A Wagga councillor is calling for the city to sever ties with its sister city in China.
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Cr Paul Funnell, who plans to initiate a notice of motion at Tuesday night's council meeting, will ask his fellow councillors to revoke an arrangement with Kunming in China, which has been in place for 32 years.
Wagga has connections to three cities in the world as part of the long-running sister city program, including Leavenworth in the United States and Nordlingen in Germany.
The outbreak of coronavirus happened in Wuhan, which is 1567 kilometres away from Kunming.
However, Cr Funnell said the city of Wagga should not have a relationship with another city within a "communist regime" that was "irrefutably" responsible for the COVID-19 pandemic.
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He said it would be "insulting" to the families who have lost loved ones and the businesses impacted to stay connected with Kunming.
"It came out of China and they covered it up for months and there is no doubt about it," he said.
"It is time we stood up and said something.
"Why is everyone so frightened to say it? It is a fact, it is the truth and there is nothing wrong with having sovereign national pride and wanting to look after our own people."
Councillor Rod Kendall, who serves on the sister city committee, said the program was an opportunity for Wagga to understand other cultures and people, particularly ones with a different political structure.
"[Sister city] relationships can be tough from time-to-time and understanding the culture can be tough, but I think there is still a lot to gain through those sister city relationships," he said.
"The relationship is with the local government area not the country. It is a bit like blaming Wagga for a federal government policy."
Charles Sturt University associate professor in political science Dominic O'Sullivan said it was "quite legitimate" for Cr Funnell to point out that China was "not entirely transparent" about the full scale of this virus.
However, he said it was "an overreaction and counter-productive" to revoke Wagga's links to Kunming.
"I think it is important that the international community puts pressure on China to be upfront with the rest of the world in respect to the coronavirus," he said.
"But we can't simply pretend that China is not there because we dislike something that they have done.
"China has done all sorts of things that are quite repugnant to what many Australians would value in terms of human rights and political freedoms and stating that is important, but severing a relationship doesn't help make a point."
While there was evidence China had not been transparent, Professor O'Sullivan said one country was not to blame for the pandemic with many government's being slow to react to the crisis, including Australia.
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