China’s Lapdogs Are off the Leash

As the Australian government is garnering attention and accolades around the world as a middle power nation standing firm against the global bully China, there is no shortage of Beijing’s useful idiots all-too-eager to try and pull the rug from under Canberra’s feet.

Some of them are home-grown: whether it’s Victoria’s socialist premier, Daniel Andrews, signing on to the notorious Belt and Road Initiative, or China-besotted billionaires sneaking Chinese into official functions where they seize the podium to lecture and browbeat Australia’s elected officials.

Then there are Beijing’s useful idiots across the Tasman. The Ardern government has become a chorus of yapping lapdogs, obediently sitting up and begging when their masters bark the order. Lead poodle, Jacinda Ardern, nipped at Scott Morrison’s heels at the Pacific Forum last year and now her toothless bulldog is wheezing and flapping its gums.

Australian officials say they were blindsided when New Zealand’s Foreign Minister Nanaia Mahuta criticised efforts to pressure China through the 70-year-old spy alliance known as the “Five Eyes”[…]

The language is carefully couched but it has real consequences. Our nearest neighbour did not inform Australia of its position before Mahuta this week voiced her government’s discomfort about the “expanding remit” of Five Eyes.

While Wellington’s conspicuous absence from a few joint statements had caused unease in Canberra over the past year, Australian officials did not know about New Zealand’s official opposition to using the spy network to exert diplomatic pressure on Beijing.

While there have been other incidents over the past year demonstrating how strained trans-Tasman relations have become, this development is likely to cause diplomatic friction in the coming weeks.

So much so that Scott Morrison is heading to Wellington with a rolled-up newspaper.

The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age can reveal Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison will visit New Zealand in two weeks to meet with his counterpart Jacinda Ardern. The future of Five Eyes will be a hot topic of discussion.

The issue will be discussed at senior levels before then, with Australian Foreign Minister Marise Payne and International Development Minister Zed Seselja flying to New Zealand on Wednesday to meet their counterparts.

Siccing Marise Payne onto Nanaia Mahuta is sending a pitbull into the ring against a slobbering, confused bulldog.

While no one in the Australian government is seriously suggesting New Zealand is at risk of being booted out of the intelligence-sharing network, Canberra and Washington are concerned by Wellington’s attempt to curtail its expansion. In Canberra, joking references to the “Four Eyes” have only increased in recent months.

Maybe they’re jokes… for now. But, as an editorial cartoon in Beijing’s official mouthpiece, The Global Times, makes clear, China is smiling for all the wrong reasons.

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