Caution needed

LABOR’S dominant Right faction has often been a voice for moderation and common sense in party affairs. At other times, for example, during the Rudd-Gillard merry-go-round, it has acted like an indiscriminate wrecking ball. Now, as more details emerge of the activities of agents of Chinese influence in Australia, it is key figures in Labor’s Right faction whose names are being mentioned again and again.

The latest revelations, as reported yesterday in The Age, focus on efforts by former NSW premier Bob Carr to counter what he sees as the ‘‘China panic’’ spreading through Australia’s political and media class. Mr Carr, it has emerged, prevailed on ALP senator Kristina Keneally to quiz the Turnbull government on the credentials of its key adviser on Beijing’s espionage and political interference activities, John Garnaut. (Mr Garnaut is a former China correspondent for this newspaper.) Ms Keneally placed questions on notice concerning Mr Garnaut and conscripted Victorian senator Kimberley Kitching, another member of the Right, to take up the white-anting of Mr Garnaut during estimates.

As an ex-foreign minister and director of the Australia-China Relations Institute at the University of Technology Sydney, Mr Carr has every right to enter the growing debate about how China seeks to influence us. The unsettling thing, in this instance, is that he should do so, not in his own name or under the flag of his institute, but by mobilising his network of influence within the Labor Party, just when Labor needs to be erring on the side of caution where China’s influence is concerned.

China is neither our enemy nor the only country that seeks to influence our affairs. But a Venn diagram of its circle of influence and “networks of power inside the Labor Party’’ would show some overlap. It is now in Labor’s interests to get some distance from those who promote China’s.