Extract from ABC News
Analysis
By Laura Tingle
Donald Trump was the first politician — and (literally) the past master — at using Twitter to send out messages, not just to his local constituents, but on a global scale.
It's not working quite so well for him these days, of course. Scan through his tweets and the warnings in blue, inserted by Twitter, that his claims about electoral fraud are disputed litter the feed. Not that it is stopping him, of course. He tweets on regardless.
And it feels like everyone has been getting into the politics and diplomacy by Twitter act of late.
Most conspicuously perhaps this week was Zhao Lijian, featuring an Australian soldier holding a knife to the throat of an Afghan child.
It was a confected picture, but one playing to the complete vulnerability Australia now faces about its international military record as a result of the findings of the Brereton inquiry, and exploited for all its worth by the Chinese.
Standing up to a bully, or a mistake?
The debate about the tweet — and the Australian response to it — has run hot all week.
Did the Prime Minister do the right thing by coming out so fast, and so hard, in condemning the tweet, demanding it be taken down and an apology given?
Division seems split between those who argue that Morrison had no choice but to stand up to a bully — and that his position was vindicated by support from other Western countries — and those who think it was a big mistake.
Among those who think it was a big mistake is eminent academic strategist Hugh White, who argues that by looking rattled and angry, the Prime Minister made his adversary China look strong and scary, which is just what the Chinese wanted.
White argues that people in Australia misunderstand who the principle audience of such actions by China actually is: other countries in Asia (and he notes that none of them have come out in support of Australia's position).
China was seeking to send an important signal to the region about how it would deal with those who spoke up against it.
China may be Morrison's Tampa issue
There are also questions about the wisdom of the Prime Minister himself coming out so fast to respond to the tweet. As other analysts point out, would President Xi have felt compelled to personally respond to a tweet by a middle-ranking bureaucrat?
The problem for the Prime Minister is that he has found it difficult not to respond because he has made himself the principle spokesman on the relationship.
There is an undoubted element of domestic politics in his public statements on China which are supposed to play to the domestic audience: China may be his Tampa issue. The daggy dad at home/the strong powerful statesman overseas.
White also argues that there are some profound underlying problems with the Government position, too. The Prime Minister keeps insisting that Australia hasn't changed its position on China, and suggested it just wants to go back to the good old days of "win-win" that characterised the Howard era.
Except Australia has changed. Our policies have changed: witness the move through the Parliament this week of laws allowing the Federal Government to scuttle Victoria's Belt and Road Initiative agreement with China and deals between China and Australian universities.
And China has changed, too. It is now a massive power in the region.
The message was clear
In the Financial Review this week, former China correspondent and Lowy Institute senior fellow Richard McGregor posed the bigger question of "whether the Government's approach to Australia's biggest foreign policy challenge is working".
He argues persuasively that it clearly isn't, given the Government keeps signalling to Beijing that it wants to re-establish dialogue to discuss political and trade differences, and that ain't happening.
While both sides retreated a little around the edges as the week went on, the message was nonetheless clear to other countries that might feel they need to speak about other issues in the region — for example, Taiwan and Hong Kong.
All the while, this foreign policy dispute has only highlighted the mishandling of the Brereton inquiry at home, with the Government first leaving the military to respond to the inquiry, then humiliating the Chief of the Defence Force, Angus Campbell, by over-ruling him on the withdrawal of the Meritorious Unit Citation for the 3,000 Afghan veterans who served in the theatre during the period in which the atrocities are alleged to have happened.
Turning closer to home...
Threat by Twitter are never pretty. And it has been practised at home this week, too.
Communications Minister Paul Fletcher chose to tweet a copy of a letter he had sent to the chair of the ABC, Ita Buttrose, complaining about the controversial Four Corners episode Inside the Canberra Bubble — though the letter was never released as a formal press release.
Does that matter? Well, you would have to say at the least it's a weird way of going about things.
In the no fewer than 15 questions Fletcher has put to Buttrose (and therefore the board) about the program, he has provided the first real test of the Code of Practice guidelines on privacy and directly asked: "Why, in the judgement of the Board, are the personal lives of politicians newsworthy?"
He complains that the privacy of a woman who was the "subject of the alleged incident in the Public Bar and the subject of the alleged relationship with the Attorney-General" has been breached, and she has denied the allegations, without mentioning that this woman must be in an invidious position here, given she remains a staffer in the Government.
He asks: "Why in the judgement of the Board is the existence of a consensual relationship between a politician and a staff member that occurred prior to the introduction of the Minister Code considered noteworthy?"
Well, there are at least three seasons why that alleged relationship might be of interest: was it being conducted at taxpayers' expense; that it exposed double standards, or that it might leave a minister open to compromise.
About as subtle as a tweet from Trump
The Australian was briefed on questions that were going to be placed on notice in the Senate this week — before the ABC had seen them — asking if it had hired a private investigator to follow Attorney-General Christian Porter.
This apparently followed a tip from Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton.
The ABC flatly denied it had been tailing the Minister. Which does leave open the question of the myriad people who may have been doing so, if his conduct was indiscrete enough to be the subject of common discussion in Parliament House.
Most significantly, though, is the not very veiled threat to the ABC board itself, where the Minister asks: "Why should an objective observer not conclude that the program demonstrates a failure by the Board in its duty under section 8 of the ABC Act to ensure that the gathering and presentation of news and information by the ABC is accurate and impartial according to the recognised standards of objective journalism?"
In other words, Fletcher is suggesting the Board has failed in its job and may have to consider its position.
It's about as subtle as a tweet from Donald Trump, or a Chinese foreign ministry spokesman.
The Board's response will be truly fascinating. And probably not delivered by Twitter.
Laura Tingle is 7.30's chief political correspondent.
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