Prime Minister Scott Morrison kept in weekly contact with Donald Trump’s secretary of state, and fellow evangelical Christian, Mike Pompeo, with a “faith connection” between the two forming a key part of their close relationship.
The revelation of the little known arrangement, in a report by The Australian’s Paul Kelly over the weekend, raises questions about Pompeo’s potential influence on Australia’s foreign policy positions, particularly in relation to China.
Kelly’s report, drawn from a new book he has written, quoted Morrison saying that his relationship with the Trump administration was “deeply rooted in my relationship with Mike Pence and Mike Pompeo”. The PM and Pompeo were in contact “weekly, not necessarily on the phone, but we were regular correspondents”. And the point of nexus? “We’re evangelical Christians,” Morrison said.
The assertion puts paid to the idea that Morrison keeps his religion and politics separate. The revelation also underlines the secretive nature of Morrison’s conduct of national affairs. Who knew that the Australian prime minister and the apocalyptic Christian Pompeo were email and phone buddies during a critical phase of Australia’s relationship with China?
Crikey has asked Foreign Affairs Minister Marise Payne if she was aware of the relationship and if she had been kept informed of policy developments. We did not hear back by deadline.
The revelation also starts to make sense of the confluence in Australian and US foreign policy in key areas. As Crikey reported in our God in the Lodge series last year, Morrison’s decision to publicly upbraid China and demand an international investigation into the origins of COVID-19 in 2020 was a neat fit with the US position.
Another was his sudden announcement, on the eve of a 2018 byelection for the seat of Wentworth, that Australia might shift its embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, breaking with decades of careful Middle East diplomacy. The idea was junked immediately but it paralleled a move by the Trump administration, made in part to please the ranks of America’s apocalyptic Christians.
There is no precedent for an Australian prime minister to conduct the US alliance via constant dialogue with a US secretary of state, with or without the bonds of religion. The question is: what other Australian positions might be influenced by the Pompeo-Morrison faith relationship?
The positions of Mike Pompeo
Pompeo is a Tea Party Republican and former member of the US Congress. He was appointed by Trump as head of the CIA and then secretary of state from 2018 until January 2021.
On the question of Israel Pompeo suggested in an interview that God may have sent President Trump to earth to protect the Jewish state under threat from Iran. “I am confident that the Lord is at work here,” he added.
Pompeo’s most strident attacks, though, have been on the Chinese government and its actions against religious minorities. In one speech Pompeo described the Chinese Communist Party as “the gravest threat to religious freedom”.
Pompeo cited what he called China’s “war” against Muslims, Buddhists, Christians and practitioners of the outlawed Falun Gong sect. Just before leaving office Pompeo escalated his rhetoric on China’s treatment of its Muslim Uyghur population. (China in turn called Pompeo “a doomsday clown and joke of the century” who was “notorious for lying and deceiving.”)
Over the same period the United States Commission on Religious Freedom, a State Department body with Republican and Democrat appointments, alleged that the Chinese government had intensified its “sinicisation” of religion policy. It cited “credible” human rights reports of “organ harvesting” of Falun Gong members. It also cited reports that pictures of the Virgin Mary in churches were being replaced with portraits of President Xi Jinping and “robed choir members” sang hymns of praise not to God but to the Chinese Communist Party.
After leaving office Pompeo joined the influential conservative think tank the Hudson Institute which had authored the report on sinicisation of religion cited by the commission.
The last publicly known interaction between Morrison and Pompeo was in late January last year. The pair reportedly spoke about the “unbreakable bond” that exists between the US and Australia and committed to continue working together to deepen and broaden the alliance; they also spoke about the importance of the Quad alliance (between the US, Australia, Japan and India) to “advance a free, open, and inclusive Indo-Pacific region”.
And what of AUKUS?
Precious little is known of how Australia came to suddenly cancel its submarine contract with France and plump for a US-led alliance to produce nuclear submarines.
What we do know, courtesy of Morrison himself, is that he had been considering alternatives for at least two years before making his surprise announcement in September last year. Under attack from French President Emanuel Macron, Morrison disclosed that he had ordered an investigation after the 2019 election to examine potential alternatives to the French deal.
We also know that by March last year, Morrison had appointed former US Navy secretary Donald Winter as a special adviser on the subs. That was six months before Morrison terminated the French deal.
But secrets remain, not just on the identities of those involved but the number. Last week Defence Minister Peter Dutton told 7.30‘s Laura Tingle that the number of people in on the decision to revoke the French contract was in the “single digits.”
“I mean the prime minister has been clear publicly in relation to this process”, Dutton said. “This was a compartmentalised piece of work within Defence. There were very, single digits in fact, number of people who had access to what was a very high-level discussion and decision-making process within the government.”
In Kelly’s analysis Morrison has been “bold” in his foreign policy. “His secret effort to secure the nuclear-powered submarine decision is a singular example of executive decision-making that only prime ministers can pull off,” he wrote.
“Morrison’s instinct is for ambition and activism. He rarely defers to others and puts the stamp of his style and judgments all over Australian foreign policy.”
Maybe so. But how can we know?
The truth is we know more about Bridget McKenzie’s dodgy $36,000 sports rorts grant to the Wangaratta Clay Target Club than we do about how Australia came to make the biggest defence policy change in a generation, leaving the country without a submarine fleet perhaps for decades. Moreover, as captain’s picks go, the submarine decision makes Tony Abbott’s knighthood to Prince Phillip look like an Australia Day prank.
It only adds to the intrigue that Morrison and Pompeo had each other secretly on speed dial for close to two years.
If you know more about this story, please email dhardaker@protonmail.com.
