Prime Minister Anthony Albanese is under pressure to confirm whether or not he personally confronted Xi Jinping over an incident with a Chinese warship which injured Australian navy divers.
Mr Albanese has not commented publicly since it emerged on Saturday morning that divers from HMAS Toowoomba had suffered “minor injuries” after being exposed to sonar pulses from a Chinese ship off the coast of Japan.
The divers were removing fishing nets that had become caught in the Australian vessel’s propeller.
Defence Minister Richard Marles said the Federal Government had expressed “serious concerns” to the Chinese Government over what he described as “unsafe and unprofessional” conduct.
The incident involving the People’s Liberation Army-Navy (PLA-N) destroyer occurred on Tuesday last week.
Mr Albanese met President Xi later in the week on the sidelines of the APEC summit in San Francisco.
It’s not clear if Mr Albanese raised the incident or not.
Mr Marles’ statement on Saturday was released after Mr Albanese had left the US and neither have publicly commented on it since.
Cabinet minister Murray Watt was asked directly on Sunday if Mr Albanese had discussed with incident with President Xi.
Senator Watt said Australia’s concerns had been relayed in the “appropriate way” — through Mr Marles.
“Richard Marles has made very clear what Australia’s position is as defence minister,” Senator Watt said.
The run-in with the Chinese warship comes just weeks after President Xi hosted Mr Albanese in Beijing for talks which signalled a new dawn in Australia-China relations following years of diplomatic tensions.
Shadow home affairs minister James Paterson said Mr Albanese must come to clean.
“(Mr Albanese’s) boasted about the length and the depth of the conversations that they had when he met them there,” Senator Paterson said on ABC.
“He would have known before he left (for) Australia that this incident had occurred. The question for the Prime Minister to answer today, now that he’s back in the country, is did he raise this and take this up on behalf of the Australian people and our Navy personnel?
“I mean, this is a serious incident.”