Australia needs to halt toxic rhetoric

With an election due before May, the Australian government of Prime Minister Scott Morrison has kicked off his election campaign by playing the "China card".

In other words, Morrison is using Australia's deteriorating relationship with its biggest trading partner to intimidate the opposition Australian Labor Party and scare the electorate into thinking it has something to fear from China.

This is the lowest form of politics and displays a government bereft of ideas.

A poll published on Feb 22 by The Guardian Australia found that Australian voters trusted Labor more than the ruling Liberal-National Party coalition government to manage the Australia-China relationship, which has been in sharp decline in recent years. It also found they trusted Labor leader Anthony Albanese over Morrison.

On Feb 14, Morrison, his army of spin doctors and a compliant rightwing media managed to take an opinion piece, which appeared in the Global Times, by a former middle-ranking Australian diplomat, as China's endorsement of Albanese.

It was one person's opinion, saying that Albanese "shines" when compared with Morrison. Hardly an endorsement from Beijing.

Defense Minister Peter Dutton has repeatedly claimed the Communist Party of China has backed Albanese as their preferred prime minister. He never presents any evidence.

He often refers to Labor as being "soft" on China.

In a National Press Club address in November, Dutton spoke of the "dark clouds" building in the "deteriorating" region and appeared to compare China with the Axis powers in the lead-up to World War II.

China has said nothing on the Australian election. But that has not stopped Dutton and his odious rhetoric.

Feb 16 saw a display in Parliament's question time that was nothing short of puerile.

Morrison started off by attacking Albanese and Labor for being "too soft" on China. Then he launched an extraordinary attack on Labor's deputy leader, Richard Marles, labeling him a "Manchurian candidate". He later withdrew the remark.

What did Morrison base his attack on? A speech given by Marles at Beijing Foreign Studies University in 2019, in which he called for Australia to continue building strong ties with China. One would have thought that was a reasonable suggestion.

The rhetoric of late has become so toxic that the head of the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation, Mike Burgess, went on the Australian Broadcasting Corp's current affairs program 7.30 on Feb 16 to say the politicization of national security was "not helpful".

Of course, there are those on the right of politics who say all of this is part of robust political debate. But is it?

There has been an insidious campaign in recent years of smearing politicians for even being seen with Chinese businessmen.

The latest victim of this guilt by association has been the New South Wales Labor leader Chris Minns, who went on a trip to China in 2015 funded by Australian-Chinese billionaire Huang Xiangmo. In 2019, the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation stripped Huang of his visa amid claims－none substantiated－that he had been seeking to influence Australian politics on behalf of China.

The property developer had donated at least A$2.7 million ($1.96 million) to both major political parties during his time in the country.

Minns defended his decision not to declare who funded the trip at the time because he had not officially been sworn in as a member of the NSW Parliament.

There has been no evidence to suggest China is behind any attempt to interfere with Australian politics.

Australian Chinese are model citizens and are rightly worried that unless the rhetoric ends, they could become victims of racist attacks. But this doesn't stop the prime minister or Dutton from finding a reason to attack China.

Even the latest claim that a Chinese warship in waters off northern Australia shone a laser at an Australian Air Force aircraft saw the usual knee-jerk reaction from Canberra.

The government will use this as another reason to ramp up the rhetoric at a time when the world needs calm, rational debate, not the jingoism we are seeing today.

The author is a China Daily correspondent based in Sydney. The views do not necessarily reflect those of China Daily.