PM quiet on if he raised navy incident with China

The prime minister is facing criticism for not making an attack on Australian personnel by a Chinese navy ship public until after he left a summit where he met the Chinese president.

But former prime minister turned US ambassador Kevin Rudd has defended Anthony Albanese’s conduct, saying Defence Minister Richard Marles had made Australia’s objections absolutely clear to Chinese authorities.

Rudd said the nature of any conservations between the prime minister and world leaders was confidential. 

“We do not comment on the detail, [it’s] longstanding practice [of] governments — Liberal, Labor and Callithumpian,” he told ABC radio on Monday.

The ambassador also condemned the incident where the ship injured Australian naval divers with sonar pulses.

Rudd said the incident would be a test of the stabilising relationship and branded commentary on whether the issue was raised “a complete distraction from the central question, which is China, through its actions, through the PLA navy, engaged in unsafe practices against the Royal Australian Navy”.

Albanese met President Xi Jinping on the sidelines of APEC in San Francisco, with the government keeping the incident from the public for some four days until the day after he left the summit.

The opposition and crossbenchers are calling for the prime minister to come clean about whether he raised the incident with the Chinese president, and criticising him for not revealing the details sooner. 

Independent Senator Jacqui Lambie said the issue should have been raised and called for the government to be upfront and answer questions. 

“You can’t sit there and pretend you’re going to be nice on trade while this is going on with your own navy people that could have brought more harm to them,” she told Sky News.

“This is just ridiculous. What happened to the friendship and the trust that we’re building and all the rest?

“This is a pretty big issue, it should have been raised but more importantly, [the prime minister should] come out this morning … come and answer some questions, tell Australia what’s going on, keeping us in the dark is not helpful.”

Opposition defence spokesman Andrew Hastie said if the prime minister knew about the incident and deliberately withheld the information, it was “outrageous and unacceptable”.

He said Albanese needed to come clean about whether he raised the incident with his counterpart as the two nations try to repair their frosty relationship. 

He also needs to have petitioned Xi and asked for an apology, Hastie said. 

Asked whether the prime minister had raised the issue, Labor frontbencher Murray Watt on Sunday said the concerns “have been relayed in the appropriate way to the Chinese government”.

Home Affairs Minister Clare O’Neil said the government “made its views known to the Chinese government through the appropriate channels” when also asked about the delayed release of information.