A group of Australian parliamentarians is expected to visit Taiwan next month.
The visit is to follow a bipartisan delegation of Australian parliamentarians that visited in December last year, and is being presented by one delegation member interviewed by Australian media as a continuation of visits over the years.
The Taipei Economic and Cultural Office in Canberra said parliamentary exchanges are a “common practice among democracies,” and it would “welcome Australian parliamentarians from all political parties to visit Taiwan,” Australian broadcaster ABC News reported on Tuesday last week.
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The 10-member cohort would include Labor Party legislators Josh Wilson, David Smith and Graham Perrett, as well as shadow assistant foreign affairs minister Claire Chandler, ABC News said.
Australia’s Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade said that “Australia values its deep and productive unofficial relationship with Taiwan, focused on trade and investment, cultural and people to people ties.”
Australia adheres to its “one China” policy, which does not recognize Taiwan as a country, but maintains unofficial contacts with Taipei, as stated on the department’s Web site.
Meanwhile, an official source familiar with the matter said on Saturday that parliamentarians travel to Taiwan in their own capacity, not as representatives of the Australian government.
Australian National University academic Benjamin Herscovitch said that aside from a gap due to COVID-19 border restrictions, Australian parliamentarians have kept visiting Taiwan over the years.
“This latest visit isn’t a dramatic departure from that schedule of semi-regular past trips,” he said yesterday.
However, he said it was noteworthy that one of the Australian parliamentarians on this visit has been willing to publicly discuss it in advance.
In recent years, these visits have not usually been clearly advertised until they happened, and have been accompanied by usually limited publicity, the academic added.
When asked about the Australian governments’ Taiwan policy, Herscovitch said it has not shifted significantly under Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s government.
Canberra continues to slowly increase its security engagement with Taipei. This includes expanding the remit of the Australian Office to engage with the Taiwanese security services and military, and extending Australia-Taiwan cooperation to regional security issues, he said.
It is hard to discern substantial differences in Taiwan between the Australian Labor Party and the conservative coalition, he said.
Both sides are committed to developing strong trade ties with Taiwan and preserving international space for the Taiwanese government, he added.
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