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According to one senator, the prime minister’s WeChat account has been plagued with problems for at least six months, with issues starting around the time he attended G7 meetings in the UK.
Scott Morrison’s account on the Chinese social media site was changed earlier this month to “Australian Chinese new life” according to the Daily Telegraph.
Due to the app’s terms and conditions, an agent running Morrison’s account had problems posting in the middle of 2021 when the prime minister was lobbying worldwide government leaders not to become overexposed to Chinese influence.
James Paterson, the Liberal Chair of the Parliamentary Intelligence and Security Committee, said the action sanctioned by the Chinese government amounted to foreign interference.
“What the Chinese government has done by shutting down an Australian account is foreign interference of Australian democracy in an election year,” Senator Paterson told Sydney radio station 2GB.
“It is very clearly government action in my view. No politician should be on WeChat and legitimising their censorship.”
The first problems occurred when the prime minister presented the G7 with a letter of 14 demands, given by the Chinese embassy to an Australian journalist, warning world leaders about the dangers of giving China too much leverage.
“It wouldn’t be at all surprising if those two events were connected,” Senator Paterson told Sky News.
Senator Paterson said WeChat had not heeded requests from the government to restore access to Mr Morrison’s account. The Senator has already called on all Australian politicians to boycott the platform.
“The government has directly appealed to WeChat to restore access and no response has been given, which seems pretty clear WeChat has no intention on allowing the prime minister to continue to post,” he said.
Senator Paterson also expressed concern that 1.2 million Chinese Australians who use the site could not get news from the Prime Minister, but could still view Opposition Leader Anthony Albanese’s attacks of the government on the platform.
According to him, Albanese should not allow a foreign government to dictate the parameters of the Australian discussion or how a prime minister should address his own people in public.
“A relatively small number (of politicians) are active on the platform and I think that is appropriate given that it is a surveillance and monitoring platform of overseas Chinese,” Senator Paterson said.
“Now that they are attempting to make a partisan intervention by blocking one side of politics getting out a message on there, it is incumbent on all politicians to get off the platform.”
Liberal MP and former diplomat Dave Sharma also said the move was likely sanctioned by the Chinese government.
Sharma says while the prime minister was right to have a WeChat account to connect with Australia’s Chinese diaspora, the platform was ultimately controlled by the Chinese communist party.
“More likely than not it was state-sanctioned and it shows the attitude towards free speech and freedom of expression that comes out of Beijing,” he told Sky News.
Dee Antenor is an experienced writer who specialises in the not-for-profit sector and its affiliations. She is the content producer for Third Sector News, an online knowledge-based platform for and about the Australian NFP sector.
