Australian Defence Minister and Acting Prime Minister Richard Marles has acknowledged that Labor would draw Australia into a hypothetical US-China conflict – without confirming on which side. Call it a Freudian slip.
Is the Albanese Labor government a Chinese puppet? Maybe not – despite CCP-linked front groups pouring cash and manpower into Labor’s campaigns in at least the last two elections and high-ranked Labor MPs caught in dodgy activities with CCP-linked figures, including one who personally warned a suspected Chinese operative who has since been barred from Australia that his phone was bugged.
Marles himself has admitted that he had a speech delivered in China personally vetted by Beijing. In that speech, Marles valorised former Labor PM Gough Whitlam, who, in 1971 while opposition leader, became one of the first Western politicians to lead a delegation to Maoist China. This was, it must be pointed out, right as the Cultural Revolution, which murdered some 25 million Chinese and destroyed up to 75 per cent of China’s cultural heritage, was raging. Whitlam, to the best of my knowledge, never spoke a word about that monstrous crime.
Such is Labor’s history of dealing with Communist China. Perhaps Albanese isn’t a Chinese puppet – but if he was, what would he be doing differently?
Well, one thing he wouldn’t change is Labor’s criminal neglect of the nation’s defence at the most critical juncture in world affairs since 1938.
Forty-eight hours before Anthony Albanese’s meeting with Donald Trump in Canada, Mr Marles defended the government’s refusal to announce fresh military spending in line with US demands, saying new funding decisions would not be made until next year.
At the same time, the defence minister flagged reforms to his department reforms that would put “everything on the table”, and the upcoming sale of billions of dollars worth of surplus defence land to raise funds for critical capabilities.
Mr Marles said while Australia was not under threat of invasion by China, it would play a key role if war broke out between the US and China. “Our continent is more relevant to great power contest now than it’s ever been before,” he told [the Australian newspaper’s] “Defending Australia” summit in Canberra on Monday.
OK, but again we must ask: on whose side? Certainly, the PM isn’t giving anything away.
The comment came days after the prime minister refused to say whether China presented a military threat to Australia.
He says, as China ramps up its aggressive posturing in Australia’s sphere, including an intimidating sail-past by a Chinese flotilla that was clearly mapping out Australian targets.
The stark warning came as the Chief of the Defence Force David Johnston said Australians needed to prepare for more regular Chinese naval exercises off the nation’s coastline, as Beijing’s powerful navy hones its war plans […]
Admiral Johnston, who last week warned the ADF might need to conduct combat operations from Australian soil, told the summit that last year’s live-fire drills and circumnavigation of Australia by a Chinese naval flotilla was not a one-off event.
“As an expanding blue-water navy, we should expect the Chinese navy to undertake similar deployments more regularly to the South West, Pacific and Indian Ocean,” Admiral Johnston said.
“These deployments are opportunities to expand their training, improve their operational readiness and demonstrate their increasing capability.”
Marles can’t bring himself to openly acknowledge even that much.
Defence experts warned that the Chinese warships used the mission to rehearse the targeting of Australian cities. Mr Marles said he was “very clear” about what the ships were doing, but it was not “appropriate or helpful” to reveal further details.
Meanwhile, Labor continue to do everything they can not to make any meaningful boost to Australia’s defence capability.
A fortnight after US Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth called for Australia to lift defence spending to 3.5 per cent of GDP from its current two per cent, Mr Marles backed Mr Albanese’s argument that military funding should be determined on the basis of required capabilities, not an arbitrary percentage of national output. He said next year’s update of the national defence strategy would determine what new capabilities would be brought into service and make fresh decisions on spending.
So, they’ll have another report into another inquiry into another blueprint for another white paper… and keep on doing next to nothing.
[Former Home Affairs secretary Michael Pezzullo] said the government already had a detailed spending blueprint – the 2023 Defence Strategic Review. “It just needs to be fully funded,” he said.
[Former Defence Department secretary Dennis Richardson] said if the government followed the recommendations of its own DSR, “it’s going to take you north of three per cent of GDP”.
Yes, but do you know how many more NDIS beneficiaries they can fund or how many more public servants they can employ with that money? Got to have their priorities straight...
