5AA Radio.
Treasurer Josh Frydenberg said China’s latest criticisms of Australia are ludicrous.
“We won’t bow to economic coercion, we will continue to talk up in Australia’s national interest, and we won’t trade off health outcomes for economic outcomes.”
The Stakes for China
Michael Shoebridge, director of the Defence and National Security Strategy and Policy program at the Australian Strategic Policy Institute said China’s actions are anxiety “masquerading as strength.”“The stakes are high for the Chinese government not just internationally but domestically, because a credible international inquiry into the pandemic and events and actions within China at the start will undercut Beijing’s rewriting of history that is trying to tell us the Party is triumphant over COVID,” he told The Epoch Times via email on April 29.
China’s Australian embassy is acting no differently to other ones around the world. Shoebridge said several ambassadors have been called in by their hosting governments over similar “aggressive behaviour.”
China’s Economic Threats
A successful trade relationship with China will depend on its respecting Australia’s sovereignty and independence, Morrison told reporters.Morrison believes Australia and China can maintain its strategic partnership, even as the virus origins are investigated.
He also doesn’t appear to be afraid of China’s threat of economic consequences.
“Australia will find markets, as we have now for a long time, all around the world,” he said.
Call to Reset China Relations
Crossbench senator Rex Patrick said in a press release on April 29 that Australia’s relations with China needed a reset following Cheng’s threat of a Chinese boycott.“The Ambassador revealed China’s true diplomatic face and confirmed concerns about China’s preference for control and coercion rather than partnership,” said Patrick.
“Australia is at a strategic, diplomatic, and economic turning point in our relations with China,” he said.
Patrick will try for a sixth-time to establishing a parliamentary inquiry into relations with communist China when Parliament sits next month.