ANALYSIS

Malcolm Turnbull’s two days in Hangzhou have highlighted the conflicted bind our relationship with Beijing lands him in when it comes to China.

On the one hand it is a major engine room for our economy. On the other, a threat to our national security.

Mr Turnbull in Opposition stirred controversy when he said  telecommunications giant Huawei should be allowed a role in the NBN. Its links with the Chinese government were not a problem in his view.

Mr Turnbull, like all our prime ministers going back decades, mostly welcomes the billions of investment dollars.

The generosity of Chinese companies, even ones with links to the Communist Party, to the Liberal, Labor and National parties are above board and gratefully pocketed.

And not without a whiff of hypocrisy.

An example is the declaration of $65,000 to the Liberals from the Top End Institute. That’s the same organisation Senator Cory Bernardi painted as a sinister Communist agent over its gift of $1670 to Labor’s Sam Dastyari.

Attorney-General George Brandis has turned himself inside out trying to say there is something materially different between this and other political donations. Donations like the one made directly into the electorate account of Julie Bishop.

”It’s as if the money went directly into Senator Dastyari’s bank account,” he railed on Sky News.

George Brandis has railed against the Dastyari donation. Photo: AAP

Indeed where else would it go? Never mind that in all instances the rules were not broken and the transaction reported in accordance with the requirements.

But what gives piquancy to the attack on Mr Dastyari are the reports picked up from Chinese state-owned media, where he was quoted supporting Beijing’s South China Sea expansionist ambitions.

In June this year, Australian-based Chinese journalists covered a news conference that Mr Dastyari held with his donor Minshen Zhu.

No Australian media were present. There appears to be no recording of his speech although Chinese state-owned TV was there.

The senator says he isn’t responsible for the way his comments were misreported. He says he has consistently supported Australia’s position on the South China Sea and did again at the June event.

He’s certainly not the first person to be treated in this way. Australian ministers have also suffered.

Professor Rory Medcalf, head of the National Security College at the Australian National University, has suffered similar misrepresentation.

Rory Medcalf says China’s “soft corruption” is a threat to national security. Photo: ANU

He says: “It’s standard practice for much of the Chinese media to portray foreign voices as echoing Chinese policy preferences.”

Professor Medcalf believes China’s “soft corruption” is a threat to our national security. The payments to politicians and political parties have one real purpose: the advancement of China’s political interests. What else?

The solution: ban all foreign political donations. Labor has tried twice in the last nine years only to have the Coalition vote it down. Labor leader Bill Shorten says it is still policy.

Mr Dastyari admits he was dumb asking his Chinese donor to pay what really is a piddling travel bill.

BA Santamaria typified the anti-Chinese feeling during the Menzies era.

But to then paint him as the Manchurian candidate as Mr Bernardi did is politically opportunistic hyperbole that has its roots in the Cold War.

In the late 1950s, Australia’s most famous anti-Communist, BA Santamaria, attacked the Menzies government for selling wheat to Red China. Thankfully that mentality has not survived.

But its vestiges are alive and well, not only in the hard right, but with more mainstream Liberals like the Prime Minister. At least when it is politically expedient.

Paul Bongiorno AM is a veteran of the Canberra Press Gallery, with 40 years’ experience covering Australian politics. He is Contributing Editor for Network Ten, appears on Radio National Breakfast and writes a weekly column on national affairs for The New Daily. He tweets at @PaulBongiorno

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