Mark McGowan suggest Anthony Albanese hold National Cabinet in China 

Western Australia Premier Mark McGowan has called for Australia’s National Cabinet to be held in China in an attempt to build relations between the two nations.

The WA premier’s comments come as he spends the week in China, working on a number of trade agreements between the Asian superpower and his own state, including securing the resumption of more direct flights to and from Perth.

Mr McGowan also encouraged Prime Minister Anthony Albanese to not only visit, but to take other state Premiers and Chief Ministers along for trade talks.

‘The Prime Minister, hopefully, will come to China sometime in the next six months and meet with President Xi Jinping,’ Mr McGowan told The West on Wednesday.

‘One of the things he could do is invite all the Premiers and Chief Ministers to come with him.’

Mr Albanese has previously indicated his willingness to make a diplomatic trip to China.

National Cabinet is the apex meeting between the Prime Minister with state and territory leaders that was established by the Morrison government to coordinate Australia’s Covid response in 2020.

Victoria’s Daniel Andrews and Queensland’s Annastacia Palaszczuk have also made recent visits but Mr McGowan wants all state leaders to go as a group.

Mr McGowan said if that happened alongside Prime Minister it would be ‘a strong demonstration that the relationship is back to a harmonious and productive one.’

Anti-Chinese government activist Drew Pavlou could not contain his disbelief when he learnt of the idea.

‘Holy sh*t,’ he said. ‘It’s crazy, it’s bizarre, it’s insane.’

Mr Pavlou suggested it would be strange to hold any National Cabinet meeting outside of Australia, even in a friendly country such as New Zealand.

‘But China? Are we a vassal state?’ he asked.

‘It should just be laughed out of the room saying something like that just to curry favour with China.’ 

Mr Pavlou said it was bad enough that Mr McGowan had been caught bad mouthing Liberal MP Andrew Hastie at a table with Chinese officials.

The WA premier’s comments come as he spends the week in China, working on a number of trade agreements between the Asian superpower and his own state, including securing the resumption of more direct flights to and from Perth

On the first day of his five-day trade trip Mr McGowan was caught on a hot microphone saying Mr Lambie ‘swallowed some kind of Cold War pills back when he was born and he couldn’t get his mindset out of that’.

The comments were directed to China-Australia Chamber of Commerce chair Vaughn Barber at Beijing lunch put on by the organisation. 

Mr Pavlou also pointed out that although Russia has been an international pariah for its invasion of Ukraine, China’s support of the war has largely been given a free pass. 

On Sunday in a meeting with the Russian President in the Kremlin China’s defense minister Li Shangfu called Vladimir Putin ‘an extraordinary state leader’ who had made ‘important contributions to promoting world peace’. 

Although the National Cabinet was created as an emergency measure it has supplanted the previous COAG forum that brought national and state leaders together. 

In 2018, then-Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull led a so-called ‘mega delegation’ to the United States along with four state Premiers, including Mr McGowan and Mr Andrews.

Mr McGowan’s trip was delayed by a day after some mid-air drama forced his initial flight to turn around.

A passenger aboard his Singapore-bound flight early Monday morning suffered a stroke, causing the Singapore Airlines plane to return to Perth about an hour into the service.

It means the WA Premier didn’t end up touching down in China until Tuesday.

The Prime Minister and the Minister for Foreign Affairs have been contacted for comment.