The federal government appears to have been forced to release details of a high-level ministerial meeting with a top Chinese official, three days after the meeting took place in Sydney and only once Chinese media published the communique from the meeting.
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Attorney-General George Brandis and Foreign Minister Julie Bishop met with Meng Jianzhu, the head of the Chinese Communist Party's Central Commission for Political and Legal Affairs, in Sydney last week, just one day before US Vice President Mike Pence arrived in Sydney.
Chinese news agency Xinhua reported details of the meeting, including the entire joint communique - in which Australia reaffirmed "its commitment to pursue ratification of the bilateral extradition treaty" - on Saturday.
But the Australian government only belatedly released the communique on Monday afternoon, three days later, after inquiries from Fairfax Media.
In addition, a separate statement about an enhanced cyber security co-operation agreement, from Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull, dated April 20 - before the April 21 meeting was held - was only released on Monday too.
A spokesman for Senator Brandis had, on Monday morning, refused to say if the communique would be released at all, though he confirmed it existed.
Australian Conservatives senator Cory Bernardi said it was "highly unusual" the federal government had not released any details of the meeting, which covered terrorism, crime and legal matters and suggested the reason may have been sensitivities over ratification of the extradition treaty.
The Turnbull government was forced to shelve the extradition treaty last month after a backbench revolt and because it was likely to be defeated in the Parliament.
Senator Bernardi said he was perplexed the Chinese government had been "more forthcoming with a joint statement than our own government".
"Whatever promises have been made or agreements reached need to be fully disclosed, particularly when some of those promises way not have the support of the parliament," he said, referring to the broad opposition to the treaty across the political spectrum.
"It's highly unusual for the Chinese to disclose more than our own government. I believe in transparency, if they are committing Australia to something, to a course of action that doesn't have the support of the Parliament, we are entitled to know."
A report on page three of the China Daily on Monday suggested Australia had moved closer to ratification and had "pledged to accelerate the approval of an extradition treaty with China as part of a joint declaration released after the first China-Australia high-level security dialogue".
Senator Brandis told Sky News on Monday afternoon the Turnbull government remained committed to ratifying the treaty as it was "terribly important for dealing with transnational crime and for counter-terrorism" and that there were appropriate human rights protections already in place in the treaty.
The Law Council of Australia, Amnesty, Labor, Senator Bernardi, the Greens and numerous Liberal MPs have suggested the human rights protections are insufficient.
"The reason the treaty wasn't ratified was because the Labor caucus made the decision that it would disallow the regulations giving effect to it in the Senate. We hope to be able to persuade the Labour Party they have made an error of judgement," he said.
"We do intend to move towards ratification of the treaty, but that to an extent is in the hands of the Labor Party."
The Prime Minister announced he would not to push ahead with ratification of the treaty after Bill Shorten said Labor would not back it. However, this statement ignores the fact that several Liberal MPs threatened to cross the floor if the government pushed ahead with ratification, while the crossbench was largely opposed too.
The wording of the communique however does not, on the face of it, represent a shift from the federal government's commitment to ratify the treaty last month, after it was shelved.
