A cabinet reshuffle on Friday saw the key role of trade minister taken over by Dan Tehan, while former special air services captain Andrew Hastie was appointed assistant defence minister.
Australia’s Prime Minister Scott Morrison reshuffled his bureau on Friday, naming trade minister and appointing a high-profile critic of China, recently banished from visiting Beijing, s assistant defence minister.
Australia is entangled in a deteriorating discretionary question with China that has seen Beijing impose trade reprisals after Australia restricted foreign investment, foreign interference, and banished Huawei from its 5G network.
Australia’s farming area has borne the brunt as unloading levies have been forced on grain and wine, and Chinese imports of hamburger, lumber and fish stopped.
A bureau reshuffle on Friday saw the vital function of trade serve taken over by Dan Tehan, who Morrison said had “a keen sense of the particular interests of regional Australia in an open, rules-based trading system”.
Former special air services captain Andrew Hastie, who headed a parliamentary intelligence committee, was appointed assistant defence minister.
Hastie has led an informal group of backbench Australian politicians known as the “Wolverines”, who hold anti-communist views which are more strident than the Morrison government’s position.
In November 2019 Hastie was barred from visiting China because of his criticism of the Chinese Communist Party, he said in a statement at the time.
The Chinese embassy said Hastie should “repent”. The embassy had previously issued statements saying it deplored Hastie’s “China threat rhetoric”.
Hastie’s office declined to comment on the appointment.
Former Trade Minister Simon Birmingham was named the finance minister in October.
