Here’s a priority list for Foreign Minister Marise Payne’s foreign arrangements taskforce to apply the Australian government’s new veto power over states’ engagement with foreign governments: Victoria’s Belt and Road Initiative memorandum of understanding with China; a dozen Confucius Institutes located at Australian universities (New South Wales removed one from its own Education Department in 2019); and, at last count in 2018, 1,741 agreements between Australian and Chinese universities. In 2007, according to Universities Australia, there were 488 Australia–China university agreements. Close to a fourfold increase in little more than a decade should have sounded warning bells.
