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The irony is growing greater by the day.\xa0

What to do with China?\xa0

The Premier has been in New Zealand and Australia this past week. \xa0

We rolled out the red carpet, they announced a visa deal for travellers and they also wanted us to put our differences aside.\xa0

The differences were more pronounced in Australia.\xa0

When Scott Morrison asked for an inquiry into the origins of Covid the Chinese went nuts, hit the tariff lever and punished Australia\xa0 for a number of years on beef, and barley, and wine.\xa0

Those tariffs have only just been unwound.\xa0

The reason is because they didn\u2019t work. China is basically a bully, and their bullying got called out.\xa0

Meantime in Europe, NATO are openly discussing tariffs against them for supporting the war in Ukraine.\xa0

They have also thrown tariffs at them because they gerrymander international markets in EVs and solar panels. The Chinese have made so many of them they are basically dumping them.\xa0

Australia, wisely, has reduced their trading reliance on China. It was once 40% of everything they did, it's now 25%.\xa0What about us? Can we say the same thing?\xa0

No we cannot.\xa0

We are trapped. We have become so embedded we must now pretend a whole bunch of stuff that is happening doesn\u2019t matter.\xa0

China supports Russia, it does business with them, it hosts Putin, it buys its oil, are we outraged? No. Certainly not publicly.\xa0

Once upon a time it was the Uyghurs, now we\u2019ve got a whole damn war, and yet we pretend we can separate all of these things out.\xa0

China is increasingly in the pacific, so Luxon and Peters circle the place with handouts, and handshakes, and talk of long-established friendships in the belief that mates beats money. Small clue, it doesn\u2019t.\xa0

Europe is looking to slap sanctions. We are looking to grow business. Someone isn't on the right side of this.\xa0

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