JANE MARWICK, PRESENTER: Labor has called on the Morrison Government to guarantee a proposed Chinese fishing facility on our doorstep won’t threaten our national security and deplete the area’s fish stocks. The Opposition is saying that the Morrison Government has dropped the ball. Now this is a Chinese company that has signed an MoU – a Memorandum of Understanding – with the Papua New Guinean Government to build, wait for it, a $132 million “comprehensive multifunctional fishery industrial park” – what the hell is that? – on the island of Daru under Beijing’s Belt and Road Initiative.
Pat Conroy is the Federal Shadow Minister for International Development and the Pacific and he joins me this afternoon. Good afternoon Pat.
PAT CONROY, SHADOW MINISTER FOR INTERNATIONAL DEVELOPMENT AND THE PACIFIC: Good afternoon, how are you?
MARWICK: Very well thank you. I’ve had a lot of people contact me about this Pat. There’s deep concern in the minds of the Australian public about this deal. Can you explain it to me?
CONROY: Yes, so it appears that a Chinese fishing company has signed a deal with the PNG Government as you said for a massive fishery industrial park on the island of Daru which is only three kilometres from the Australian maritime border and only a couple of hundred kilometres from the mainland. This is clearly something that is supported and heavily influenced by the Chinese Government because the Chinese Ministry of Commerce have announced this deal in a formal ceremony signaling that they are well and truly behind this project.
MARWICK: Right, and so we are saying Daru for people listening with a D, not Nauru. It’s one of the few Torres Strait Islands that don’t belong to Australia and as you said is just a few kilometres from our maritime border. Now Australia Government sources have told Nine Media, they’ve conceded that there was some concern about the project - particularly the depletion of fish stocks in the area - but have insisted the project still has a long way to go before being approved. Do you know if that’s right or not?
CONROY: Well we’ve got a number of concerns, not just about that particular issue. The first issue is, did the Australian Government actually know anything about it before the MoU was signed? Secondly, did they have any real attempt to block it or at least persuade the PNG Government to think twice about this?
First off, there aren’t commercial fishing grounds close to Daru, so there are real question about building a –
MARWICK: There are or there aren’t? Sorry Pat.
CONROY: There aren’t.
MARWICK: There are not commercial fishing grounds close to Daru. So what’s this really about?
CONROY: Well that’s the question. So the information that we’ve got is that the fishing resource in the Torres Strait is quite poor, so first off, why are they spending hundreds of millions of dollars on a fishery resource project when there aren’t fishery resources nearby? Secondly, the facility is multipurpose, so it will have wharfs and facilities that could accommodate other vessels that could have purposes other than fishing. So what are the arrangements that guide other Chinese vessels using this facility?
And the other part of this is that it’s well known that the Chinese trawler fleet are part of the auxiliary of the People’s Liberation Army Navy. So for example in recent conflict between the Philippines and China, some of their fishing trawlers assisted the Chinese Navy in that particular sort of confrontation.
MARWICK: Gotcha, so we’re talking about a wolf in sheep’s clothing?
CONROY: Well we’ve got concerns. I wouldn’t go that far, but this facility is way too large for its ostensible requirement. It’s multipurpose, so what are the other purposes?
MARWICK: Yeah.
CONROY: And the Chinese fishing fleet isn’t just there to fish, and that’s why we’ve got real concerns about this and why we think the Government has dropped the ball in terms of making sure that Australia’s national interests are protected.
MARWICK: And what about Papua New Guinea’s role in this?
CONROY: Well there’s a real question here about how much they’re being supported by Australia. We should remain the partner of choice for our Pacific friends so that they don’t have to turn to other countries, but the fact is that the current Government has cut education aid to PNG and has actually pulled out officials from the Australian embassy in Papua New Guinea. So if we look like we are neglecting our relationship, they are going to turn to other people, and they desperately need economic development –
MARWICK: See Pat, this is interesting because whenever we talk about foreign aid you’ll get a whole lot of callers to talkback radio saying ‘don’t give aid to other countries, we’ve got homeless people here, Australians need the money’, but this is the reason. It’s strategic – I mean it’s to be kind and all of that stuff – but it’s strategic. So are you telling me that basically if we’ve taken our eye off the ball with Papua New Guinea and we’re not looking after them, they’ll take some largesse off China?
CONROY: Absolutely. If you’re the Government of PNG, your number one concern is to lift people out of economic poverty, and if we’re not seen as being the partner of choice, if we’re not doing everything we can to be a good partner in a relationship that helps both countries, they’re going to turn to other countries. And that’s what’s occurred here. This is manifestly against our national interest to have someone else becoming the partner of choice for PNG, and these things will happen more and more unless we get much more active.
MARWICK: You know what I find interesting? Daniel Andrews has been roundly criticised - and I’ve joined that criticism – for signing a Memorandum of Understanding for the Belt and Road Initiative in Victoria and the Coalition has been red hot on that, and I just don’t know how this one hasn’t raised more eyebrows.
Just stay with me Pat because Matt from Claremont has called in. I think you’re more of an expert on this than I am. Hi Matt.
MATT, CALLER: Hi, how are you?
MARWICK: Yeah good thanks.
MATT: Yeah I work as a boat skipper and I delivered boats to Fiji from 1998 onwards, and I ended up actually marrying the Deputy Prime Minister’s daughter. The Chinese came in in 2005, and they absolutely decimated the entire place. It was just wiped out in three years. So, yeah.
MARWICK: You mean fished all of the fish out of it?
MATT: Absolutely fished it out. Completely decimated it. And it was because the Fijians were poor, the Government needed money, and they got paid off and it was just appalling.
MARWICK: Thank you for the call Matt. Pat?
CONROY: Yeah that’s absolutely right. So we’ve got real questions about even if this is purely about fishing, what happens to a fishery resource that’s shared with Australia where Papua New Guineans have the right to fish there, Australians have the right to fish there, but then we’ll be asking the Border Force to work out when a trawler comes in – it might have Papua New Guinean crew but it might be Chinese owned – and the fish might be going back to China, so what rights do they have there? That’s another problem.
Another problem on top of that is if the resource is depleted, what obligations do the Papua New Guinean Government have to the Chinese company and the Government of China to make good on any commitment? We saw in Sri Lanka for example where the Sri Lankan Government couldn’t pay a loan to the Chinese Government and to pay off that debt they ended up leasing a naval base for 99 years to China. So there are huge questions here, and the Government clearly needs to be much more active in this area.
MARWICK: Good to talk to you this afternoon, thank you Pat.
CONROY: Thank you, have a good afternoon.