Former Canadian politician David Kilgour and human rights lawyer David Matas have unwittingly exposed the current dynamics that drive Australia's relationship with China. Mr Kilgour and Mr Matas are authors of a report alleging that mainland Chinese authorities are using the organs of executed Falun Gong dissidents to supply its booming transplant business.
Mr Kilgour and Mr Matas found that, of the 60,000 transplants the China Medical Organ Transplant Association recorded between 2000 and last year, 18,500 of those organs came from identifiable sources. That leaves 41,500 transplants from no other explained sources, says the well-publicised, 68-page report.
Some members of the Australian medical profession have backed these claims. Daryl Wall, a transplant specialist, said that 'the expansion of capital punishment has contributed significantly to the rate of organ donation in mainland China'.
The Kilgour-Matas report is providing succour to those Australians who think that their country ought to be more robust and confrontational in taking China to task over human-rights abuses.
But Canberra seems determined to ensure that the matter of organ donations, like other human-rights issues, does not jeopardise the growing strategic and economic alliance between the two countries.
Australia did raise the matter of organ harvesting and political executions at its annual human rights dialogue with China last month. But it appeared to do so simply because it thought it politic, given the publicity the Kilgour-Matas report was receiving in Australia.
The leader of the Australian delegation at that meeting, Foreign Affairs Deputy Secretary David Ritchie, was clearly prepared to give Beijing the benefit of the doubt. 'We think the evidence is not necessarily there, it's still open - which is one of the reasons why we raised the issue: we don't know one way or the other,' he said.