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SYDNEY, Australia – Two high profile Australians have separately taken issue with Scott Morrison’s government over its relationship with China.

Former Australian Foreign Minister Bob Carr did not miss a beat in a hard-hitting op-ed in The Sydney Morning Herald on Friday when he accused Australia of being a puppet of the United States. “Once again we look like diplomatic amateurs with only one international personality: not a roaring lion, but a puppy rolling over to have our tummy tickled by our great ally, after being sent yapping around the yard to return with the rubber bone,” he wrote.

Carr, a former long-time premier of New South Wales, was taking issue with the Australian government over the way in which it has been publicly critical of China, accusing it of mishandling or covering-up the circumstances that led to the Covid-19 outbreak, a similar line being touted by the Trump administration. Carr conceded China has questions to answer but is highly critical of the Morrison government going public with its claims, without alerting China in advance.

“Instead, Australia opted not to open dialogue with for example the Europeans, Japan, India, Canada, Singapore. We might have delayed any publicity until we had massaged a consensus proposition. One that Beijing could not have resisted, or only at diplomatic cost,” he wrote.

“Instead, days after a telephone conversation with Donald Trump, our foreign minister supported an inquiry with no clear operational objective, as if throwing out the idea for the hell of it, or to win praise from the Trump administration. Now plucky little Australia is locked into the idea with no backing from European or Asian partners,” the former Australian foreign minister said.

“The backing we get from U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo simply confirms the sad image that persists in Asia: Australia is happiest when our international character is deputy sheriff at this moment, to a U.S. president with less international credibility than any since Herbert Hoover.”

Separately, media mogul Kerry Stokes, the Chairman of the the Seven national television network has similarly blasted the government over its treatment of China in the wake of the Covid-19 outbreak.

“If we’re going to go into the biggest debt we’ve had in our life and then simultaneously poke our biggest provider of income in the eye it’s not necessarily the smartest thing you can do,” Stokes was quoted as saying by the high-circulating The West Australian newspaper, which his company owns.

Mr Stokes urged the prime minister to “mend relations with China,” saying any boycott by China of Australian goods and resources, which was hinted at by China’s ambassador to Australia this week, would have catastrophic consequences for the Australian economy.

“I don’t know if Australians could contemplate the thought of an Australian dollar at 25 U.S. cents. If we were to have no income from China, absolutely it will fall to that,” he said.

“You would take out all of our balance of trade and there is nobody else to buy everything we sell at the same value.”

“China probably owes the world an explanation on the origins of COVID-19, but we need to stop making accusations,” he told The West Australian.

Stokes also defended China’s wet markets, which many believe the Covid-19 emanated from, and to which Carr took issue with.

“The facts are throughout the entire Asian region wet markets are the only way to trade produce,” he said.

“People have got to respect that’s the way they’ve conducted themselves and traded for years and generations.

“If we want to interfere with what they trade, that’s going to be a very difficult situation to convince people that we know what they should eat,” Stokes said.

Mr Stokes is the second Western Australian billionaire to defend China this week. Mining tycoon Andrew Forrest, the Chairman of FMG resources, has also called for better relations with China. This week he donated 10 million test kits to China.

(Pictured former Australian Foreign Minister Bob Carr with former Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard).