Geoff Raby says a more hawkish line is creating turmoil, and part of the problem is a rift between Turnbull and Bishop

This article is more than 2 years old

This article is more than 2 years old

Australia’s security establishment has sidelined the department of foreign affairs on the China relationship and driven a more hawkish line, creating turmoil, according to a former Australian ambassador to Beijing.



Geoff Raby contends in a post on the Pearls and Irritations blog that a deteriorating relationship between Malcolm Turnbull and Julie Bishop is part of the reason the Canberra-Beijing relationship is off the rails.

Raby, a former diplomat and deputy secretary in the foreign affairs department, now China-based businessman, says: “A deputy who has survived three leaders does bear watching.”

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As well as political intrigues, Raby says the government’s China policy is a “mess” in part because the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation has “politicised itself” by running a “China-threat campaign”.

He says the “security establishment” – defence, the office of national assessments, Asio, the international spy agency Asis, the international division of the prime minister’s department, and some publicly funded thinktanks – has responded to China’s rise, and its successful challenge of US pre-eminence, by sidelining the foreign affairs department.

Raby claims that Australia’s security establishment “some time ago concluded that the China relationship was too important to trust to Dfat” and he says the foreign minister’s role in managing the bilateral relationship has become “inconsequential”.

He says Bishop tried to “play herself back into the Canberra China game” by giving a “bizarre speech, written by her office, in Singapore last year in which she declared China to be unfit for regional leadership because it was not democratic”.

The former Beijing ambassador says the relationship is being bungled because there is “an ideologically pre-conditioned policy-making establishment in Canberra which is quixotically hoping for the return of the old, US-led order” – a posture that is damaging to Australia’s interests.

He claims that Asio is briefing “selected media against certain individuals who it suspects – rightly or wrongly – of being Chinese agents of influence” and suggests the domestic spy agency “would appear to be the most likely source of the media briefing about former senator [Sam] Dastyari’s cautioning of businessman Huang that his phone was being tapped”.

Turnbull conceded mid-month that diplomatic tension between Australia and China had ramped up in response to the government’s proposed foreign interference crackdown.

China’s ambassador to Australia warned in a rare public interview in April that the bilateral relationship had been marred by “systematic, irresponsible and negative remarks” about China, and signalled that trading ties could be damaged.

Late in April the Australian academic Clive Hamilton gave evidence before a US congressional committee that Beijing was waging a “campaign of psychological warfare” against Australia, as America’s most significant ally in the region, undermining democracy and cowing free speech.

China waging 'psychological warfare' against Australia, US Congress told Read more

Hamilton is the author of Silent Invasion: China’s Influence in Australia, a book which was dumped by publishers Allen & Unwin last year over fears of legal action by Beijing, before being published by Hardie Grant.

The academic has been one of the leading public voices arguing that China is intent on pressuring Australia through acts of “psychological warfare”.

But Raby criticises some of the current public commentary against people “seeking to promote a more constructive and balanced approach to how to respond to China’s rise and the changed international order”.

He says people trying to promote a positive bilateral relationship are attacked “as apologists for China, fellow travellers, mercenaries and Panda huggers – the last is the most damning”.

Raby says the pushback “is intended to stifle legitimate policy discussion and development”.

“The mess that Australia’s China policy is now in attests to this”.