A split has opened in Australia\u2019s ruling coalition government over a lawmaker\u2019s comparison of the rise of China to that of Nazi Germany.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Conservative MP Andrew Hastie, a former special forces soldier, wrote an opinion piece on Thursday for Channel 9 newspapers comparing the rise of China as an unnoticed existential threat to that of Nazi Germany, prompting a mixed reaction from colleagues and swift condemnation from Beijing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Powerful ministers including Attorney General Christian Porter and Finance Minister Mathias Cormann criticised Hastie\u2019s column, while Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton defended it, and Prime Minister Scott Morrison remained neutral.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The split continued to widen over the weekend when Trade Minister Simon Birmingham told his colleagues to watch their words.Is it helpful to Australia\u2019s national interests?\u201d Former ambassador to Israel and Liberal member for Wentworth Dave Sharma tweeted his support for Hastie\u2019s analysis on Saturday.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Hastie is not a minister but is an influential member of Australia\u2019s ruling Liberal-National coalition, and is the chair of parliament\u2019s intelligence and security committee, which is privy to classified information.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
His column outlined the dangers of not comprehending China\u2019s ideological motivation for building ports and roads, arguing the West had wrongly calculated that economic liberalisation in China would lead to democratisation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cHastie is right to ring the bell on this issue, and to warn that our greatest vulnerability lies in our thinking,\u201d he tweeted.Sharma said the comparison with Nazi Germany was valid as both World Wars One and Two were caused by the failure to manage Germany\u2019s emergence as a major power.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A split has opened in Australia\u2019s ruling coalition government over a lawmaker\u2019s comparison of the rise of China to that of Nazi Germany. Conservative MP Andrew Hastie, a former special forces soldier, wrote an opinion piece on Thursday for Channel 9 newspapers comparing the rise of China as an unnoticed existential threat to that of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":67968,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[87],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-67967","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67967","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=67967"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67967\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":67969,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67967\/revisions\/67969"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/67968"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=67967"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=67967"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=67967"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}