More treasonous coverage of the Chinese attack on Australia today at the ABC. First up, we get the whinging beef lobby:
China’s ban on beef imports from several Australian abattoirs has cost the industry hundreds of millions of dollars while eight meatworks wait to resume trade.
Last year, exports of red meat to China were valued at about $3 billion, making it Australia’s most lucrative agriculture export market but the Australian Meat Industry Council says sales have fallen by almost 30 per cent year-on-year.
Regardless, the council’s chief executive, Patrick Hutchinson, said Australian beef exports were on track for the “second-biggest year on record to China” referring to both volume and value.
No context, no countervailing analysis or voices. Just lobby puke to boost the CCP attack.
Why stop there, let’s go to Newcastle and do some more CCP dirty work:
Thermal coal exports to China from Australia’s busiest coal terminal have completely stopped amid escalating trade tensions and an unofficial Chinese ban on Australian coal.
Newcastle is the largest coal port in the world and trade with China made up 20 per cent of its exports last year.
But no ships have left for China in December and there are none listed in the schedule leading up to Christmas.
No context, no countervailing analysis or voices. Though at least this the time the lobby refused to comment despite ABC badgery that it do so.
But wait, there’s more fear to spread in the service of the CCP:
As relations between China and Australia hit their lowest point in over half a century, industries including honey, fruit, dairy and vitamins producers could be next in line to be hit with tariffs, according to research firm IBIS World.
We’re all rooned unless we give in to the CCP! No context, no countervailing analysis or voices. No need for a lobbyist given IBIS is implicitly industry favourable.
Next up, we get the deeply one-sided coverage of the push to ban BRI:
The Foreign Minister of Australia has just become more powerful.
On Tuesday, the Federal Parliament passed the Government’s new foreign relations laws in full.
The bill gives the Commonwealth the power to veto agreements with foreign countries struck by state and local governments, as well as universities.
It all happened with breakneck speed — the Federal Government only announced it would push ahead with the bill in August.
This time it is few quotes from the government with a conga-line of critics from the Greens, Labor and Alan Gyngell. No countervailing analysis or voices.
Then we swing to another piece strarring the very compromised James Laurenceson – fresh from selling out Australia to the SCMP by misrepresenting Australian isolation in the Chinese bullying – now scare-mongering about foreign students:
The New South Wales economy could be exposed if Chinese students do not return, a leading economist has warned, despite Premier Gladys Berejiklian saying she is not concerned by the escalating Chinese-Australian trade war.
“We don’t feel we are impacted in New South Wales at all,” the Premier told a business lunch in Sydney on Tuesday.
“We feel the relationships we have will sustain whatever issues there are at a national level.”
Professor James Laurenceson, the Director of the Australia-China Relations Institute at UTS, agreed NSW is not as exposed as other states.
No acknowledgment that the Australia-China Relations Institute at UTS only exists thanks to being funded by Chinese migrant billionaire Huang Xiangmo. The same 2017 Huang Xiangmo who destroyed Labor MP Sam Dastayri’s career with bribes in return for positive announcements on Chinese policy. More recently Huang has been exiled from Australia in disgrace.
A cascade of similar “influence operation” debacles followed that was a part of Australia’s great awakening to the shady CCP money that was distorting its political economy. Especially on the Labor side of politics but certainly not exclusively so (hello Gladys Liu and Andrew Robb). The Turnbull Government acted as it should in response by launching anti-foreign influence legislation to flush the political system of those inappropriately on the CCP payroll, such as James Laurenceson. This is also the driver behind the push to ditch BRI.
Nor is there any acknowledgment that UTS is a very comprised interest in the debate given it only keeps the disgraced unthink tank open to help attract Chinese students.
No context, no countervailing analysis or voices but rich with lobbying bloodlust.
Seriously ABC, what are you doing? This is terrible journalism, deeply hostile to the Australian national interest and the truth. Whether intended to or not, it obviously acts to amplify the CCP attack on Australia.
There is clearly a methodological problem as well. It’s not good enough to cover the basic story then get a quote from the most captured lobby that you can find. This is pure Murdoch-style unjournalism, only more egregious, deployed by the ABC in service to a foreign power attacking our country.
When we combine the ABC’s recently fantastically one-eyed commentary in favour of the same from Geoff Raby, Hugh White, Stan Grant and Laura Tingle it’s hard not to conclude that there has been an editorial decision to ensure Australia is sold to China at the price of Australian freedoms laid out in the 14 recent conditions:
I am not in the business of demanding other media voices be muzzled. But the notion that the tax-payer is funding a national broadcaster to operate as an economic war propaganda amplifier to sell out those same taxpayers’ democratic freedoms is beyond the pale.
Honestly, if this is the best that the ABC can do to defend Australia amid the greatest attack on it since WWII then it should not only have its funding cut but be shut down entirely.
