A disturbing stoush in the press today. Kevin Rudd:
“Mr Dutton is the architect of what I would describe as Australia’s megaphone diplomacy towards Beijing,” Rudd said.
“Has it solved any problems in terms of Australia’s long-term relationship with China? Not really. It was simply aimed, primarily, as a piece of domestic political posturing on the part of Mr Dutton and the Liberal Party.
“For God’s sake, this is the party which leased the Port of Darwin to China on a 99-year lease. This is the government which failed to put down a single rivet on a single boat on a submarine order which was agreed to under my government.
“Mr Dutton has multiple cases to answer rather than just wallowing around in the continued rhetoric of hairy-chestedness. It doesn’t advance Australia’s core national security interests one bit.”
Yes, he has. The rhetoric of the Morrison Government forced China to divulge its real plans for Australia:
Moreover, the shift in social normatives that accompanied the Dutton rhetoric has helped Australian businesses to plan to diversify away from China. There is the Quad and AUKUS as well.
Don’t get me wrong, the Colation made a terrible of other things, most notably the Pacific and timely defence procurement, but Rudd’s characterisation is clearly politicised, ironically.
On the other hand, what is Labor achieving by adopting Beijing’s talking points of a “reset”?
- The Press Club was hijacked to declare war on Taiwan.
- China is daily putting Australia at the forefront of every pushback against the West with the objective of splitting us.
- Business is again mulling whether it should re-engage economically.
- China is still crushing the east coast economy by taking 71% of its gas.
- China is still corrupting the Solomons politics and aiming for a military base.
All of these are encouraged by Labor’s soft-pedaling. Its “reset” is a fantasy that is allowing China to spray the nation with propaganda, undermine allies, unduly influence Chinese-Australians, as well as corrupt the political discussion. Not to mention make us more vulnerable to economic coercion.
I’ll add that Kevin Rudd is paid a million bucks a year to run the Asia Society which is itself dedicated to Asian engagement which is not well suited to the times. How can he berate Dutton for megaphone diplomacy after China’s egregious version of the same at the Press Club? Talk about propaganda!
Dutton makes a lot more sense:
Well, don’t forget that Kevin Rudd was the one that used the famous language in relation to Chinese rat… the second word I won’t repeat on your program. So I hardly take etiquette lessons from Kevin Rudd.
But I think a couple of points [are necessary]. The Labor Party now … understands the depth of the intelligence that’s available and that all paints one picture. And the alliance that we’ve struck, that Scott Morrison was able to strike, with the Indians and with the Japanese … is a very important relationship.
We need to come together with our allies to provide that deterrence. The whole basis of [the] AUKUS [submarine deal] was to try and provide the underpinning of that security.
Over the last few years, I think everything that we have said, frankly, has been vindicated.
As Labor has previously said, China has changed. It appears Labor has not changed very much at all.
