For all of Scott Morrison’s chest-thumping rhetoric about how “Australians always stand up to bullies and we will be standing up to Russia”, the sanctions against the Putin regime announced by the prime minister are limited and hardly world-leading. In fact, they strongly parallel those of UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who has come under serious criticism for the lack of bite in the sanctions he announced on Tuesday.
Johnson and the UK Tory party have close links with several Russian oligarchs and have taken £2 million in political donations from Russian sources. His government has imposed sanctions on five banks — Rossiya Bank, IS Bank, General Bank, Promsvyazbank and Black Sea Bank — and three Russian oligarchs close to Putin.
Morrison — who doesn’t even have the excuse that Russian oligarchs are significant political donors — barely went any further. He has sanctioned the same five banks and imposed “travel bans and targeted financial sanctions on eight members of Russia’s Security Council”.
The US and Europe went further. The Biden administration blocked two banks, VEB and Promsvyazbank, from US financial markets and froze their assets, and restricted access to any funding of Russian government debt. US sanctions on individuals also extend to the head of Promsvyazbank. The EU cut Russian access to European financial markets and imposed sanctions on 351 members of the Russian Parliament that supported Putin’s recognition of Donetsk and Luhansk as well as a further 27 people.
Russia experts say targeting the elites that support and enable Putin inside Russia is a far more effective way to undermine the autocrat than targeting oligarchs, even if they’re close to Putin.
Plainly European sanctions on such individuals are far more effective given they often hold assets in Europe and send their children to study there (though about 1000 Russian students came to study in Australia in 2019). Australia is a bit player, even if our economy is approximately the same size as Russia’s (and we’re a fossil fuel dependent economy as well). But the argument that the sanctions are just the beginning and will be ramped up if Putin invades more areas of Ukraine doesn’t hold up well compared to the actions of the Europeans and the Biden administration.
Could it be that Australia’s heavy trade surplus with Russia is holding Morrison back? Here’s where we’re no bit player. We have a $500-million-a-year surplus with Russia. Made of what? Alumina. We’re the world’s biggest exporter of alumina and Russia is our third-biggest export market, taking over $450 million in exports a year. Indeed, Russian aluminium giant Rusal owns 20% of the Gladstone refinery operated by Rio Tinto, which is one of two in Queensland. Another four refineries operate in Western Australia.
Where else does Russia get alumina from? We’re its second-biggest source of alumina, after… Ukraine. If Morrison wants to live up to his tough talk on Putin, he can dramatically cut Russia’s alumina supplies (and send Rusal’s stock price tumbling even further).
But $450 million in exports, coming from refineries in regional and rural Australia, is valuable in electoral terms. Throw in that we make another $100 million exporting live animals to Russia and you’re talking some electorally potent economic sectors threatened by a real sanctions regime.
But we always stand up to bullies — don’t we?
