When your closest allies start asking hard questions about where your loyalties really lie, it’s long past time to take stock. Once might be a coincidence, but twice?
First, it was the US government taking the Albanese government to task for welching on its defence obligations and too-obviously pandering to the Chinese communist regime. (Which shouldn’t be a surprise: the CCP spent a lot of money and effort in helping Labor get re-elected. Besides, a roster of Labor elder statesmen are or were on the CCP payroll.)
Now, it’s Japan’s turn to give Albanese the stick.
Japan’s former top diplomat in Australia, Shingo Yamagami, has accused the Albanese government of failing to support his country publicly in the face of a vicious Chinese campaign directed at new Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi.
The Japan-Australia story is a remarkable one. In living memory, Japan posed an existential threat to Australia, and its imperial war machine visited unspeakable atrocities on Australians, as it did to its victims on the Asian mainland. But where, say, China remains openly hostile to reformist post-War Japan, countries like Australia soon welcomed the newly-pacifist one-time enemy. Just 15 years after the war, Japanese television star Koichi Ose toured Australia to a hero’s welcome from fans. Trade and cultural ties blossomed, with Japan eventually becoming an informal partner in Australia’s security alliances, including a Joint Declaration on Security Cooperation that makes the two countries allies in all but formality.
Now, it’s up to Japan to ask if Australia – or at least, its current Labor government – really has its heart in it.
Mr Yamagami, an adviser to Ms Takaichi, says Japan took a strong public stand against China’s Covid-era coercion of Australia but Canberra has failed to reciprocate.
“When Australia came under tremendous pressure from China and was subject to similar economic coercion, Japan stated out loud that Australia was not walking alone,” he writes in the Australian. “Is it too much to expect the same from our Aussie mates in times of need?”
While the Chinese threat to Australia might seem distant (only if you carefully ignore China’s Silent Invasion, as academic Clive Hamilton terms it), to Japan, it’s literally just across the water.
Ms Takaichi prompted a furious backlash from Beijing after she told her country’s parliament last month that a Chinese attack on Taiwan could trigger Japanese military action. “If you stick that filthy neck where it doesn’t belong, it’s going to get sliced off,” Xue Jian, China’s consul-general in Osaka, declared in response.
China demanded an apology from Ms Takaichi, accusing her of crossing “a red line” as it banned Japanese seafood imports and warned Chinese tourists to steer clear of the country.
Such brutal language might seem more at home in the Hitlerian 1930s. Certainly, directed at Australia it would reduce the government to a grovelling heap. Japan is made of sterner stuff.
But the Japanese prime minister stood firm, saying it was “important for Japan to state clearly what needs to be said”.
Mr Yamagami writes: “What if a Chinese foreign ministry spokeswoman demanded that the prime minister of Australia retract his remarks made in the Parliament House while the Consul-General of China in Sydney posted his willingness to decapitate the PM on his X account? You’d be hard-pressed to imagine such a scenario. Yet that is precisely what is happening between Japan and China.”
Instead, the Australian government is set to sit in cowardly silence as yet another hostile Chinese fleet menaces our shores.
Foreign Minister Penny Wong – who is scheduled to travel to Japan and China before the end of the year – has said nothing publicly about Beijing’s coercion of Australia’s closest partner in Asia. But in comments to the Australian, Senator Wong rejected suggestions the Albanese government had failed to support the nation’s quasi-ally.
Except that we can all see it for ourselves, Penny. It’s about as convincing as your mealy mouthed dodging on the Britanny Higgins lies.
Mr Yamagami, a former Japanese intelligence chief, has been a vocal critic of the Albanese government’s position on China and faced criticism from Senator Wong before Labor was elected over hawkish comments that ran counter to her push to stabilise ties with Beijing. He warned just months ago the Albanese government’s muted China diplomacy was “tantamount to appeasement”, urging a more full-throated response to the challenges posed by Beijing.
Of course it’s appeasement. Albanese and Wong would gladly hand the Sudetenland over to Xi Jinping, if they could. Anything to curry favour with the communist dictator.
