The incredible meteor lit up the night skies as it passed over the south coast of Australia on Tuesday, May 21. According to NASA’s Centre for Near-Earth Object Studies (CNEOS), the meteor entered the atmosphere at 11.5km per second or 25,724mph. The meteor then partially broke up and crash landed in the waters of the Great Australian Bight bay some 186 miles (300km) west-southwest of Mount Gambier. Before this happened, however, the fireball released enough energy in the sky to equal a “small nuclear bomb”.
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According to NASA, the meteor entered the atmosphere with the force of 1.6 kilotons or 1,600 tonnes of TNT.
Thankfully, Professor Phil Bland from Curtin University said the space rock exploded too high up for the meteor to cause any significant damage.
When a 65.6ft-wide (20m) meteor exploded over Russia’s Chelyabinsk Oblast in 2013, more than 1,000 people were injured by blown out windows.
Professor Bland said: “It’s in the range of a small nuclear weapon. Because it exploded at an altitude of 31.5 km it didn’t do any damage.”
NASA meteor: A powerful fireball crash landed off the coast of Australia (Image: THE ADVERTISER)
Shortly after the incident, eyewitnesses flooded social media with photos and videos clips of the fireball.
It’s in the range of a small nuclear weapon
Professor Phil Bland, Curtin University
Lyall Furphy tweeted: “I got a great view of it while driving to Adelaide.”
Alexandra Marshall tweeted: “That meteor dropped in to say, ‘hi!’ and remind us all that it has much bigger siblings who are far less considerate with their landing options.”
And Melanie Remen, who caught the meteor on video, tweeted: “Wow! One of our security cameras caught the Meteor in Adelaide on Tuesday night, wicked!”
NASA aerospace engineer Dr Steve Chesley estimated the meteor could have been about the size of a small car.
However, the force of entering the atmosphere at “hypersonic velocities” would have caused the space rock to crumble and fall apart.
The meteor expert told ABC Radio: “You wouldn’t want it to land on your head but these wouldn’t really do any damage on the ground.
“What the folks there along the coast of South Australia saw was a spectacular light show, probably a very loud sonic boom that would rattle the windows, this wasn’t big enough to break windows I expect, and then just small pebbles falling to the Earth and not at hypersonic velocities, they slow down very quickly.”
NASA meteor: The fireball's fragments landed in the Great Australian Bight (Image: NASA)
NASA meteor: Social media was flooded with reports of the bright fireball (Image: @ellymelly)
Quick facts about meteors:
1. Meteors are bits and pieces of rock and ice, which have broken off from comets orbiting the Sun.
2. A meteor shower over Earth occurs when the planet crosses the dusty orbital trail of a comet.
3. NASA estimates around 30 meteor showers a year are visible and some have been around for at least 2,000 years.
4. When a meteor turns into a streaking fireball, it momentarily becomes brighter than the planet Venus – the second brightest object in the night skies after the Moon.
5. The International Space Station (ISS) is shielded from meteor impacts.
CCTV footage from the South Australia Police Department shows the moment a meteor lit up the night sky.Screenshot/Twitter
A NASA research center confirmed that a massive fireball landed on Tuesday in the Great Australian Bight just off the coast of South Australia.
People in parts of Victoria and South Australia reported seeing large flashes of bright white light at around 10:30 pm on Tuesday.
The Center for Near-Earth Object Studies in California confirmed that the bright light was actually an impressive fireball with a calculated impact energy of 1.6 kilotons of explosive power.
A NASA research center confirmed that a massive fireball landed on Tuesday in the Great Australian Bight just off the coast of South Australia.
The Center for Near-Earth Object Studies at the California Institute of Technology analyzes the impact time, location, and amount of energy generated by meteors and asteroids that approach earth. The research facility uses high-precision orbit solutions of the space objects to predict the risk of impact and supports NASA's Planetary Defense Coordination Office.
US government sensors have been monitoring fireballs — or "exceptionally bright meteors," as NASA explains — since 1988. The chart below from the research center maps the location and impact energy of the brightest fireballs reported.
A map of all fireballs reported by US Government sensors since 1988.Centre for Near-Earth Objects Studies
Fireball seen on Thursday night.NASA
People in parts of Victoria and South Australia reported seeing large flashes of bright white light at around 10:30 pm local time on Tuesday.
The center confirmed that the bright light was actually an impressive fireball with a calculated impact energy of 1.6 kilotons of explosive power. It traveled at a velocity of 11.5 kilometers per second (7 miles per second) and ultimately landed in the Great Australian Bight just off South Australia's coast.
NASA engineer Dr Steve Chesley told ABC Radio that the meteor could have been the size of a small car when it hit the atmosphere, and it was actually traveling at a slower speed than most asteroids.
Check out video captured by the South Australia Police Department which shows the exact moment the meteor lit up the night sky:
Our CCTV in Mount Gambier captured this otherworldly fireball at 10.46pm Tuesday. Just in case, we’d ask that Limestone Coast locals be alert for Alien Life Forms (including ALF himself) trying to hitch-hike to Earth Capital, and approach with caution. #meteor#weneedanALFemojipic.twitter.com/iOgAOlw4cu
— South Australia Police (@SAPoliceNews)
May 22, 2019
Actor Geoffrey Rush has been awarded the largest ever defamation payout to a single person in Australia.
The Oscar-winner was last month awarded A$2.9m (£1.57m; US$1.99m) after winning the case against Nationwide News, which publishes Australia's Daily Telegraph.
The Sydney newspaper had published stories accusing him of behaving inappropriately towards former co-star Eryn Jean Norvill.
Judge Michael Wigney found that Ms Norvill was "prone to exaggeration".
Mr Rush has sought an injunction to prevent the Telegraph re-publishing accusations at the heart of the case.
Nationwide News has appealed against an initial ruling in the case.
The accusations detailed in the Telegraph article "King Leer" date back to a 2015 theatre production of King Lear in which Mr Rush acted alongside Ms Norvill.
Mr Rush was awarded $850,000 in general and aggravated damages plus more than $1m for past economic loss, $919,678 in future economic loss and $42,000 in interest, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation reports.
He was originally seeking more than $25m in damages.
The judge called the reporting a "recklessly irresponsible piece of sensationalist journalism of ... the very worst kind", The Sydney Morning Herald reports.
Mr Rush's barrister, Sue Chrysanthou, said the Telegraph had shown a "complete lack of impartiality and lack of commercial sense".
Tom Blackburn, barrister for the newspaper, said Mr Rush was "trying to shut down any criticism of the judgment" and that the injunction on re-publishing allegations could have a chilling effect on coverage of the #MeToo movement.
Actress Yael Stone also accused Mr Rush of behaving inappropriately towards her, an allegation he denies.
The Telegraph had pushed to have Ms Stone's allegations admitted as evidence, however the judge blocked the move on the grounds it could have led to prejudice against Mr Rush.
Actress Rebel Wilson was awarded a A$4.7m payout last year, but that sum was reduced to $600,000 on appeal.
She sued magazine publisher Bauer Media over articles that she said had wrongly portrayed her as a serial liar, but an appeals court later found that "there was no basis in the evidence for making any award of damages for economic loss."
MELBOURNE, Australia — The Oscar-winning Australian actor Geoffrey Rush will be awarded 2.9 million Australian dollars in his defamation case against Rupert Murdoch’s Nationwide News, a court said on Thursday, the largest such payout to a single person in Australia’s history.
Mr. Rush was awarded 850,000 dollars, or about $600,000, in initial damages in April after winning his defamation case, in which he accused a tabloid newspaper of wrongly portraying him as having behaved inappropriately toward a female co-star.
On Thursday, he was awarded an additional 1.98 million Australian dollars for past and future economic losses and 42,000 dollars in interest. That brought the total award to 2.9 million Australian dollars, or nearly $2 million.
“Geoffrey Rush obviously has won the battle — he is a spectacular winner in the context of litigation,” said Matt Collins, an Australian lawyer who is an expert in defamation law. “But you would query whether he has ultimately won the war. You would query whether any sum of money would be sufficient to restore his reputation.”
Mr. Rush’s lawyer, Sue Chrysanthou, declined to comment.
The actor’s defamation case involved two front-page articles published in late 2017 by The Daily Telegraph, a Sydney newspaper.
The articles alleged unseemly conduct by Mr. Rush toward an unidentified female actress in a Sydney Theater Company production of “King Lear” from 2015 to 2016. One of the articles was accompanied by a photo of Mr. Rush in costume under the headline “King Leer.” The actress was later revealed to be Eryn Jean Norvill.
In a much-publicized trial, Mr. Rush, 67, a star of the “Pirates of the Caribbean” series and other films, argued that the articles incorrectly depicted him as a “pervert” and a “sexual predator.”
Mr. Rush’s lawyer said in court on Thursday that the actor had offered earlier to settle the case, asking Nationwide News to pay him 50,000 dollars as well as cover his legal costs and issue an apology. He also asked for the articles to be removed. Nationwide News declined.
The April verdict was seen as a blow for the #MeToo movement in Australia; advocates say the country’s strict defamation laws have helped keep it from gaining steam. The case was closely watched in part because it was a test of whether a celebrity of Mr. Rush’s stature could fend off #MeToo accusations through a defamation claim.
The record damages awarded on Thursday follow a spate of high-profile defamation cases in Australia.
In 2017, Bauer Media was ordered to pay the Australian actress Rebel Wilson 4.7 million dollars, over a series of magazine articles in 2015 that painted her as a serial liar. That amount was reduced to 600,000 dollars by an appeals court, which found a lack of evidence that she had suffered an economic loss of the magnitude of the original award.
Also in 2017, the police were ordered to pay 2.6 million dollars in damages to a Perth-based lawyer, Lloyd Rayney, after he claimed he had been defamed for being called the “prime” suspect in his wife’s murder.
“We had a flight of very high-profile defamation cases in Australia over the last few years, and the trend has been towards increasing damages awarded,” said Mr. Collins, the defamation law expert.
In Mr. Rush’s case, the amount of the economic losses was agreed to between the parties, rather than imposed by the court. Mr. Rush originally asked for more than 20 million dollars in damages.
Nationwide News is appealing the defamation verdict. If Mr. Rush loses the appeal, Nationwide News will not have to pay any damages.
Midway through the trial last year, Nationwide News called on “Witness X” to provide evidence. Justice Michael Wigney, who presided over the case, rejected the bid and ordered Ms. Stone’s identity suppressed.
In an interview published in December, Ms. Stone told The New York Times that Mr. Rush had behaved inappropriately toward her during a 2010-11 Sydney production of “The Diary of a Madman.”
She said that Mr. Rush had danced naked in front of her, sent her erotic text messages and used a mirror to watch her shower.
The actor said in a statement at the time that Ms. Stone’s allegations were “incorrect and in some instances have been taken completely out of context.”
Ms. Norvill, for her part, testified last year that Mr. Rush had sexually harassed her, saying he had made “groping” and “cupping” gestures toward her breasts.
She said he also “deliberately” stroked her breast in front of a theater audience and on a separate occasion traced her lower back along the waistline of her jeans with his fingertips.
It was another election that couldn’t be lost until it was. Rived by years of infighting, Australia’s conservative governing coalition was trailing in the polls. The opposition Labor Party’s polls showed it all but certain of ousting Prime Minister Scott Morrison, and its action platform on climate change seemed bound to resonate in a country devastated by drought, heat waves, brush fires and the loss of its magnificent Great Barrier Reef to warming seas.
On Saturday, in another surprise of the sort that had stunned Americans and Britons, Australian voters handed Mr. Morrison what he called a “miracle” victory. His conservative Liberal-National coalition, sharply opposed to cutting down on carbon emissions and coal, is expected to take 77 seats, one more than enough for a majority.
In hindsight, there are many reasons Mr. Morrison defied predictions. One was his success in projecting himself as the average Joe, a rugby-loving, beer-drinking evangelical Christian in a baseball cap who peppered his speeches with folksy Australianisms and slogans like “a fair go for those who have a go.” Urban Australians rolled their eyes, but polls show that whatever they thought of his party, the larger pool of those Mr. Morrison called the “quiet Australians” — a category similar to those who voted for Brexit or President Trump — consistently favored him over the Labor Party’s Bill Shorten.
The troubling message was that even on an island-continent where the ravages of climate change are there for all to see, especially after the hottest summer on record, invocations of economic stability, secure jobs, cuts to immigration and conservative family values trump the unknowns and costs of dealing with climate change.
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Climate action supporters rallied outside Parliament House in Canberra, Australia, on May 5.CreditRohan Thomson/EPA, via Shutterstock
The surprise result also appeared to reflect a recent tendency of pollsters to underestimate the strength of conservative candidates and causes. Benjamin Netanyahu’s victory in Israel in 2015, and Britain’s Brexit vote and Mr. Trump’s election, both in 2016, confounded pollsters’ and pundits’ predictions and have caused considerable analysis and soul-searching in the world of survey research.
There are many possible explanations for these polling misses, from voters’ lying to survey-takers or avoiding pollsters altogether, to faulty turnout models, to a tendency by polling companies to reinforce one another’s findings, a phenomenon called “herding.” The industry is hard at work trying to correct these problems, and the generally accurate polling in the United States’ 2018 congressional election was a good sign.
Like other victorious conservative populists, including in the United States, Mr. Morrison had the advantage of an easier message: change is risky and expensive; leftist plans to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases will wreck the economy, which has grown without interruption for 28 years. In the final debate between the candidates, each was told to ask the other two questions. Mr. Shorten used both of his to promote Labor policies, which included tackling climate change and wide-ranging reforms; Mr. Morrison used his to attack Labor policies.
The conservative coalition made the cost of addressing climate change the dominant issue. One economic model cited by Labor estimated that the 45 percent reduction in carbon emissions would cost the economy 167,000 jobs and 264 billion Australian dollars ($181 billion). Mr. Morrison used the study to claim Australia could not afford its current programs to reduce emissions and invest in clean energy.
It is certainly discouraging that so many voters in a democratic society could choose to shut their eyes to the obvious and immediate danger of climate change. The election gave added evidence that climate wars have become an adjunct of the politics of grievance that have brought populists to power in America, Europe and elsewhere, and have rent electorates into bitterly opposed camps of urban and provincial, young and old, activist and cautious.
But Mr. Morrison’s victory does not necessarily mean he will do nothing about greenhouse gases. The pressure to take action is certain to grow, especially from the young, who demonstrate a strong concern for the climate, and several candidates who pushed a climate-change agenda did win. (Alas, the government is likely to support a hugely contentious coal mine proposed in the northeastern state of Queensland, which would be among the world’s largest if approved, but Labor gave mixed signals on what it would have done.)
What the Australian election outcome revealed was the urgent need to broaden the message for reducing carbon emissions, and to separate it from the divisive culture wars afflicting Western democracies.
Mr. Morrison confounded the pundits with his victory. He could now confound them even more by showing that he is ready to lead Australia, a country where the ravages of man-made climate change are most evident, in fighting back. As the first director of Tourism Australia, Mr. Morrison approved the cheeky “So where the bloody hell are you?” advertising campaign. The next target of that Australian brashness should be the climate. Otherwise, a new generation of voters will be putting that question to him when the next election rolls around in three years’ time.
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Australia’s newly elected Prime Minister Scott Morrison arrives to deliver a victory speech with his family in Sydney on Saturday after winning the general election.
Saeed Khan/AFP/Getty Images
The polls were wrong. The pundits were wrong. The party insiders were wrong. The bookies were wrong. I was wrong. Even Burt the psychic croc was wrong.
Australia’s dysfunctional, unpopular, conservative government (the Liberal and National parties, currently in coalition, sit on the right in Australian politics) held onto power for a third term in Saturday’s national election. This happened despite the fact that most analysts expected it to lose a large number of seats; despite being (seemingly) out of step with the nation’s emerging consensus on climate change, marriage equality, religion, and race; despite a chaotic tenure in office that has seen three leaders since 2016; despite a threadbare policy agenda; despite many of its high-profile figures recently retiring in frustration or anticipation of defeat; despite betting agencies paying out Labor backers early; despite losing more than 50 consecutive opinion polls. After all of it, the conservatives won the only poll that mattered, in what reelected Prime Minister Scott Morrison, an evangelical Christian, called “a miracle.”
With the count ongoing, the Liberal-National Party coalition has won what appears to be a majority of seats in the 150-seat lower house, currently sitting on 75 but projected to make 78, against the Labor Party’s projected 67 (76 seats are required to form government—even if they fall short, the LNP can form a minority government with one of the six independents). Expected swings against the coalition in several regions of the country didn’t materialize, while there was a crucial 4 percent swing against Labor in the state of Queensland (alternately described as Australia’s Alabama or Florida).
Progressive Australians are—to understate things—“hurting,” in scenes reminiscent of the 2016 U.S. presidential election aftermath (only they’re threatening to move to New Zealand instead of Canada). Even Donald Trump sees the parallels, reportedly calling to congratulate the Trump-sympathizing Morrison and comparing his shock win to his own.
But more than anything, Australians on both sides of the aisle are blindsided, wondering—to paraphrase both Hillary Clinton and an infamous Morrison-led Tourism Australia campaign—what the bloody hell happened?
None can dispute defeated Labor leader Bill Shorten’s explanation: “We didn’t get enough votes.” But that’s pretty much where consensus stops. Other than Queensland, no one is quite sure who to blame, but boy are there a lot of candidates—perhaps more than were in the race itself. As one anonymous Labor figure told the Guardian Australia, “at the moment we haven’t got a fucking clue.”
Was it the Labor Party’s “big target” policy agenda, which many inside and outside the party are now saying was too big, too broad, too complex, or too hard to explain to voters in the given time? Many of the disaffected who stood to gain the most from Labor’s big-spending, tax-reforming economic plan voted against it, instead embracing the far right, while the tax reforms opened Labor up to highly effective, though false, “death tax” and “retiree tax” scare campaigns. Labor’s environmental stance, while not actually all that bold, hurt it in coal-friendly Queensland and among voters worried about the costs of acting on climate change, while the fact that its progressive tax changes were only going to affect the top 20 percent didn’t cut through. Shorten used his concession speech to defend the ambitious platform saying, “I’m proud that we argued what was right, not what was easy.” Still, many are declaring this the end of opposition parties going into elections with actual policies.
Progressive Australians are—to understate things—“hurting,” in scenes reminiscent of the 2016 U.S. presidential electionaftermath.
It could also be that this was about Shorten himself, the record-breakingly unpopular Labor leader and former union boss, who confidently told reporters Saturday morning that his democracy sausage (an important Election Day ritual) tasted like the “mood for change”. He was aware of his unpopularity and cleverly utilized the more trusted female members of his team, as well as his exceptionally popular wife, Chloe, on the campaign trail. Many of us believed voters would get past Shorten’s personal un-appeal—some of us even confidently wrote about it. Queensland, especially, couldn’t: “They saw him as a southern trade unionist with a green agenda,” Griffith University political scientist Paul Williams told SBS News. Hearsay shows that even people who care about climate change and don’t usually vote Liberal still did so because they disliked Shorten so much.
Did the left lose it, or did the right win it? Morrison definitely deserves a lot of credit, with many now calling the eight-month prime minister a Liberal Party legend (“from accidental Prime Minister to homespun hero”). Despite the fact that Australians vote for parties, not prime ministers, the former ad man ran a presidential-style race that pitted him directly against his unpopular Labor counterpart—“the choice between Bill Shorten and myself.” He kept divisive Liberal figures out of the spotlight and himself in it, with the policy conversation trained on Labor’s taxes and spending. And, also, the right lied, shamelessly, sparking new calls for truth in political advertising laws.
Or did Rupert Murdoch win it? Former Labor Prime Minister Kevin Rudd has called him the “elephant in the room.” News Corp controls 70 percent of Australia’s print media and its 2019 campaign coverage was so biased against Labor that one ofthe Murdoch-owned Australian newspaper’s most respected former journalists called it out, saying he was canceling his subscriptions. Speaking of billionaires: a fair portion of blame/credit is being heaped at the feet of eccentric mining tycoon Clive Palmer—a man John Oliver refers to as an Australian Trump, and the figure behind Titanic II. Palmer spent an unprecedented $60 million in advertising trying to get his independent party back into Parliament, and though he didn’t win a single seat, he ended up diverting votes away from Labor with his “shifty Shorten” ads. (In true Trump style, he is now claiming credit for the coalition win, saying this was his plan all along.)
Or, more bleakly, did Australia lose it? There was so much the left got wrong about this election, but the more important thing we got wrong was the idea that Australia was somehow immune from what was happening in the rest of the world. While right-wing figures like Fraser Anning (who was famously egged after blaming Muslim immigration for Christchurch) and Pauline “swamped by Muslims” Hanson bob in and out of the picture, our electoral system kept them on the fringes, and our democracy still seemed to make sense. And while divisive former Prime Minister Tony Abbott, elected in 2013 and removed by his own party in 2015, was further to the right than Morrison, his election could perhaps have been explained in that it came off the back of six years of exasperating Labor leader dysfunction. No such pretense here—in fact, it’s the Liberal Party that’s been creating the chaos for the past six.
Of course, Morrison is no Trump (although he did once mockingly brandish a piece of coal in Parliament, yelling, “This is coal! Don’t be afraid, don’t be scared!”). Hanson has limited parliamentary power, Palmer won no seats, and Anning, having been unendorsed by Hanson’s One Nation Party, failed to get reelected in his own right, despite a coordinated campaign by the alt-right. But the far right certainly bled votes from Labor in Queensland, while its memes and scare campaigns even filtered up into Liberal-National Party lines.
But it’s not just about the far right. Progressive Australians are reeling because any lingering illusions that we were a “fair” nation have been shattered. Whatever Labor’s political shortcomings, Australians in general voted against a detailed platform that aimed to seriously address climate change, raise wages, increase cancer funding, make child care free or significantly cheaper, close tax loopholes for corporations and the wealthy, fund the arts, fund the underfunded public broadcaster, and begin the serious work needed to improve the lives of Indigenous Australians including electing the nation’s first indigenous affairs minister. Instead, they voted for … not much of anything (other than some tax cuts), even after two dysfunctional terms of it. After this defeat, it’s unlikely Labor will come up with anything this ambitious again. Many believed (or hoped) we were going the way of New Zealand, whose Labour Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern recently topped a list of Australia’s most trusted politicians, but we went in the opposite direction. And while Australians hoping for a more progressive Australia have had their hopes dashed, so too have refugees being kept on Manus Island under our draconian asylum-seeker policies (previously overseen by Morrison).
None of this explains how the polls got it so devastatingly wrong, with one viewer asking the ABC’s election panel: “Should anyone trust an opinion poll ever again?” It follows the poll-bucking trends of Brexit and Trump. Some blame what in British politics is called the “shy Tory factor,” in which voters tell pollsters they plan to vote less conservatively than they really are. One polling company director dismissed this idea, but Morrison seems to agree with it, thanking the “quiet Australians” in his victory speech. Some blame cost cutting and technological change, with robocalls and internet polling leading to inaccuracies. One pollster says there was a late break to the coalition while another dismisses that theory.
Good polls, bad polls, or totally obsolete polls, Liberal Party hero Morrison now looks likely to remain in power for as long as the party does, despite no leader having completed a full term since 2007. Before the election, former Liberal prime ministerial adviser Niki Savva wrote that in the unlikely event Morrison won, he’d have unprecedented authority over the party and government.
The problem is, having run on not much other than how scary Labor is, no one’s quite sure what the deeply religious, coal-clutching prime minister plans to use that authority for.
SYDNEY, Australia — In a gold-curtained meeting room in Sydney, the Chinese consul general appealed to a closed-door gathering of about 100 people, all of them Australian residents and citizens of Chinese ancestry.
He called on the group to help shape public opinion during a coming visit of China’s prime minister, Li Keqiang, in part by reporting critics to the consulate. Rallies in support of China should be coordinated, he suggested, and large banners should be unfurled to block images of protests against Beijing.
“We are not troops, but this task is a bit like the nature of troops,” said the diplomat, Gu Xiaojie, according to a recording of the session in the consulate obtained by The New York Times and verified by a person who was in the room. “This is a war,” he added, “with lots of battles.”
The previously unreported meeting in March 2017 is an example of how the Chinese government directly — and often secretly — engages in political activity in Australia, making the nation a laboratory for testing how far it can go to steer debate and influence policy inside a democratic trade partner.
It is a calculated campaign unlike any other Australia has faced — taking advantage of the nation’s openness, growing ethnic Chinese population and economic ties to China — and it has provoked an uncomfortable debate about how Australia should respond.
Many countries face the same challenge from China, an authoritarian power pushing its agenda inside and beyond its borders.
In Asia, China has been accused of funneling funds to the campaigns of preferred candidates in Malaysia and Sri Lanka. In the United States, there is concern about Beijing’s efforts to stifle dissent on college campuses. And in Europe, Chinese companies and organizations tied to the ruling Communist Party have held events for political leaders and donated millions of dollars to universities.
China once sought to spread Marxist revolution around the world, but its goal now is more subtle — winning support for a trade and foreign policy agenda intended to boost its geopolitical standing and maintain its monopoly on power at home.
The contours of its playbook are especially visible in Australia, where trade with China has fueled the world’s longest economic boom. Australian intelligence agencies have warned of Beijing’s efforts, and the issue is likely to be contentious for Australia’s conservative prime minister, Scott Morrison, who won a surprise victory in elections Saturday.
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An opposition Labor Party senator, Sam Dastyari, resigned amid accusations that he did China’s bidding at the behest of China-born donors.CreditWilliam West/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
Representatives of the Chinese government routinely lobby Australian politicians behind closed doors without disclosing their activities, often by threatening economic punishment and persuading Australian business and academic leaders to deliver their message.
The Chinese government and its supporters have also sought to suppress criticism and elevate its views in the Australian news media, by suing journalists and publishers for defamation, financing research institutes and using advertisers to put pressure on Chinese-language outlets.
Beijing has even promoted political candidates in Australia with these outlets as well as via the United Front Work Department, the party’s arm for dealing with overseas Chinese, and — according to some assessments — with campaign contributions made by proxies.
Last year, after a scandal involving donors with ties to Beijing forced a senator to resign, Parliament approved an overhaul of espionage laws making it illegal to influence Australian politics for a foreign government.
Australia’s new government — led by Mr. Morrison, who has been vague about his plans for foreign policy — must now decide what to do next at a time when the public is divided: Many Australians fear China but also favor good relations to maintain economic growth and regional stability.
“There is a lot to unravel with the China story here,” said Mark Harrison, a China scholar at the University of Tasmania.
The Communist Party, he said, is essentially trying to enforce the same bargain with Australia that it has with the Chinese people: a promise of prosperity in exchange for obedience and censorship.
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President Xi Jinping of China addressed the Australian Parliament in 2014.CreditRick Rycroft/Associated Press
Weaponized Economics
China’s economic bonds with Australia can be traced to the 19th century, when a gold rush drew Chinese immigrants to the continent. Now, China is an engine of economic growth for the country and its largest trading partner by far, accounting for 24 percent of Australian imports and exports.
With that reliance comes an implied threat: China can take its money elsewhere.
The problem, current and former Australian officials say, is the Chinese government rarely discloses its lobbying activities. Australian businesses linked to China often lean on politicians without public scrutiny, leading security agencies to warn about Beijing manipulating politics.
“In no country is there such a profound rift between business community and security,” said Linda Jakobson, founding director of China Matters, a nonprofit policy group based in Sydney.
Critics say China has exploited that rift — and even tried to use its economic leverage to punish Australia for adopting the new law requiring those working on behalf of a “foreign principal” to register their activities.
Beijing denied any effort to punish Australia, and Australian politicians have brushed off these disputes. But it hardly the first time Beijing blurred the lines between business and politics.
In 2009, the Australian government rejected a bid by a Chinese state-owned firm to purchase 18 percent of Rio Tinto, the Anglo-Australian mining giant, after officials argued privately that the sale would give China too much power to set prices.
Beijing’s response was an early version of what has since become common in the relationship: a campaign to pressure the Australian government via China’s business partners.
Chinese officials and investors “put the weights on the relevant Australian executives,” Kevin Rudd, the prime minister at the time, recalled in an interview. “The whole idea at that stage was to maximize business lobby pressure on the government.”
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Chau Chak Wing, a billionaire property developer with Australian citizenship, is one of at least two wealthy political donors who have filed lawsuits against media companies in Australia for reporting on donations and links to the Chinese government.CreditPeter Rae/EPA, via Shutterstock
Silencing Dissent
In May 2018, two children in Rockhampton, a rural capital of beef production, painted tiny Taiwanese flags on a statue of a bull during an event celebrating the town’s diversity. There were flags from many countries, but the local government painted over those from Taiwan to avoid offending Beijing, which says the self-governing island is part of China.
“What they want are pre-emptive concessions to Chinese interests,” said Peter Varghese, a former head of Australia’s Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade.
Analysts say Beijing tries both to suppress speech in Australia that undercuts its priorities — such as the diplomatic isolation of Taiwan — and to promote its own agenda.
Critics say one prominent example is the Australia-China Relations Institute, a research organization in Sydney led until recently by Bob Carr, a former foreign minister and outspoken defender of China’s positions. The institute was established with a gift from Huang Xiangmo, a Chinese real-estate developer who had donated generously to both of Australia’s main political parties.
Australia recently rejected his citizenship application and revoked his residency, despite his denials of having acted on behalf of the Communist Party.
China has also had success shaping news coverage in Australia, especially in Chinese-language outlets.
Maree Ma, general manager of the company that owns Vision China Times, a newspaper in Sydney and Melbourne, said Chinese officials successfully pressured businesses in 2015 and 2016 to pull their ads because of its critical coverage.
And before Saturday’s election, on WeChat — the Chinese social media platform, which is also popular in Australia — accounts affiliated with the Chinese Communist Party mocked the conservative government, disparaging Australia as “a country whose head has been kicked hard by kangaroos.”
Because Australian law favors plaintiffs in defamation suits, some say such cases — including a large payout in February to Chau Chak Wing, a Chinese-born property tycoon and political donor — have had a chilling effect on reporting and public protesting that might anger Beijing or its allies.
At the Chinese consulate in 2017, organizers showed photos of pro-China activists in Australia roughing up protesters from the Falun Gong spiritual movement, which is banned in China.
The audience applauded.
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Yongbei Tang, a prominent Chinese political candidate, in Hobart.CreditMatthew Abbott for The New York Times
Running for Office
China’s playbook prioritizes one particular group: Australia’s growing ethnic Chinese population, a diverse group of more than one million people, about half of whom are immigrants from mainland China.
At times, the Chinese government treats Australian citizens of Chinese ancestry as if they’re still subject to its rule. Critics of Beijing are often pressured. In January, Yang Hengjun, an Australian writer and former Chinese official, was arrested on dubious charges of espionage while visiting China.
More often, Beijing tries to woo people like Yongbei Tang.
Ms. Tang moved to Australia 23 years ago with her husband, an electrical engineer, settling in Hobart, the capital of Tasmania, where she started editing a newspaper called Chinese News Tasmania. Last year, she ran for the City Council.
“All the people in the community know me,” she said, when asked why. “I’m a media person. Influential.”
Ms. Tang had also helped start a local chapter of the Australian Council for the Promotion of Peaceful Reunification of China, which promulgates Beijing’s position that Taiwan is part of China. The group was established by Mr. Huang, the donor whose residency was revoked, and Australian intelligence officials say it is an arm of the party’s overseas influence efforts.
That connection and others made Ms. Tang, an Australian citizen, a subject of intense debate during the campaign, which she lost. Several local Chinese leaders published an open letter condemning her “hiding of titles of many organizations including her association with the Chinese Government.”
Cassy O’Connor, the leader of the local Greens Party, accused her of being part of an attempt by Beijing to dominate the Tasmanian tourism and property investment. “The Chinese government actually picks off smaller states like Tasmania, with smaller economies,” she said.
Ms. Tang denied any ties to the party. “The only wrongdoing I did was to put my hand up, wishing to add a different voice to the Hobart City Council,” she said.
What Ms. Tang actually reveals, analysts say, is the party’s ability to recruit sympathizers around the world, many of whom gravitate to Beijing’s orbit less because of ideology than the potential for wealth and influence. Even after her loss, she received favorable coverage on state television in China.
For many, Australian politics has become an increasingly valuable option — one of many ways to potentially benefit from Chinese power and prosperity.
“We are no longer the sick man of East Asia,” said one business leader at the consulate meeting in 2017. “We Chinese stand tall.”
