Sticking with the previous government’s decision, Australia’s new government will also continue to maintain a 2-year-old ban on the Chinese Telco firm Huawei restricting the firm from working with the National Broadband Network (NBN).
Attorney General George Brandis said that the decision of continuing the ban was taken after the country’s national security agencies presented the newly elected government briefings on the ban which prevented the tech giant from applying for work tenders on the NBN because of security concerns.
Not giving much detail on the entire matter, Brandis said in a statement that “As a matter of long-established practice, the government does not comment on advice from the national security agencies”.
Malcolm Turnbull, Communications Minister, had earlier promised in June to review the ban saying that “We’ll review it in light of the full security briefing that is only available to government”, reported ABC News.
China’s foreign ministry in against the ban imposed on Huawei and says that the company acts on a purely commercial basis. The Ministry has criticized mixing together of mixing business and security by the Australian Government.
“We always oppose interference in normal trade cooperation between the two countries on the pretext of national security,” said Hua Chunying, ministry spokeswoman, at a regular briefing.
The previous center-left Labor Party government had imposed a ban on Huawei Technologies Ltd’s Australian subsidiary in late 2011.
John Lord, Chairman of Huawei Australia, claimed that the company does not pose any threat to the nation’s security and complained that the government never explained any reasons for the ban. He even argued that a U.S. House Intelligence Committee report released last year which concluded Huawei and ZTE Corp, rival Chinese technology provider, posed national security threats to the United States has completely damaged the company’s international reputation.
