Shanghai: On the rooftop of Shanghai’s luxury Kimpton Hotel, an ebullient Don Farrell sipped a Clare Valley shiraz as he hovered over a sizzling frypan, cooking up the famed surf and turf dish that is a mainstay on every good Australian RSL menu. “It doesn’t get any better than this,” the trade minister remarked, framed by the city’s shimmering high-rise skyline. The dish’s heroes were slabs of Queensland strip loin steak, served with South Australian rock lobsters, cooked by longtime Shanghai resident and professional chef Heidi Dugan, who was assisting the minister in the makeshift kitchen.
A cooking demonstration in Shanghai with Trade and Tourism Minister Don Farrell and chef Heidi Dugan. Credit: Lisa Visentin A small coterie of Australian and Chinese guests, who watched the signing of a $30 million deal to sell Teys Australia beef on e-commerce platform Dingdong in 2025, were the live audience. It was an image of peak rosy diplomacy that was inconceivable a few years ago, when Australian ministers couldn’t get their Chinese counterparts to take their calls let alone score an invite into the country.
This is the shiny side of the turbulent Australia-China relationship that the federal government is eager to champion as the vindication of its “stabilisation” agenda. Farrell’s one-day blitz of Shanghai on Monday was a veritable festival of Australian wine, beef and lobster – the industries freed this year from punitive Chinese import bans and tariffs. .