Mark McGowan has been caught unawares by a ‘hot microphone’ that revealed his disparaging remarks about Liberal MP Andrew Hastie on day one of his trip to China.
In the footage shot by Chinese operators and provided to Australian outlets by Mr McGowan’s office, the Premier is seen chatting with Australian Ambassador to China, Graham Fletcher and China-Australia Chamber of Commerce chair, Vaughn Barber.
The three were attending a lunch put on in Beijing where Mr McGowan is visiting for five days to spruik his state’s trade with the Asian giant.
WA Premier Mark McGowan has been recorded making disparaging remarks about Liberal MP Andrew Hastie during a trade trip to China
Mr McGowan makes comments about an unnamed former trade minister, Mr Hastie and former Coalition finance minister and now OECD Secretary-General, Mathias Cormann.
‘So, I like Mathias Cormann, he had the same view as me, but he had no sway … on this issue. He had a lot of sway, but on this issue, he was the odd one out,’ Mr McGowan tells Mr Barber.
‘The other Western Australian who was senior, well, there was a few of them actually – Hastie.
‘He swallowed some sort of Cold War pills back … when he was born, and he couldn’t get his mindset out of that.’
Mr Hastie, a former SAS officer and assistant defence minister who represents the West Australian electorate of Canning, has been a longtime critic of Mr McGowan.
He was quick to resume hostilities following Mr McGowan’s recent faux pas in China.
He said the Premier had demonstrated he was out of his ‘intellectual depth’ in dealing with China.
‘The truth is that he’s (Mr McGowan) a prison guard looking for work now that the pandemic has finished,’ Mr Hastie said.
‘I’m not surprised he’s running down Australian MPs in China, but it is surprising from a former legal officer in the Royal Australian Navy.
‘I’m not sure I’d want to serve alongside him on a naval ship in a crisis.
‘Character is everything, what’s he really saying when the cameras aren’t running?’
Mr McGowan served as a legal officer for the navy from 1989 to 1994 while the jibe about being a prison guard refers to Western Australia’s long period of closed borders during the pandemic.
Andrew Hastie was quick to return fire over the overheard remarks as he accused Mr McGowan of being an ‘unemployed prison guard looking for work’
Former Morrison minister and now Secretary-General of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development Mathias Cormann received a more complimentary assessment by Mr McGowan
In the lead-up to the 2019 election Mr McGowan criticised the then-Morrison government’s hardline approach to China, calling it ‘mega-phone diplomacy’.
‘They should, if they have criticisms or they want to take issues up, you take them up in a more refined way, a more subtle way,’ Mr McGowan said.
Following this Mr Hastie shot back that Mr McGowan was ‘outside his brief and beyond his narrow range of competence’.
Addressing the lunch, Mr McGowan made comments about the Morrison government’s handling of Australia’s relationship with China but the video provided to media cuts out before the subject is gone into.
The Premier’s office said it was unable to provide that portion of the speech.
Unlike Victorian Premier Dan Andrews who controversially went to China for four days without inviting media in early April, Mr McGowan invited journalists to go with him.
However, visa issues meant only a reporter and photographer from The West Australian newspaper have gone on the trip.
Video of Mr McGowan’s trip is being shot by a local Chinese crew and is being supplied to Australian outlets by the Premier’s office.
In 2021 China, which is huge consumer of WA’s iron ore, accounted for 60 per cent of the state’s exports.
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