Our federal parliamentarians – even Labor, since this is new territory – have been caught off-guard by reports that Victorian Premier Dan Andrews has sealed a Memorandum of Understanding (details still undisclosed) with China’s Ambassador to Australia Cheng Jingye, involving Xi Jinping’s grand Belt and Road Initiative, or BRI.

So why has Victoria chosen to take this action seeing that it’s a state rather than a national government and constitutionally ineligible to conduct international treaties, explained rather lamely, by Labor’s Acting Foreign Minister Mark Dreyfus, as a “consultation mechanism”.