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Yesterday I thought I was in a parallel universe when our premier was caught out bagging Australia’s alternative defence minister Andrew Hastie while sitting in a room in Beijing surrounded by Australian diplomats and officials of the Chinese Communist Party.
Back in Perth, his ministers said the conversation was private, which is pretty funny given the hundreds of people seated around the premier – not to mention the television camera that was locked on him so closely that its microphone picked up his every word.
And we’re talking about China here – a surveillance state. You’d be taking your chances having a private conversation in your own hotel room when you’re the premier of China’s biggest trading partner.
I mean, the premier and his entourage would have been told in a security briefing to leave their own mobile phones in Perth because of the security risks.
There was nothing private about the way the premier said that Andrew Hastie – a former captain in Australia’s SAS special forces regiment – must have swallowed Cold War pills at birth.
And even more jarring is that the premier’s attack on Hastie, while in China, went global when the premier’s own office sent the video of their boss out to the media.
The vision is known as overlay, but no one, other than WAtoday, bothered to check what was being discussed at the table.
So that was yesterday, and of course Andrew Hastie responded by reminding the premier – a former navy legal officer – that loose lips sink ships.
“The truth is that he’s a prison guard looking for work now that the pandemic has finished,” he said.
“I’m not surprised he’s running down Australian MPs in China, but it is surprising from a former legal officer in the Royal Australian Navy.
“I’m not sure I’d want to serve alongside him on a naval ship in a crisis.
“Character is everything, what’s he really saying when the cameras aren’t running?”
Now, today, I woke up and thought I had gone from a parallel universe and into the twilight zone.
The morning paper, our morning paper that is, not the Chinese People’s Daily, is quoting the Premier saying he wants the Prime Minister to consider bringing Australia’s national cabinet to China.
He says Anthony Albanese should bring the national cabinet so it can fan out and visit China’s regions.
Maybe the premiers and territory leaders could ask questions, while on their trip, about the origins of the Covid pandemic?
I mean, that’s the reason China imposed the harsh trade tariffs on key Australian export industries like barley and seafood – because we dared to want answers to a disease that shut down the entire world.
Andrew Hastie warned the Premier to be more careful. Credit: Alex Ellinghausen, James Brickwood
And by the way, The West Australian, which is travelling with the premier, didn’t report a single word about his hot mic mishap now being reported by all other media around the country. Not a single word.
Perhaps the premier should be more cautious when visiting a dictatorship which is the reason the Australian government recently announced it will spend more than $300 billion to bolster our ability to defend ourselves.
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