Australian election: was the Labor Party’s loss a setback for China’s interests?

Chinese state-run media and commentators seemed interested in a victory for opposition party led by Bill Shorten, who saw Beijing’s rise as an ‘opportunity’

Although Prime Minister Scott Morrison’s Liberal Party remains in power, experts say US-China tensions mean Canberra will soon have to decide between them

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Scott Morrison, Prime Minister of Australia and leader of the Liberal Party, delivers a victory speech accompanied by his family. Photo: EPA-EFE

Published: 7:00am, 21 May 2019Updated: 4:12pm, 21 May 2019

Prime Minister Scott Morrison may have celebrated his surprise victory in Australia’s federal election over the weekend by calling it a “miracle”, but state-run media in China saw little reason to cheer.

In an editorial published hours after it became clear Morrison’s centre-right Liberal Party had cruised to victory in Saturday’s election, the hawkish Global Times seemed to lament the result.

“This election result also means that China-Australia relations, which have deteriorated in recent years under the leadership of the ruling coalition formed by the Australian Liberal Party and the National Party, will continue to have uncertain prospects,” it said on May 19.

Before the vote, party mouthpieces made no bones about their preference for a government led by the centre-left Labor Party, whose leader Bill Shorten had welcomed China’s rise as a “strategic opportunity” and pledged to reset relations that had frayed after the passage last year of sweeping anti-foreign interference laws widely seen as directed at Beijing.

“There’s always a general sense in China that the Liberals would be more hawkish and the Labor Party would be a little more conversational,” said Merriden Varrall, a non-resident fellow at the Lowy Institute think tank in Sydney.

On popular Chinese social media and messaging app WeChat, dozens of top verified accounts in China mounted a sustained campaign of negative coverage of Morrison’s government in the run-up to the vote, according to researchers at University of Canberra’s Institute for Governance and Policy Analysis.

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