The legislation which would also see university research agreements with Chinese partners vetted by federal officials may have passed, but it was regarded as unlikely the federal government would actually intervene in any of these agreements in the short term, given the already poor nature of the bilateral relationship just now.
$200m deal too close for comfort
But another agreement signed under the BRI is about to escalate the sense of threat that increasingly underlies the Australia-China relationship.
Last month Papua New Guinea signed a memorandum of understanding to build a $200 million comprehensive multi-functional fishery industrial park on Daru Island. Google Daru. There isnt much there, including fish.
As Jeff Wall, a long-time adviser to the PNG government, wrote in the Australian Strategic Policy Institutes publication The Strategist this week:the town of Daru is the closest PNG community to Australia. Even though it is around 200 kilometres from the Australian mainland, it is very close to the islands of the Torres Strait that are within our northern border.
Wall noted there was little doubt the MOU with Chinas Fujian Zhonghong Fishery Company project was sponsored directly by the Chinese government as it was announced by Chinas Ministry of Commerce, supported by Beijings powerful ambassador in Port Moresby, Xue Bing, who declared that the investment will definitely enhance PNGs ability to comprehensively develop and utilise its own fishery resources.
Federal MP Warren Entsch, whose electorate covers the Torres Strait, is just one figure in Canberra alarmed at the development. He questions why anyone would build such a huge fishing operation in a place where there arent a lot of fish.
Daru Island, where China proposes to base a new fishery, is very close to Australian waters in the Torres Strait. Jason South
He says there is currently an under-used mackerel fishery, a bit of trout and some lobsters.
The fishing rights in the Torres Strait are shared under a treaty between Australia and PNG and Entsch says the fishery has been well managed to avoid over-fishing.
He fears a big Chinese fishing operation could just come in and vacuum everything up, putting at risk, apart from anything else, the subsistence living of many locals.
The Guardian noted last month that Chinese fishing fleets have devastated fish stocks in other parts of the world. In August, just off the Galapagos Islands, an armada of nearly 300 Chinese vessels logged 73,000 hours of fishing in a month, hauling in thousands of tonnes of squid and fish, it wrote.
Entsch believes the issue is on the radar of foreign minister Marise Payne, but he has been unable to see her to discuss it since the deal was announced a few weeks ago.
Unlikely the deal can be stopped
Of course, there may be a few more strategic reasons than fish involved in the Chinese building a massive port just north of Australia.
But even if it does not become a major naval base for China, the idea of a large Chinese fishing fleet in the region poses big problems for Australia.
There is already a substantial Border Force presence in the Torres Strait, based out of Thursday Island, which focuses on illegal fishing (until now particularly by Indonesian fishermen) and on stopping the importation of drugs and other contraband from PNG to northern Australia. It is part of Operation Resolute, which is the Defence contribution to patrolling Australias Exclusive Economic Zone
The prospects of encounters and the complexities of policing the Strait are about to become a lot more complicated.
As Wall says, if the project goes ahead, its reasonable to assume Chinese fishing boats will be active in the seas around Daru, and in the Torres Strait.
They may use fishermen from Daru and elsewhere in Fly River Province, something the Chinese ambassador was clearly alluding to.
It will hardly be ideal for the Australian Border Force, which patrols the Strait, to have to decide which fishing boats and crew are actually from PNG and which might be fronts for Chinese operators from the multi-faceted facility.
Wall says PNG, one of the last countries in the region to sign a BRI agreement with China in 2018, is now the scene of intense activity, with China involved in negotiating around $3 billion of contracts for roads in the poverty-stricken nation.
Australia has belatedly recognised the threat PNGs vulnerability represents: hence our own recent decision to upgrade Manus Island to a naval base.
A $200 million “fishery” investment in an area not known for an abundance of fisheries but strategically as close to Australia as you can get, raises questions about the real agenda.
It seems unlikely the deal can be stopped. As a sovereign country, PNG would hardly be happy about Australia telling it what deals it can do, or renege upon.
Daru is the capital of the so-called Western province of PNG, which is particularly poor, and particularly poorly served by the government in Port Moresby.
There has been considerable aid poured into the area over the years by Australia.
But, just as our relationship with China unravels, the Daru proposal shows how we must seriously escalate our efforts to assist the economic development of poor nations in our region who are so rightly lured by the spectre of massive dollars from Beijing.