Turnbull in a China shop: did Beijing bogeyman sway an Australian election?

It is an unlikely setting for a pivotal moment in the rise of the “Asian Century”. Indeed, until recently even the most prescient of political observers in Washington or Beijing might have struggled to place it on a map.

Welcome to by-election day in Bennelong, population 106,000. Thrust into the limelight after their sitting member in the House of Representatives, the Liberal Party’s John Alexander, was found to be secretly British and forced to resign, the good people of Bennelong have found themselves not only potential parliamentary kingmakers down under but the centre of world attention.

On the surface, their choice appears merely a national concern. This weekend’s vote has been characterised by the opposition as a referendum on Malcolm Turnbull’s Liberal government, and is nominally a choice between the now-former Briton (Alexander renounced his citizenship to stand once more) and the Labor party’s Kristina Keneally, a former premier of New South Wales. While early exit polls suggest an Alexander victory, even a close result would be enough to rock Canberra. Were Keneally to win, the Coalition government would lose its one-seat working majority – an upset on a scale similar to the last time Bennelong played political jack-in-the-box when John Howard in 2007 became only the second sitting Australian prime minister to lose his own seat.

Spies and a magic weapon: why are Australia, NZ so suspicious of China?

But 10 years on from that vote – and 45 years since Australia and China established diplomatic ties – rising tensions in Canberra regarding perceived undue influence from Beijing have cast the latest Bennelong ballot not only as a litmus test for Sino-Australian relations but as a milestone in Beijing’s ascendance to superpowerdom.