‘Truly weird’: Australia silent while UK set to call China a national security threat

Let's return to something now I touched on last night with John Anderson and that's Labor's concerning drift when it comes to national security, in particular the way the Albanese government has gone from trying to improve the relationship with China to now what appears to be out and out kowtowing to Beijing. The foreign editor of The Australian, Greg Sheridan, he wrote a fantastic article yesterday and he joins me now. Greg, your article I thought was just extraordinary, yes you picked up those points about expelling the security chiefs from the NSC and the review of ASPE, but you go way beyond this, what else has Labor done that benefits Beijing? Well Peter, great to be with you and that's right, I think the expulsion of the intelligence chiefs from the NSC, and they've been there forever, for years and years and years and years. So this is what Paul Keating demanded, what Beijing wanted, and the Albanese government has delivered it. A grotesque thing, they won't defend the security chiefs and then they expel them from the NSC. So they'll only be there when called upon. And then they've already hobbled and may well destroy the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, which was one of Beijing's 14 demands of the Australian government. But as well, they've stopped mentioning China as a justification for AUKUS, so China did appear in the Aukmin statement, but the British Foreign and Defence Secretaries are happy to say yes, one of the reasons we need AUKUS is because we've got to respond to China's massive military build-up, whereas the government won't say the word China and the word AUKUS in the same sentence. They've gone from speaking frankly about China when they first got in, when they inherited the national security template of the previous government, to now not speaking about it at all. And the other thing they've done, which China would be very happy with, is they're not doing anything on defence. They've got all these AUKUS plans for 10 years hence and 20 years hence and so on, but in the three years they will have been in government, they have made no increase in defence expenditure and they haven't increased a single military capability, instead of which they've cut the size of the surface fleet, they've retired one of the ANZACs, they're going to retire a second one. We don't actually increase the size of the surface fleet until 2034. At the earliest they've abolished the last squadron of the Joint Strike Fighters, they're not going to upgrade the Collins with Tomahawks. In every way they've reduced our military capability and I think what you've got is a government, for the first time, a Labor government dominated by the factional left. You know, they're good people, they're good, honest, patriotic Australians, but they have no interest in national security and Richard Marles, the notional hawk, just has no influence in the government. What do you make of that news we've heard today, that Britain's set to declare China a threat to national security, after two cyber campaigns targeting their politicians. We learned this week too, officially, out of New Zealand, that there was a cyber attack on their parliament by China, they named China, we've not been so strong here on that in Australia, but if Britain goes down this path, surely this is something we should have on the table. Well you're absolutely right Peter, I mean this is getting to be truly weird now, you're getting a more frank, honest, meaningful, detailed discussion of Indo-Pacific security out of London than you're getting out of Canberra. Now Penny Wong made a speech, I'm a bit of a fan of Penny Wong, but she made a speech at the ASEAN conference in which she talked about the threats to maritime security but didn't mention China by name, and this was enough to enrage Paul Keating, even though she didn't mention China by name. Now then in a press conference with Wong Yi, she did say, you know, outline Australia's disagreements with China, but she's the only one, the Prime Minister doesn't do it, the Defence Minister doesn't do it, and the juxtaposition in timing is telling here. So Wong Yi, the Chinese Foreign Minister, comes to Australia, we all roll over, he tickles our tummy, isn't this wonderful, you know, he has a wonderful meeting with Paul Keating who says everything's fabulous in the Chinese government and our government is celebrating the renewed, wonderful relationship, and then it turns out that all through this time China has been engaging in the most savage cyber attacks on Australian, British, American and New Zealand government systems, voting rolls, the machinery of government, so much so that even Britain, which is never looking to pick a fight with China, is now saying it's going to declare China a threat to British national security because of its aggressive cyber intrusions, and yet the Albanese government, so when it first came in it just inherited the playbook from the previous government and had the wit to stick with it, but now it's asserting its normal identity, which is apparently to say nothing and also of course you can't sustain the public, the public doesn't understand what's going on if you never tell them. Just really quickly Greg, I mean we've had that word today that there is now a heightened, it's at the highest level, terror threat in France. It's prompted our guys here in Australia, DFAT, to issue a travel warning in relation to France. This all goes back to Islamic terrorism. We know Mike Burgess, when he was in the room at NSC, was warning us about the likelihood of an Islamist attack in Australia over the next 12 months. This is a concern. It really is Peter, so this is grotesque, that you would expel the head of ASIO and the head of ASIS from the National Security Committee at a time like this. Of course they'll be there when terrorism is formally considered, but it's up to the authorities to raise the threat level and I don't have any secret information about that, but American intelligence warned the Russians of an imminent attack, the French believe an attack is imminent, Afghanistan is now a permissive environment for terrorism, we know Islamic State is reviving there and in other countries. There has been a juicy target in the past, you've got this heightened, fevered emotion about Gaza and the Palestinians. So I think, without any secret information, I think the danger of a terrorist attack has become much higher than it was six months ago. Well, I don't want to end on a discordant note, Greg, get to you and Josie, happy holy Easter and I hope you get a little bit of a break over the next few days. We'll speak to you when you're back.