PRC Foreign Affairs Ministry representatives have raised similar complaints, albeit using rhetoric that is more restrained. On April 20 a Foreign Ministry spokesperson branded Australia as ‘dancing to the tune of a certain country’ in its call for an inquiry into the origin and spread of COVID-19.[6]Remarks from PRC diplomatic representatives in Australia have made similar remarks that have only ratcheted up in tone since last year. In November 2019 the deputy head of mission at the PRC embassy in Australia wrote inThe Australiannewspaper, ‘Chinese netizens now look at this continent and wonder where has the…independent Australia gone.’[7]In April this year, a PRC embassy spokesperson alleged Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton had been taking ‘some instructions from Washington’[8]and further that ‘certain Australian politicians are keen to parrot what those Americans have asserted and simply follow them in staging political attacks on China’.[9]The PRC Ambassador to Australia, Cheng Ji