Australia doesn’t need to use sanctions to act against China rights concerns: Penny Wong
- The foreign minister was responding to suggestions by ex-premier Scott Morrison that the country had taken an ‘accommodating’ view towards Beijing’s rights record
- Wong added it is in both China and Australia’s interests to remove any impediments to trade, as a nearly 3-year bilateral stand-off between both sides eases
Australia’s Foreign Minister Penny Wong has cautioned against “taking advice on foreign policy” from the country’s former prime minister Scott Morrison, who has been calling for Magnitsky-style human rights sanctions against China.
Ahead of a speech on Friday that Morrison gave in Tokyo, his notes were published by Australian media, in which he wrote that the West had taken an “accommodating” view to Beijing’s human rights situation.
Wong, who was speaking to reporters after a ministerial forum with Papua New Guinea, said human rights were important to Australia but there were various ways to express its concerns.
“I’m not sure how much advice it would be sensible to take from Mr Morrison on foreign policy but … I outlined at length our position on sanctions as not the only, but one of the ways, in which Australia will express and assert its values,” she said.
On trade, Wong reaffirmed that it was in both China and Australia’s interests to remove any impediments, in another sign the nearly three-year bilateral stand-off between Beijing and Canberra was on the mend.
Morrison, who did not impose any sanctions against China before his government lost the election last May, spoke at the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China’s symposium in Tokyo on Friday.
He was joined by former British and Belgian prime ministers, Liz Truss and Guy Verhofstadt.
According to Reuters, Truss said in her speech at the symposium – her first since being forced out of office last year – that the West should take a tougher stance against China, including on helping to boost Taiwan’s defences.
The Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China was set up in 2020 to coordinate policies by democratic governments towards Beijing, and includes politicians such as US Senator Marco Rubio as one of its many co-chairs.
Aukus: Australia’s best way to counter China, or an expensive mistake?
On Friday, Australian Deputy Prime Minister Richard Marles also rebuffed Morrison’s approach saying that pursuing human rights issues with China could be done most effectively when Australia had a relationship with China.
When asked if Canberra should take a more aggressive stance as called for by Morrison, Marles said the Australian government regularly raised human rights issues with Beijing but that it was important it did it in a way that was respectful and in the context of a more stabilised relationship with China.
“What we seek to do is to pursue these issues in a way which makes the greatest difference. And having a relationship with China where we can raise these issues is really important and it is actually possible to walk that balance which this government is doing,” Marles said in Canberra on Friday.
These sentiments were also echoed by Australia’s opposition leader Peter Dutton, and leader of Morrison’s Liberal Party.
“There will always be tensions, but Australia is going to stand up for our sovereignty. This government’s done that and we can do it in a respectful way,” he told the local press on Friday.
