Australia’s Huawei 5G ban is a ‘hedge’ against future Chinese aggression, says former prime minister Malcolm Turnbull
- Huawei and fellow Chinese company ZTE were both banned from supplying 5G equipment to Australia’s wireless network in August on national security grounds
- Failure to compete with Huawei and ZTE on 5G a ‘big oversight on the part of previous American administrations’
Australia banned Huawei and ZTE from its 5G network as a “hedge against adverse contingencies” in case relations with China soured in the future, according to former Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull.
Turnbull, who was ousted as leader in August 2018, said that his government “decided not to allow 5G networks to be built out by companies that have an obligation to their own country to assist the intelligence services of those countries”.
“We have to, in an uncertain world, hedge against contingencies where people who we have friendly relations with, we may not necessarily be friends with in the future,” Turnbull said in an interview with the South China Morning Post in Hong Kong this week.
Huawei and ZTE were both banned from supplying 5G equipment to Australia’s wireless network in August on national security grounds. Under Chinese law, Chinese companies have an obligation to cooperate with the country’s intelligence services.
With 5G set to provide the technological rails for societies of the future, it is feared that allowing Chinese firms to build the networks could act as a Trojan horse for espionage.