Australian foreign minister Marise Payne: a China dove, hawk or parrot?
As Australian defence minister, Marise Payne was often critical of Beijing. Now that she is foreign minister, China will find out if she was just following her department’s advice – or if there’s a deeper problem to worry about
When Scott Morrison unveiled his first cabinet after becoming the 30th prime minister of Australia late last month, Chinese media honed in on one appointment in particular: Marise Payne as minister for foreign affairs.
As defence minister under former prime minister Malcolm Turnbull, whose introduction of anti-foreign interference laws strained China-Australia relations, Payne raised Beijing’s ire by criticising its military build-up in the South China Sea.
In the Global Times, Zhou Fangyin, an international relations expert at Guangdong University of Foreign Studies, suggested Payne’s move to foreign affairs was a harbinger of Canberra adopting a more hawkish stance towards Beijing.
But many Australian observers doubt the appointment of Payne, a career politician and senator of over two decades, signals any major turn in Australian foreign policy.
“As an individual, I don’t have any sense of her having particular views on China or indeed foreign policy,” Richard McGregor, a senior fellow at the Lowy Institute, told This Week in Asia. “I think as defence minister she was sort of parroting the defence department and as foreign minister I imagine she’ll also be very much mindful of what advice she gets from the foreign ministry as to what she says.”
“She is a moderate in all forms really,” McGregor added, noting Payne’s reputation as a relatively liberal member of the mostly conservative Liberal Party. “So that is why I’m not persuaded that she is particularly hawkish, as opposed to her colleagues.”