Australia’s Scott Morrison goes full throttle on anti-China rhetoric to boost re-election bid

The prime minister painted the opposition Labor Party as pro-Beijing and called his main rival Anthony Albanese weak on national security
Morrison’s attack coincides with surveys showing his Liberal National Coalition government on track for a major defeat in an election that must be held by May 21

Australia

Bloomberg

Published: 11:48am, 24 Feb 2022

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Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison is betting on a risky election strategy in his bid for another surprise come-from-behind election win: Turning China relations into a major campaign issue.

The 53-year-old leader has recently painted the opposition Labor Party as pro-China, calling his main rival Anthony Albanese weak on national security and labelling another lawmaker a “Manchurian candidate” – a comment he later withdrew. Labor has dismissed Morrison’s attacks as a desperate attempt to ensure his political survival.

The escalation in anti-China rhetoric coincides with opinion polls showing Morrison’s centre-right Liberal National Coalition government on track for a major defeat in an election that must be held by May 21. A Newspoll survey this month found the Coalition trailing Labor by 10 percentage points, which would translate into a loss of as many as 21 seats for a government that currently holds a slim majority.

“We don’t often have elections bent on foreign policy, but the polls show the government has ground to make up,” said Natasha Kassam, director of the Public Opinion and Foreign Policy programme at Sydney’s Lowy Institute. “And national security has always been more comfortable campaigning space for the Coalition than for Labor.”

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Relations between Australia and its largest trading partner have suffered in recent years, particularly over accusations of Beijing trying to influence domestic politics. After Morrison’s call in 2020 for an international probe into the origins of Covid-19, Australian exports encountered obstacles in Chinese ports, including long customs delays and high tariffs.

As a result, opinions of China have deteriorated. In 2017, less than a third of Australians had a negative view of China, according to Pew Research. By 2020, that number had soared to 81 per cent.

Still, it’s unclear if the issue will be high on the minds of voters when they enter the polling booth. A survey by Newspoll in January found just 10 per cent of respondents considered “the threat of China” the most important issue, ranking fourth after the pandemic, the economy and climate change.

Morrison’s poll numbers began to plummet after an Omicron outbreak in recent months saw testing shortages and empty supermarket shelves across the country.

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Similar anti-China strategies have also failed to work out for conservative candidates in recent elections in the US and Canada. Former president Donald Trump and challenger Erin O’Toole both lost after accusing their opponents of being too weak to handle Beijing.

What’s more, polls show the China issue may not even help Morrison. A survey by Essential polling published on February 22 found more people trusted Labor to handle the relationship with China than the government by an 11-point margin.

While 61 per cent of the respondents said Australia’s relationship with China was “a complex relationship to be managed,” only 26 per cent said China was a “threat to be confronted.”

“That polling does show that the government’s got to be probably a lot more careful than it has been so far,” said Michelle Grattan, a professorial fellow at the University of Canberra who has written about the country’s politics for decades, including currently for The Conversation.

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Morrison’s government has taken a more muscular stance toward the Chinese government than its predecessors, restarting the Quad security partnership with India, Japan and the US and criticising Beijing over alleged human rights abuses in Hong Kong and Xinjiang. But Labor has largely adopted similar positions, with Albanese recently placing the blame for deteriorating relations squarely on Beijing.

An example of the bipartisan approach came last weekend, when both major parties rushed to condemn reports of a Chinese navy vessel shining a laser at an Australian reconnaissance plane. Morrison called it “an act of intimidation” while the Labor Party said it was “not the actions of a responsible power.”

Some of Morrison’s harsh language on the campaign trail also risks backfiring among the ethnic Chinese population of more 1.2 million people. Almost 20 per cent of the population in the swing seat of Chisholm in Melbourne are ethnically Chinese, a seat won by the Liberal Party’s Gladys Liu in 2019 by just over 1,000 votes.

Australia’s Labour Party leader Anthony Albanese. Photo: AAP Image via AP

The concerns go beyond the election itself. At a recent New South Wales by-election, Labor candidate Jason Li said he and his team were subjected to a large number of racist comments.

Morrison has been quick to draw a clear distinction between Beijing and the local Chinese community. He said in a recent interview that “we love the Chinese people and particular Chinese-Australians,” adding they were some of the country’s most patriotic citizens.

Yet Chinese-Australians are growing more concerned by the campaign rhetoric, according to Osmond Chiu, research fellow at the Per Capita research group in Melbourne.

“One of the big concerns is that its being done in a way that treats Chinese-Australians as collateral damage,” he said. “I don’t think there’s really an appreciation of that.”