Morrison swims in a swamp of US influence peddlers. But who does he speak for?

Who is Scott Morrison speaking for when he recently raised the idea of Magnitsky-style sanctions to punish Chinese business and political figures?

Morrison made his comments, sure to be inflammatory, in Tokyo at a meeting of the grandly titled Inter-parliamentary Alliance on China (IPAC). Australia’s former prime minister was joined by UK former blink-and-you-missed-it PM Liz Truss, as well as former Belgian PM Guy Verhofstadt, a Liberal politician.

Morrison might be the current member for Cook in southern Sydney, but late last week libertarian US policy centre the Hudson Institute was all over his speech, uploading it to its site and billing Morrison as its “China Centre advisory board member”.

The Hudson Institute has become a new home for Morrison and a springboard to international relevance — sorely needed given the state of his relations in Australia and within his own party.

The Institute established its China Centre in 2021, appointing former US secretary of state Mike Pompeo to its advisory board. Pompeo had gone out of his way to inflame US relations with China in his final months in office. When he joined Hudson, he brought with him Miles Yu, his former China policy adviser (and professor at the United States Naval Academy), as a senior fellow.

Pompeo and Morrison have enjoyed a close personal relationship based on their shared religious beliefs — both are committed Pentecostal Christians. Their relationship appears to have blossomed when Morrison was prime minister from May 2019, and might have been kept secret had it not been for Morrison spilling the beans to The Australian‘s Paul Kelly, as part of a flattering portrait of Morrison’s evolving foreign policy expertise — particularly towards China.

Morrison revealed to Kelly that while prime minister he was in regular contact with Pompeo. Crikey‘s inquiries indicate that none of this was officially recorded. There has been virtually no media attention either on the nature of the relationship or its impact on Australian foreign policy.

Pompeo is a possible candidate for the next US presidential elections. Last week he created further headlines when he claimed Israel had a biblical claim to Palestinian lands and was therefore not illegally occupying it.

The Pompeo-Morrison relationship only truly broke cover at the end of last year when Pompeo invited Morrison to join him on the advisory board of Hudson’s newly created China Centre. Morrison described Pompeo as “a dear friend”. Pompeo’s old staffer, Yu, lavished praise on the member for Cook, giving him a hero’s billing, which many Australians might not have recognised.

“He’s very Australian, he’s very famous, he’s beloved by Australians and Americans,” Yu said.

The Hudson Institute is an influence-peddling organisation par excellence. It receives financial backing from a number of US weapons manufacturers, including Huntington Ingalls Industries, which builds nuclear submarines for the US Navy. It has close ties with Taiwan, which has reportedly provided financial backing to the institute. The country’s president, Tsai Ing-wen, sent official congratulations to Hudson on its 60th anniversary in 2021. The institute declares that it has received donations from Japanese government-linked organisations. 

The institute also lists News Corp CEO Rupert Murdoch as a major donor, who also has a seat on Hudson’s chairman’s advisory board. Former prime minister Tony Abbott has had a cameo role: he was part of a Hudson panel that kicked around the implications of the AUKUS agreement in 2021.

Morrison’s IPAC address in Tokyo last week was a typically muddled articulation. He gained headlines for comparing a “benign and accommodating view” of China with former British PM Neville Chamberlain’s policy of appeasement and his misreading of Hitler’s intentions in 1938.

Morrison raised the prospect of whether sanctions should be applied to Chinese nationals for human rights abuses, especially in relation to the Uyghur population of Xinjiang. In the next breath, he appeared to shoot the idea down, citing the “practical issues to consider” within the China relationship, “not the least being the practical issues of possible impacts on Australian citizens being held by the Chinese government”.

Perhaps China pays little attention to the words of a former prime minister, but his intervention at the very least muddies the waters. 

So is he the former prime minister? The humble member for Cook? Or is he mini-Mike Pompeo, man of belligerent views backed by powerful friends?