Australian minister says China should be more transparent about virus

An Australian government minister has called on China to be transparent about the origins of the coronavirus and predicted the world will rethink relations with Australia’s most important trading partner because of the pandemic.

Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton, who recently recovered from COVID-19 which he apparently contracted during a trip to Washington DC, tells Nine Network: “I do think there will be a reset about the way in which the world interacts with China. We do want more transparency.”

Chinese interference in other countries and involvement in cyber spying “need to, I think, be looked at again,” Dutton says.

“When you’ve got a communist party that doesn’t have the transparency that other comparable economies have, then that is a problem,” Dutton says.

Dutton’s call for transparency comes after US officials revealed intelligence agencies are assessing whether the respiratory virus escaped from a biological laboratory in the Chinese city of Wuhan, where the pandemic began.

“Hopefully you can have China answering these questions that are reasonably put and people can have more confidence,” Dutton says.

— AP