As the Australian PM joins the conga line of suckholes dancing on the precipice of WWIII by toadying to a grifting dictator running a corrupt former Soviet province, it’s worth noting just how abysmally poor this dime-store Trot’s judgement on Australia’s defence really is. After all, not only did Anthony Albanese make a clueless party hack defence minister, but he was asleep at the wheel when the greatest threat to our region was firing missiles and torpedos in the Tasman Sea last week.
While this fatuous twit blatherskites that joining a ‘coalition of the willing’ (where have we heard that one before?) is somehow ‘in Australia’s national interest’, he takes no interest in a very real threat on our doorstep.
Last week China conducted a live weapons exercise in the Tasman Sea. That is, the Chinese navy, far from Chinese waters, was firing missiles and torpedos in the busy sea and air lanes between Australia and New Zealand. And neither Albanese nor our defence chiefs had the slightest clue. The first notice Australia got was when a Virgin Airlines pilot was warned away by the Chinese.
The affair was such a shocking debacle that even the Greens are asking the right questions.
The scale of the debacle surrounding China’s live weapons drills in the Tasman Sea was laid bare this week, not by the opposition or the government but by Greens Senator David Shoebridge.
“I’m trying to work out how it is with a $55.7bn budget, we find out from a Virgin pilot and a delayed notification from New Zealand,” he told Senate estimates on Wednesday.
Shoebridge, despite his political stripe, is well informed on defence matters. His brother, Michael Shoebridge, is a former Defence official and a noted security analyst.
His point was well made. For all the billions taxpayers have poured into exquisite military capabilities, the Australian Defence Force only learned about Friday’s live weapons drill second-hand and after the fact.
Labor’s first reaction, as always, is spin and outright lies.
Defence Minister Richard Marles, for instance, claimed there has been “unprecedented surveillance” of the Chinese warships which have lurked off Australia’s coast for weeks. So, why did it take a commercial airline pilot, and New Zealand, who were monitoring the Chinese fleet, to notify Australia of the live fire drill after it had begun?
Anthony Albanese stated that China provided advanced notice of the drill, ‘in accordance with practice’. This is a blatant lie. China provided no advanced warning at all. He also stretched the truth by claiming the alert from New Zealand was received ‘at around the same time’ as the Virgin pilot’s notification. In fact, the NZ warning wasn’t received until nearly an hour later.
Anthony Albanese’s response to the drill says a lot about his lack of attention to detail and the political strife it gets him in […]
His looseness on such a serious matter should send shivers down the spines of his colleagues given an election announcement is imminent.
The coalition has seized on the inconsistencies, accusing Albanese of misleading the public and being “weak” on matters of national security.
Penny Wong was sent in to clean up the mess on Thursday, applying her trademark indignation to accuse the coalition of politicising the episode.
Which is Labor’s boilerplate response every time they’re caught out asleep at the wheel on national security. It’s the same fake indignation they’ve tried to put on to avoid scrutiny over their complete failure to reign in violent anti-Semitism. No one’s buying: a Jewish-Australian audience booed and heckled Labor’s Mark Dreyfus when he tried it on at a special anti-Semitism summit.
What’s especially concerning is that, while the governmental head is rotten and useless, the rot is spreading downwards through the Defence hierarchy.
The Chief of the Defence Force David Johnston […] said it was possible a nuclear submarine was accompanying a Chinese naval task group, that was currently sailing 250km south of Hobart.
“I don’t know whether there is a submarine with them,” he said.
He wouldn’t have even known the entire fleet was there, it seems, if not for a commercial airlines pilot.
On Monday, Airservices Australia chief executive Rob Sharp told the Senate hearing that the air traffic authority became aware of the danger to aircraft at 9.58am AEDT when the Virgin pilot relayed the warning. Almost 50 planes were forced to change their flight plans as a result of the exercise […]
Airservices Australia’s deputy chief executive, Peter Curran, said the Virgin pilot had monitored radio transmissions directly from one of the Chinese warships on a frequency that was not monitored by air traffic controllers […]
The Australian Defence Force revealed the three-vessel Chinese naval task group had moved further south and was operating in Australia’s exclusive economic zone, about 296km east of Hobart.
They probably only know even that because Darren from Georgetown, out fishing in his tinny, noticed them sailing past.
So, now China knows that Australia’s entire eastern seaboard is wide open.
As Defence Secretary Greg Moriarty told Senate estimates: “The Chinese are signalling. They are practising and rehearsing, and they are collecting (intelligence)” […]
This is Beijing saying, “We can hit your biggest east coast cities”.
The takeaway for Australia is we are completely unprepared to counter China’s powerful bluewater navy, not to mention its long-range missiles, despite record levels of defence spending.
Because it’s all being wasted on DEI nonsense.
Defence officials should hang their heads in shame that the ADF is in such a poor state that it couldn’t even keep on top of the activities of three Chinese ships between Australia and New Zealand.
But, hey, at least they can put out recruiting posters of trannies in hijab and get that coveted rainbow tick.
