China found 'yet another reason to punish Australia'

Sky News host Paul Murray says since China has cheered in a change of presidency in the United States, they want to use Australia as an example, to put the nation’s collective heart on a spike to remind other countries never to call them out.

It comes as Australia is preparing to take China to the World Trade Organisation as a tariff dispute over grain escalates.

The Morrison government lodged an appeal against the 80 per cent tariffs which were slapped on grain producers, but China upheld its decision, causing Trade Minister Simon Birmingham to say the next step would be to take the dispute to the WTO.

Wine exporters have become the latest casualty of the trade stoush between Australia and China and have been hit by tariffs of up to 200 per cent, triggering fears smaller producers will not be able to recover.

“Over the weekend, China found yet another reason to punish Australia,” Mr Murray said.

“Remember, they are seeking to punish Australia because Australia wanted to know what went wrong with this virus. This virus that has killed a million people, that has destroyed the western way of life, that to this day is going to plunge this country into 1 trillion dollars’ worth of debt.

“China, now that they seem to have cheered in a change in the presidency of the United States, they want to use Australia as then example. They want to put our collective heart on a spike to remind countries, no matter what we do, never call us out.

“We are not the problem; china is the problem. But we need to make sure we can diversify our economy, so we don’t have a relationship where our biggest customer is also our biggest threat.

“Our sovereignty, our independence matters."

Видео China found 'yet another reason to punish Australia' канала Sky News Australia