Even as he moved to offer some certainty to Hongkongers who fear for the future of the city under China’s new national security law, Scott Morrison seemed at pains to play down the significance of his own announcement.
The Australian prime minister stressed the move to grant a five-year extension to about 10,000 temporary visa holders already in Australia, and then a pathway to permanent residency, was merely an “adjustment” of existing policy settings.
He told reporters gathered in the prime minister’s courtyard of Parliament House on Thursday he was also “not expecting large numbers” of people now in Hong Kong to apply to come to Australia, and in any case, they would be subject to “the normal application mechanisms”.
This was not – he insisted – anything like Boris Johnson’s offer to as many as 3 million residents of the former British colony, those with British national overseas status, the right to settle in the UK. No, Australia was not talking about such large numbers, and the UK’s history meant it had a “very special set of responsibilities” to deal with any exodus from Hong Kong.
Dr Lee Morgenbesser, a senior lecturer at the Griffith Asia institute at Griffith University, says Australia’s tweak to its visa rules “would not be sufficient” without being accompanied by the UK’s offer. He says Morrison chose his words carefully. It certainly was not framed as “Tiananmen Square 2.0” – a reference to when as prime minister Bob Hawke offered asylum to about 42,000 Chinese students after the 1989 massacre.
Ben Bland, a research fellow at the Lowy Institute and the author of Generation HK: Seeking Identity in China’s Shadow, believes Australia’s move will provide much-needed relief and options for the Hongkongers working and studying in Australia who are concerned about their future back home. “But Canberra is letting the UK, which bears a direct responsibility as Hong Kong’s former colonial master, do the bulk of the heavy lifting in terms of those who are in Hong Kong and want to leave.”
Perhaps the most forward-leaning portion of the government’s press conference was the suggestion from the acting immigration minister, Alan Tudge, that Australia wanted to persuade highly talented business owners and entrepreneurs to relocate from Hong Kong because “we know that many individuals now might be looking elsewhere, because they do want to be in a freer country, they want to be in a democratic country”.
There are several unanswered questions, including whether the government will make arrangements for family reunions for the tens of thousands of Hong Kong-born people who are permanent residents or citizens of Australia. But it was notable that the offer was couched as an attempt to recruit skilled migrants rather than a humanitarian gesture: Australia’s refugee program would continue as normal without a special intake being created.
It’s no surprise that Morrison sought to minimise the scale of the changes, given that the relationship between Australia and China has become increasingly heated – and difficult to navigate.
While Australia was quick out of the blocks in calling for an independent coronavirus inquiry – and copped a furious reaction from its largest trading partner as a result – this time Morrison has pointed out Australia is merely one of many countries raising concerns about the impact of the national security law on Hong Kong’s freedoms; so worried, in fact, that Australia would also suspend its extradition treaty with Hong Kong.
Australia was simply “adjusting its laws, our sovereign laws, our sovereign immigration program, things that we have responsibility for and jurisdiction over, to reflect the changes that we’re seeing take place there”. Nothing to see here.
In the end, the government’s formulation wasn’t enough to hold off a swift rebuke from China, which is especially sensitive when Hong Kong and Taiwan are mentioned because it believes they relate to “core interests” of national unity and sovereignty.
The Chinese embassy in Canberra said Beijing “strongly deplores and opposes the groundless accusations” and called on Australia “to immediately stop meddling in Hong Kong affairs and China’s internal affairs under any pretext or in any way, otherwise it will lead to nothing but lifting a rock only to hit its own feet”.
The Australian government has been receiving advice to be patient and hold the line amid the turbulence in its relationship with China. The Guardian understands that one emerging view is that Australia eventually needs to find a new landing point in the relationship; that there can be no return to the status quo and that it is becoming harder to paper over the differences.
It is well known that Australian ministers have lately struggled to arrange calls with their Chinese counterparts to talk through issues including the barley tariffs – but some within the government have cautioned that this may be a pressure tactic from Beijing. After all, Chinese officials have long had objections to Australia’s arrangements to prevent other countries “dumping” products at low cost on Australia, and China may have chosen the timing and framing of the barley tariffs for political effect.
Differences about Hong Kong make it increasingly difficult to see what a breakthrough in the Australia-China relationship might look like but each side is likely to be warier of the other when high-level talks resume.
In the meantime, Australia is moving to shore up ties with its other important regional partners, including Japan. To that end, Morrison held a virtual meeting late on Thursday with the Japanese prime minister, Shinzo Abe, in which they shared “grave concern” about the Hong Kong national security law as they both believed it “eroded Hong Kong’s autonomy under the ‘One Country Two Systems’ framework”.