Prime Minister Anthony Albanese needs to “grow a backbone and stand up for our country” after his response to Chinese officials attempting to block Sky News journalist Cheng Lei’s view of a press conference, Opposition Leader Peter Dutton has declared.
China’s Premier Li Qiang joined Mr Albanese in Canberra on Monday for a leaders meeting before a lunch in the Great Hall of Parliament House.
Footage emerged of the tense altercation which appeared to show a Chinese embassy official impeding Lei’s view as she was sitting in an area assigned for media representatives during a document signing ceremony.
Australian officials appeared to ask the Chinese embassy staff to move but they refused, continuing to block her view and from television cameras filming the journalist and former political prisoner.
The Prime Minister initially denied any knowledge of the incident when asked about it, despite footage of Lei being blocked uploaded to the internet for more than an hour.
“Well, I didn’t see it. But I saw Cheng Lei and we smiled at each other during the event,” he said in response to a question about the incident from Daily Telegraph reporter Clare Armstrong.
“I’m not aware of the issues and it is important that people be allowed to participate fully and that is what should happen in this building or anywhere else in Australia.”
Mr Albanese addressed the incident again on Tuesday during an interview with Perth’s Nova 93.7 where he labelled the moves by Chinese officials as “ham fisted”.
“We have different values and different political systems, and we saw some of that… with the attempt that was pretty ham fisted to block Cheng Lei… there was a clumsy attempt,” the Prime Minister said.
“The Australian officials did the right thing and intervened, but that showed that they’re different systems that are there.”
Mr Dutton said he broached the issue with Premier Li during a meeting between senior Coalition members and the visiting Chinese official.
“We had a productive meeting and China’s obviously an incredibly important trading partner for us,” Mr Dutton said.
“We raised the issue of Cheng Lei which was a very regrettable incident and I’m very pleased to hear the government’s raised that with the Chinese Embassy because it’s completely unacceptable in our free society for that kind of conduct to take place.”
The Opposition Leader on Tuesday continued to hit out at Mr Albanese’s response to the treatment of Lei, with Mr Dutton demanding the Prime Minister “grow a backbone and stand up for our country”.
“I do want to point out that the Prime minister clearly misled the Australian people yesterday when he got up and did a press conference and said that he heard nothing of it, he didn’t understand what the question was or didn’t know anything about it,” Mr Dutton said said.
“It’s completely inconceivable and the Prime Minister needs to stand up today to explain the discrepancy (and) to explain why he didn’t tell the truth yesterday.
“Please grow a backbone and stand up for our country. The job of the Prime Minister is to make tough decisions and to call out bad behaviour and to make sure that you do the right thing by Australians and that’s what our Prime Minister should do.”
Sky News political editor Andrew Clennell broke the news of Mr Dutton, alongside shadow foreign affairs minister Simon Birmingham and shadow tourism minister Kevin Hogan, addressing the issue with the Chinese Premier on Tuesday during a discussion on respect.
“It came after the Chinese leadership was saying to the Opposition that the relationship between Australia and China had to be based on respect, and mutual respect,” Clennell said.
“As I understand it, the Opposition then raised the issue of Cheng Lei, the treatment by embassy officials, as a pointer to what disrespect can look like.
“There was no verbal response from the Chinese leadership to that.”
The tense altercation made headlines on Monday, with footage showing at least two Chinese officials standing directly beside Lei in the middle of a seated section at the media event.
Backlash to Mr Albanese’s response came from across the political divide with Liberal Senator and shadow affairs minister James Paterson labelling the Prime Minister’s response as a “crude and clumsy attempt to evade scrutiny”.
He doubled down on his attack of the Prime Minister’s handling of the incident, slamming his defence of Lei as “disappointing.”
“I don’t believe the Prime Minister, unless every one of his 11 media advisers are guilty of the most serious professional malpractice of allowing the Prime Minister to go and face a press gallery press pack, including Cheng Lei, and didn’t bother to tell him about the serious incident involving Cheng Lei only an hour earlier,” he told Sky News Australia on Monday evening.
“Frankly, I’m worried that the Chinese delegation will be laughing tonight because not only did they get away with it, but they didn’t even cop the mildest rhetorical rebuke from the Prime Minister of Australia after they engaged in body blocking and intimidation of an Australian journalist.”
The Greens joined the pile on, with Senator David Shoebridge questioning the Prime Minister’s credibility while also demanding the government take a stand.
“I mean it just strains credibility, if it is a lack of knowledge then it is a deliberate intentional lack of knowledge and I don’t think it does anybody any credit when that happens,” Mr Shoebridge said.
“If someone made a mistake and tried to exclude someone from an event for political reasons then you should just own it, say it was wrong and say it’ll never happen again on your watch.
“Just pretending you don’t know about it or consciously not finding out about it just makes you look like you stand for nothing.”
Lei spent two years and 11 months in prison in China on trumped-up espionage charges and has since spoken out about the potential ramifications of reporting on China.