Scott Morrison calls Donald Trump to discuss holding the WHO to account for pandering to China over the coronavirus pandemic - and says US and Australia are 'best mates'
- Prime Minister Scott Morrison has spoken to President Donald Trump on phone
- Mr Morrison said the pair discussed strategies to relax coronavirus restrictions
- Pair also discussed the WHO's response to virus which has infected 2.5million
- Learn more about how to help people impacted by COVID
Prime Minister Scott Morrison has spoken to President Donald Trump about how the World Health Organisation can 'improve' after both leaders criticised how it dealt the coronavirus pandemic.
Mr Morrison called Mr Trump at around midday on Wednesday (AEST) and later tweeted about the conversation.
He said they discussed strategies to relax coronavirus restrictions and also the WHO's response to the deadly virus which has infected 2.5million people globally.
Prime Minister Scott Morrison has spoken to President Donald Trump (pictured together in September) on the phone about how the World Health Organisation can 'improve'
Mr Morrison called Mr Trump at around midday on Wednesday (AEST) and later tweeted about the conversation
The WHO has come under fire for being slow to declare a pandemic, telling nations not to shut their borders and praising China's response despite the country's attempt to cover-up the spread of the disease by silencing whistleblowers.
President Trump accused the organisation of being 'China-centric' and vowed to cut funding.
Mr Morrison has also criticised the WHO - particularly over its refusal to ban wet markets - but has said Australia will not walk away from funding the organisation.
In his tweets after the call, Mr Morrison wrote: 'We had a very constructive discussion on our health responses to #COVID19 and the need to get our market-led and business-centred economies up and running again.
'We also talked about the WHO and working together to improve the transparency and effectiveness of international responses to pandemics.
Share this article
Mr Morrison signed off by praising Australia's relationship with the United States.
'Australia and the US are the best of mates and we'll continue to align our efforts as we work towards the recovery on the other side of this virus,' he wrote.
It comes after the Chinese Embassy in Canberra accused Australian politicians of sucking up the the US.
A spokesman accused Home Affairs Minster Peter Dutton of blindly following US orders to join a 'propaganda war' against China after he said the country should be 'transparent' about the origins of the virus.
Last week US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo demanded China 'come clean' after unsubstantiated reports that coronavirus may have originated in a lab in Wuhan.
Mr Dutton on Friday said China should 'answer those questions' before foreign affairs minister Marise Payne called for an inquiry.
A Chinese Embassy spokesman said Australian politicians were 'pitiful' and lacked independence.
US President Donald Trump speaks as Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison laugh during a meeting in the Oval Office in September
President Donald J. Trump and First Lady Melania Trump pose for a photo with Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison and his wife Jenny in September in the White House
The leaders (pictured in September) discussed strategies to relax coronavirus restrictions and also the WHO's response to the deadly virus which has infected 2.5million people globally
In dealing with the coronavirus, the Australian government has been one step ahead of the WHO since even before it reached Australian shores on 25 January.
That week, while the WHO director-general was busy saying China should be 'congratulated' for protecting 'the people of the world', the Australian government was hatching a national plan to stop the virus.
On February 1, when there were 14,000 recorded cases in the world, Australia banned flights from China.
Two days later, on February 3, the WHO was still telling countries not to initiate travel bans.
Director-General Tedros Adhanom stood up in front of the world's media and said there was no need for measures that 'unnecessarily interfere with international travel and trade'.
In the same press conference he called the spread of the virus 'minimal and slow' and heaped praise on China for locking down Wuhan.
'If it weren't for China, the number of cases outside China would have been very much higher,' he said.
People wearing protective clothing and masks arrive at Hankou Railway Station in Wuhan, to board one of the first trains leaving the city in China's central Hubei province early on April 8
A tweet from the WHO on 24 January which shows it repeating Chinese insistence that the virus did not spread between humans
Chinese President Xi Jinping wears a mask in Shangluo City, northwest China's Shannxi Province, on April 20
During a WHO meeting that day, China's delegate Li Song said banning Chinese people from travelling was 'seriously against recommendation by the WHO.'
But Scott Morrison took no notice and extended the ban before also blocking flights from Iran, South Korea and Italy, which also suffered outbreaks in February.
In radio interview with Alan Jones on 2GB on February 6, Mr Morrison backed his decision to ignore the WHO.
'We've noted all the things the WHO and others said. But frankly, we're making the calls based on what we think is best for Australia,' he said.
Then, on February 27, Australia became one of the first countries in the world to publicly declare the crisis had 'pandemic potential'.
Why is the WHO director-general 'sympathetic' to China?
At the end of Janaury, WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom enjoyed a trip to China to rub shoulders with President Xi Jinping.
When he returned, he hailed China for 'transparency' - even though it had covered up the extent of the outbreak by detaining doctors who sought to alert citizens.
Australian professor John Mackenzie, a member of the World Health Organization's emergency committee, called China 'reprehensible' - but Dr Adhanom said China should be 'congratulated' for protecting 'the people of the world'.
He then fawned over the communist leader, telling aides he was 'very impressed and encouraged by the president's detailed knowledge of the outbreak.'
Since then, Tedros Adhanom has been called a 'China apologist' by various commentators.
Kristine Lee, China analyst at an influential US think-tank said: 'There is a clear narrative coming out of the WHO that panders to Xi Jinping's view about his country's handling of coronavirus.'
But why? Perhaps it goes back to his time as a top Ethiopian politician, wrote journalist Ian Birrell.
He served in senior roles under Meles Zenawi, who ran a brutal dictatorship with close ties to Beijing, which admired the regime's authoritarian model of development.
Intriguingly, Tedros was accused of covering up three outbreaks of cholera during his seven years as health minister, although the claims were dismissed as dirty tactics to try to derail his bid to become the WHO boss.
Shortly after starting his new job with the WHO in 2017, he appointed Robert Mugabe as a 'goodwill ambassador', only to back down after furious protests from human rights groups pointing out the despot had devastated Zimbabwe's health service while wrecking his nation.
Mugabe, as head of the African Union and a close ally of China, had helped him win the WHO post. Beijing also used its financial muscle to build support among developing nations, with Xi said to see the achievement as a sign of China's growing strength.
Mr Morrison told news reporters that afternoon: 'Based on the expert medical advice we have received, there is every indication that the world will soon enter a pandemic phase of the coronavirus.'
Meanwhile, the WHO was still refusing to use the word even as cases around the globe soared to 83,000.
'If misused, [the word] can cause unreasonable fear, or unjustified acceptance that the fight is over,' director-general Adhanom said.
Finally, after huge international pressure, the WHO declared a pandemic on 11 March, two weeks after Mr Morrison used the word.
In a press conference on April 2, the Australian Prime Minister emphasised how slow the WHO had been.
'Ten weeks ago, ahead of the rest of the world, Australia listed the coronavirus as a disease with pandemic potential under our Biosecurity Act,' he said.
'Five weeks ago, a fortnight before the World Health Organisation, we called out the coronavirus as a pandemic.'
'We activated the emergency response plan on that basis. Further border closures and measures were announced and implemented,' he said.
The Australian government has also been among the first to criticise China's wet markets where the virus jumped from animals to humans in November.
People crowd to buy meat and fish at Khlong Toei wet market in Thailand. The virus is thought to have begun in Wuhan's wet market and there are calls for wet markets to be banned
A person wearing a face mask as a preventive measure against the spread of the COVID-19 novel coronavirus carries groceries in Wuhan on April 20
In another interview on 2GB in early April, Mr Morrison called the markets a 'real problem' and slammed the WHO for inaction.
'This is something the World Health Organisation should do something about. I mean, all this money that comes out of the UN and the World Health organisation.'
Mr Morrison said the WHO should be held to account for the way it uses Australian tax dollars.
'You know, this is why we've got to be quite strident on these things in these forums and make sure that they're dealing with what are quite serious world health risks,' he said.
Donald Trump launches full-frontal attack on 'China-centric' WHO saying 'they called it wrong'
President Donald Trump savaged the 'China centric' World Health Organization on Tuesday and said he wanted the group looked into before any more U.S. dollars flow to Beijing.
'They called it wrong, they called it wrong, they missed the call,' Trump said during his daily White House press briefing.
'They should have known and they probably did know,' he added, suggesting the WHO was withholding information about the coronavirus.
Trump's main beef with the United Nations health group is that leadership there said it wasn't necessary to bar travelers coming in from China as the coronavirus started spreading beyond Wuhan, where it originated.
The president has followed the lead of prominent conservatives in complaining that the WHO has been too friendly to China during the coronavirus outbreak.
President Trump attacked the World Health Organization on Tuesday, calling it too 'China centric' and suggesting that it was hiding information about the coronavirus from the rest of the world
'The WHO, that's the World Health Organization, receives vast amounts of money from the United States and we pay for a majority, the biggest portion of their money, and they actually criticized and disagreed with my travel ban at the time I did it,' Trump said near the top of the briefing. 'And they were wrong. They've been wrong about a lot of things.'
'And they had a lot of information early and they didn't want to - they seemed to be very China centric,' he said, changing the point he was trying to make mid-sentence.
Later in the briefing Trump threatened to cut off the WHO's supply of money from the United States.
'We're going to put a hold on money spent to the WHO. We're going to put a very powerful hold on it. And we're going to see,' Trump said. 'It's a great thing when it works but when they call every shot wrong that's not good.'
'They are always on the side of China,' he also complained.
Trump suggested he might cut the U.S.'s funding that goes toward WHO, calling the United Nations agency 'very China centric'
When the president was asked if it was a smart move to cut off funds to the major global health organization during a global pandemic he backed away from the definitiveness of his previous threat.
'I'm not saying I'm going to do it, but I'm going to look at it,' Trump pledged.
Later, Trump was asked why he thought the WHO was 'China centric.'
'I don't know, they seem to come down on the side of China,' the president responded. 'Don't close your borders to China, don't do this, they don't report what's really going on, they didn't see it and yet they were there. They didn't see what was going on in Wuhan ... they must have seen it, but they didn't report it.'
Trump had previewed his attack earlier Tuesday on Twitter.
