What China’s warship did to Australian divers

Sam Hawley: Hi, I'm Sam Hawley, coming to you from Gadigal land. Before we get into today's episode, just reminding you, we're running a listener survey because we really want to hear from you about what you do and don't like about the show. It's all anonymous, and you can find the link in our show notes and on our website. We'd love to hear from you. Now for ABC News Daily. In recent weeks, the imagery couldn't have been better, with Anthony Albanese rubbing shoulders with China's President Xi Jinping on the world stage. The message was the relationship had been stabilised, but how quickly things can change. Australia is now in dispute with China over a maritime altercation which saw Australian divers injured. Today, foreign affairs reporter Stephen Dziedzic on how the incident unfolded and how China's response threatens to open a new rift. Stephen, let's unpack what happened on Tuesday last week. HMAS Toowoomba had been operating in international waters off Japan. First, tell me what it was doing there.

Stephen Dziedzic: So Toowoomba had basically been part or has been part of an international effort to try and enforce sanctions against North Korea. It was in those waters as part of a broader mission, a three month deployment to monitor ships coming in and out of North Korea. On Tuesday last week, Toowoomba's propellers became entangled in fishing nets. A number of Australian divers were sent down to basically try and disentangle those nets by hand, so that Toowoomba could continue on its way. That's when this confrontation occurred.

Sam Hawley: Okay, so the divers are sent down to untangle the net, and at this point, other ships in the area are warned that the divers are going to do that. They're told that's what's happening.

Stephen Dziedzic: Yeah. Well, according to the defence minister, Richard Marles, the frigate provided the usual warnings to other vessels in the area that diving operations were happening. So a number of ships in the area were told. But obviously one of the ships that was hailed was the Chinese warship that's at the heart of this confrontation and this whole controversy. And it obviously approached the Australian vessel at that time.

Sam Hawley: And what did it do then?

Stephen Dziedzic: Well, that's when China basically released what's called a sonar pulse into the water. Now, sonar is what a number of ships and other vessels use to try and detect things underwater. So if you want to try and see what's happening, then you need to basically bounce sonar off it, in order to measure distances between things. So the Chinese ship, according to the Australian account, basically sent out this short pulse or this ping into the water. Now, if you're an inanimate object, that's not a problem - it bounces off. But if you're a Navy diver, then you could be exposed to what is potentially a pretty heavy dose of sound. Now that can potentially do damage to someone. It could potentially damage the hearing of the diver, at really high levels it could potentially even do more serious damage, for example, to the internal organs of a diver down there. Now, what we don't know is how seriously the Australian divers were injured. I mean, the language that the government used has been pretty careful saying that they suffered mild injuries. That seems to imply, even though they're not being specific, that it did nothing worse than perhaps give them a bit of nausea or disorientation or dizziness. But the reality is, we simply don't know.

Sam Hawley: So luckily, by the sounds of it, anyway, the divers are okay. Tell me now, Stephen, about the initial response to this from the government. What was it saying?

Stephen Dziedzic: Well, we first learned about this on Saturday. Before then, at least as far as I can tell, there had been absolutely no public coverage of this. So the Australian government had kept a pretty tight lid on this. But on Saturday morning, Richard Marles issued a statement essentially labelling the incident both unsafe and unprofessional, laying out what had happened and making it clear that the Australian government had made representations to the Chinese government to convey that the depth of Australia's concern. And since then, speaking to Sky News, the Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has also weighed in on the matter, saying that he's very concerned about what's happened.

Anthony Albanese, prime minister: This was dangerous, it was unsafe and unprofessional from the Chinese forces, and that's why we've made very clear to the Chinese of our strong objections to this occurrence.

Sam Hawley: So Anthony Albanese, he says the issue has been raised with China through all the normal channels. But Stephen, there are questions out there about whether he's pushed China hard enough on this.

Stephen Dziedzic: Yeah. That's right. And the main question that the opposition has been asking is, did Anthony Albanese, when he met Xi Jinping late last week in San Francisco on the sidelines of APEC, did he use that opportunity to personally press the Chinese leader about this incident? So remember, you've got to keep the timing in mind here. This happened on Tuesday, a few days before Anthony Albanese sat down with Xi Jinping for this brief pull-aside. So well and truly, at that point, he would have been briefed about what's happened. The prime minister has refused to say whether or not he used that meeting in San Francisco to raise this issue.

Anthony Albanese, prime minister: I don't talk about private meetings on the sidelines, discussions I have with any world leader. That's how you keep communications open.

Stephen Dziedzic: But now that has been taken by many commentators and certainly by the opposition as an implicit admission that he did not raise it.

Simon Birmingham, shadow foreign affairs minister: Well, I would hope that the Australian government makes serious representations to China. And given what appears to have been an inadequate response to date in not seizing the opportunity to raise it at the highest levels, the Albanese government should now be making clear our concerns.

Stephen Dziedzic: Given the seriousness of this incident with, you know, Australian Navy divers injured, however mildly that might be, their argument is that merits attention at the highest level. And that merits, at the very least, a mention to Xi Jinping.

Sam Hawley: So Stephen, Simon Birmingham, the coalition's foreign affairs spokesman, who we just heard from there, he's really concerned by how this has been handled by the government. And the opposition also argues that China should apologise.

Simon Birmingham, shadow foreign affairs minister: If they say that it was a mistake and an accident, well, so be it. But apologies ought to be offered. But most importantly, for the safety of our region, we ought to be seeing a change in the way the Chinese military conduct themselves.

Sam Hawley: But I guess, Stephen, China is not going to apologise over this.

Stephen Dziedzic: So that's the demand from the opposition. But look, China's very unlikely to apologise. Now, what we've seen from the Chinese side has basically been a straight denial of Australia's account of the interaction. It's defended its behaviour as quote unquote "professional". And not only that, it's also essentially accused Australia of straying very close to what it regards as Chinese waters. So, for example, you had the Global Times saying that that it occurred in, quote, "Japan's self-proclaimed exclusive economic zone". So while we don't know exactly where this happened, China seems to be implying here that it occurred in a stretch of water which Japan calls its exclusive economic zone, but which China also claims as its territorial waters. You've got to see this in context: Australia isn't the only country that's come to grief with the Chinese navy in either the South China Sea or the East China Sea. Over recent months, we've seen a pattern of very aggressive behaviour from the Chinese navy, over the last few months in particular, but really over many years now. But I guess what's most concerning from an Australian government perspective is that China is, one, accusing Australia of making things up. And whilst I wasn't on the ground, I think that's pretty damn unlikely. And two, that there seems to be an unwillingness on the Chinese side to even admit that this has happened to even engage with the basic facts.

Sam Hawley: And of course, Stephen, it comes at a really tricky time for the Australian government, doesn't it, because it's trying to get this relationship back on track. It's trying to repair trade with a very important trading partner. So how does this all sit in terms of that?

Stephen Dziedzic: Sam, it sits really, really uncomfortably. And it almost couldn't have come at a worse time for the government in the wake of Anthony Albanese's trip to Beijing, which was in many ways a landmark visit and was accompanied, of course, with an enormous amount of sort of grandiose rhetoric, including from the Chinese side, about relationship repair. You saw Chinese leaders labelling the prime minister a handsome boy, and you see enormous amounts of rhetoric about how the relationship is now back on an even keel. But, you know, within a couple of weeks of that trip, you see behaviour like this. I think what it does is it's a reminder of the structural constraints to relationship repair between Australia and China. It's a reminder of the fact that Australia and China remain profoundly at odds when it comes to some really important questions around our strategic posture, but also just about our strategic interests, particularly in North and South-East Asia, as well as in the Pacific. There's a big debate at the moment about how far up the chain this might have been approved on the Chinese side, but there's no doubt that at the very least, the Chinese navy has been given a very, very, very long leash to operate on and that it's been given essentially the green light from Beijing to engage in behaviour like this.

Sam Hawley: Mm. And, Stephen, as far as we know, the divers are okay. But it is a sign, isn't it, of how easily things could and can run off track.

Stephen Dziedzic: Yeah. And it's a reminder that that process of stabilisation does to some extent remain hostage to, you know, what the analysts like to call exogenous shocks, right? Just events, things that happen that are beyond Australia's control. Look, it's also worth remembering that this isn't happening in a vacuum with the US either. The fact that China is very deliberately doing this to a US treaty ally also comes in that broader story of confrontation between the US and China in waters quite close to China, which the US regards as international, but which China increasingly regards as little more than a Chinese lake - part of its territory. So that push and pull between China and the US is going to continue for quite some time. And Australia, smaller nations like Australia and the Philippines, we are still at risk of being drawn into those broader confrontations and at worst, a broader regional conflagration.

Sam Hawley: Stephen Dziedzic is the ABC's foreign affairs reporter. The divers involved in the incident have now returned to duty, according to the defence minister's office. This episode was produced by Nell Whitehead, Anna John and Sam Dunn, who also did the mix. Our supervising producer is David Coady. I'm Sam Hawley. Don't forget to fill out our survey. It's in the show notes and on our website, ABC News Daily. We'll be back again tomorrow. Thanks for listening.