Australian PM Anthony Albanese says no to US-style TikTok ban
- Albanese said ‘we have no plans’ to replicate a move by US legislators to ban the app unless it agrees to divest from its Chinese owner
- The prime minister also said he was looking forward to Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi’s visit to Canberra next week
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“We will take advice but we have no plans to do that,” Prime Minister Anthony Albanese told a radio interviewer when asked if Australia would follow suit.
“You’ve always got to have national security concerns front and centre,” he said.
“But you also need to acknowledge that for a whole lot of people, this provides a way of them communicating and so we have not got advice at this stage to do that.”
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Australia banned TikTok from government devices in April 2023 – the last member of the secretive Five Eyes security alliance do to so after the US, Britain, Canada and New Zealand.
“We don’t use TikTok on government phones and that is an appropriate measure that we’ve put in place,” Albanese said.
He also said China’s Foreign Minister Wang Yi will visit Australia next week.
“I think it is a good thing that Wang Yi is visiting,” Albanese told reporters on Thursday, citing “significant progress” in removing trade impediments.
The Chinese minister is scheduled to hold “strategic dialogue” talks with Foreign Minister Penny Wong in Canberra on March 20.
“We seek to cooperate with China where we can, disagree where we must and engage in our national interest,” Wong said in a statement.
“It’s Australia’s view that a stable bilateral relationship would enable both countries to pursue respective national interests, if we navigate our differences wisely.”
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Australia’s trade relations with China have improved since Albanese’s centre-left Labor Party won government in 2022, adopting a less confrontational tone than the previous conservative government.
China had imposed tariffs and trade barriers on key Australian exports in 2020, angered by measures including Canberra’s barring of Huawei from 5G contracts and its call for a probe into the origins of the Covid-19 pandemic.
Beijing has already unwound tariffs and restrictions on Australian coal, timber and barley, and it is expected to do the same for Australian wine within weeks.
New Zealand Foreign Minister Winston Peters said Wang would also be visiting Wellington.
“We look forward to re-engaging with Foreign Minister Wang Yi and discussing the full breadth of the bilateral relationship, which is one of New Zealand’s most important and complex.”
