If the priority the Rudd Government attaches to an issue can be determined by the number of media releases about it, then halting Japanese whaling is more important than stopping Chinese repression in Tibet.
In the weeks after its election, the Labor Government dispatched surveillance aircraft and ships to the Southern Ocean, announced the appointment of a special envoy on whale conservation, lodged a formal protest with the Japanese Government, and threatened legal action in international tribunals.
When it comes to Tibet, so far there's been nothing more than a quiet plea for "calm and restraint by all parties". Relations between Australia and China are business as usual. When the Prime Minister was asked whether he would mention Tibet on his visit to Beijing, he refused to answer. He also refused to respond when asked whether he would urge China to allow international observers into Tibet.
The forthcoming Olympic Games don't make the situation any easier. Between now and August there will be daily pressure on Rudd and his ministers to explain their position on everything from air pollution in China to investment by the Chinese Government in Australian resource companies. The protest of a few days ago as the Olympic torch was lit in Greece will be the first of many.
Discussion about a possible boycott of the Olympics has highlighted the changing moral certitude of our past and present politicians. Malcolm Fraser advocated sporting sanctions against South Africa and a boycott of the Moscow Olympics, but now believes that the Beijing Olympics should proceed uninterrupted. The International Olympic Committee, after years of studiously avoiding the issue of politics and sport, has finally acknowledged that China is not a liberal democracy. Rudd might be hoping that Tibet will go away as an issue, but it won't. And the broader question of how Australia should handle its relations with China won't go away either.
The difference in the way Labor has managed its dealings with Japan over whaling and China over human rights is stark. The impression that the Australian public is left with, and the impression communicated to the Japanese and Chinese governments, is that the Labor Government is happy to be symbolic -- just as long as it doesn't entail too much effort. It's interesting to speculate what would happen if a small proportion of the effort the Australian Government allocated to getting publicity for its opposition to whaling was instead devoted to encouraging China to strengthen the political rights of its citizens.
Certainly the situation of Tibet is complicated because both the Coalition and Labor accept Chinese sovereignty over the province. There's little doubt that Australia has more chance of stopping whaling than it has of getting China to change its human rights practices. Further, there's a good argument that our foreign policy efforts should be concentrated on influencing the things that we can influence rather than the things that we can't. From the way he has behaved so far, there's every indication that this is the maxim that Rudd is following. The problem is that he promised to be different. While he didn't quite commit to pursuing an "ethical" foreign policy, he loudly proclaimed that Australia would do more to uphold international standards of human rights, and we wouldn't acquiesce so easily to alleged human rights violations committed in the pursuit of the war on terror.
As Tony Parkinson, former foreign policy adviser to Alexander Downer, writes the "yawning disparity in the Rudd Government's approach to the two major powers in East Asia has not been a good look, serving only to compound the worst fears in Tokyo about Rudd's decision to include China, but exclude Japan, as a destination for his first major overseas trip as Prime Minister". The question that follows is whether this signals that Labor has made up its mind about how it sees Australia's future in Asia -- and whether that is a future closer to communist China than to democratic Japan.
Rudd has as much as admitted that nothing Australia does will change the situation in Tibet. He's not even willing to do the most basic symbolic act, which is to raise the subject. Given that the Prime Minister makes so much of his special relationship with the Chinese Government, it would have been thought that the Chinese would have at least listened to him, even if they ignored what he said.
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