Daniel Andrews has begun a series of meetings in Beijing as part of a four-day trip to China amid criticism from home over the exclusion of Australian journalists and education leaders, and the limited information provided about the visit.
The Victorian opposition has accused the premier of snubbing industry leaders from the higher education sector by not having them join him on a visit designed to entice Chinese students back to the state.
The acting premier, Jacinta Allan, argued the visit was a “business trip” rather than an “event trip”.
The premier’s private office on Tuesday afternoon released a half-page outline of Andrews’ day, which included meetings with China’s minister of education, Huai Jinpeng, and the mayor of Beijing, Dr Yin Yong.
The premier was expected to meet the vice-president of the Chinese People’s Association for Friendship with Foreign Countries (CPAFFC), Li Xukui; the commissioner for Victoria to Greater China, Brett Stevens; and Australia’s ambassador to China, Graham Fletcher.
The president of the Media, Entertainment and Arts Alliance union that represents journalists, Karen Percy, said the premier’s decision not to invite media to accompany him was “disturbing”, particularly given there have been no accredited Australian journalists in the country since September 2020.
“We’re being sidelined, we’re not being considered at all and that’s hugely problematic,” Percy said. “It affects our press freedom rating.
“Corruption is going up while press freedom is going down. These things are ultimately related.”
Percy, who has been a foreign correspondent in south-east Asia and Russia, raised concerns about the lack of information the government has released to date on the trip. She said the schedule was “completely lacking” of information necessary for journalists to do their job.
“It’s weird,” Percy said. “It’s very unusual. During my time as a foreign correspondent we’d receive talking points ahead of meetings the prime minister or a minister were having.”
This trip is Andrews’ seventh to China, and marks the first by an Australian leader since the Aukus defence pact was signed. But in a break from tradition, no journalists, relevant ministers or stakeholders were invited.
The Liberal opposition’s education spokesperson, Matt Bach, backed the trip but argued the premier was preventing higher education leaders and university vice-chancellors from providing “meaningful contribution” to the state’s relationship with China.
But the chancellor of La Trobe University, former Victorian Labor premier John Brumby, dismissed the opposition’s argument that the higher education sector had been robbed of a chance to contribute to the meetings.
“This trip is fundamentally about government to government meetings … so I’m comfortable with that,” he said.
Brumby, who chairs the Victorian government’s international education advisory council, said he “didn’t think it was a big issue” that journalists were not invited to attend.
Richard McGregor, a senior fellow for east Asia at the Lowy Institute thinktank, said Andrews’ meeting with the CPAFFC – an organisation that the US Department of State, during the Trump era, claimed was a “tasked with co-opting subnational governments” – was “unsurprising”, but “noteworthy.”
“Anyone who goes to China will meet Chinese leaders who are going to try and influence them,” McGregor said. “It’s influence in the broadest sense of the word.”
Dr Ben Herscovitch, a research fellow at the Australian National University who specialises in Australia’s relationship with China, agreed it was inevitable that a political figure like Andrews would be bombarded by messaging from the Chinese government.
“But that’s just part and parcel of that kind of diplomatic engagement in that inevitably the Chinese government seeks to propagate its view of the world and shape the view and the thinking of individuals who come to China,” he said.
Federal Labor MPs said on Monday that Andrews’ trip would contribute to the Albanese government’s attempts to stabilise Australia’s relationship with China after years of increasingly hostile diplomatic tensions under the Morrison government.
The federal Coalition argued the exclusion of domestic media meant the public would be forced to rely on coverage by China’s state-run media.
