Treasurer Josh Frydenberg has called on WeChat to restore access to the Prime Minister’s account and allow politicians of all stripes to use the platform.
Scott Morrison’s account on the Chinese social media platform was taken over and rebranded as ‘Australian Chinese new life’ earlier this month, according to the Daily Telegraph.
Mr Frydenberg says it is not good enough that the Labor leader still has access to WeChat when the Prime Minister has not.
“This is something we would like to see rectified as it is a very important method of communicating with the Australian Chinese community,” he told reporters in Brisbane on Monday.
“It should be offered to politicians of all political persuasions, it shouldn’t be a political football. It is very, very disappointing to see the Prime Minister prevented from having this access.
But Mr Frydenberg did not join his colleague’s call to boycott the platform amid the controversy.
Liberal chairman of the House Intelligence and Security Committee, James Paterson, said WeChat had ignored government requests to restore access to Mr Morrison’s account.
He called on all Australian politicians to boycott the platform.
“The government has directly appealed to WeChat to restore access and there has been no response, which seems pretty clear. WeChat has no intention of allowing the Prime Minister to continue posting,” a- he told Sky News.
Senator Paterson said the action was sanctioned by the Chinese government and amounted to foreign interference.
“What the Chinese government has done by shutting down an Australian account is foreign interference in Australian democracy in an election year,” Senator Paterson told Sydney radio station 2GB.
“This is very clearly a government action in my view. No politician should be on WeChat legitimizing their censorship.
The Victorian senator also revealed that the Prime Minister’s WeChat account had been plagued with problems for at least six months, with the problems starting around the time he was attending G7 meetings in the UK.
An agent managing Mr Morrison’s account due to app terms and conditions struggled to post in mid-2021, around the time the Prime Minister lobbied world government leaders to they are not overexposed to Chinese influence.
The initial problems arose when he took a list of 14 demands given by the Chinese Embassy to an Australian G7 reporter to warn world leaders of the dangers of giving China too much clout.
“It would not be at all surprising if these two events were linked,” said Senator Paterson.
He said it was also about 1.2 million Chinese Australians who use the service couldn’t access Prime Minister’s news but could still see government criticism on Opposition Leader Anthony Albanese’s platform .
He said Mr Albanese should not allow a foreign government to dictate the terms of the Australian debate or dictate how a Prime Minister can speak to his own people.
“A relatively small number (of politicians) are active on the platform and I think it is appropriate given that it is a platform for monitoring and controlling overseas Chinese. “Senator Paterson said.
“Now that they’re trying to do partisan intervention by preventing one side of politics from getting a message out there, it’s 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.
Mr Sharma said 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.
“It is more likely than not that he was sanctioned by the state and it shows the attitude towards freedom of speech and free speech that comes out of Beijing,” he told Sky. News.
