Peta Credlin: Chinese warships prove weak PM is out of his depth

Every serious defence and strategic expert will tell you these are the most dangerous times the world has faced since World War II and yet our PM seemingly couldn’t care less, writes Peta Credlin.

Anthony Albanese is weak, out of his depth and, I’m sorry to say, intellectually not up to the challenges ahead as the world becomes more and more dangerous.

The most recent example was laid bare in his response to the Chinese navy’s latest blatant act of intimidation: a Chinese naval task force cruising down the east coast of Australia, entirely uninvited, and with no purpose other than to show-off Chinese power, via two live-fire exercises.

Not only was our PM ignorant of what was happening, but he almost fell over himself making excuses for the Chinese, even though they’re our key strategic rival – and, by their own admission, intent on world domination by 2050.

It’s a sign of how feeble our own navy has become that it was the New Zealanders who were monitoring the Chinese task force. With one Anzac frigate (of an already understrength navy) prematurely retired on this government’s watch – and with more tipped to follow – it’s shocking but unsurprising that we lacked the warships to keep a constant guard on the Chinese ships.

It’s also a sign of our utter failure at military surveillance that we were unable to say whether the Chinese surface ships were accompanied by a nuclear submarine.

As former Labor MP Michael Danby said on my show last week, “If this was back when Kim Beazley was Labor’s defence minister, he would have scrambled an Orion (surveillance aircraft) to shadow them.”

One of the three Chinese warships that were conducting live-fire exercises in the Tasman Sea. Picture: Australian Defence Force

How far Labor has fallen.

You’d think that this brazen challenge to our national security would have dominated our PM’s thinking. On hearing of this news, previous PMs would have flown to Canberra for a full defence briefing.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese. Picture: NewsWire/Jeremy Piper

Not this bloke. He continued his sandbagging tour of marginal seats and was off at a fundraising event on Illawarra where Labor’s candidate is in all sorts of trouble over community opposition to Chris Bowen’s offshore wind farm agenda.

Just like he flew to Perth for a Labor fundraiser instead of immediately heading to Melbourne after the terrorist firebombing of a local synagogue.

As someone who worked closely with a PM who took national security seriously, I just can’t credit a national leader who got the basic details wrong of this serious incursion into our home waters.

When first challenged about this, Anthony Albanese pretended that a Chinese task force off the coast of Sydney, engaging in live-fire exercises, was no big deal and claimed that the Chinese had notified us of their intention to use live munitions. This was false.

In fact, we only learned about it because a Virgin pilot had heard a warning shortly after the firing window had commenced and because the New Zealanders had then formally alerted our military nearly an hour later.

Chief of the Defence Force, Admiral David Johnston Picture: NewsWire/Martin Ollman

And we know both things are true because they were said under oath in Senate estimates last week by officials and the Chief of the Defence Force, Admiral David Johnston, completely blowing apart the PM’s version of events.

Meanwhile, dozens of commercial aircraft were forced to detour because the Chinese had chosen to disrupt the main trans-Tasman air route. And this matters because it was military ground fire that brought down MH17 in 2014, killing 298 people on board.

But it is of a piece with a PM who has consistently made excuses for a communist Chinese government waging a campaign of intimidation in its bid to dominate our region and, ultimately, the wider world. Since coming into office, Albanese has assiduously cultivated the Chinese communist leadership and been at pains never to cross the Beijing regime, despite bullying ranging from a Chinese military plane firing flares into the path of RAAF aircraft in international air space to a Chinese warship deliberately injuring our naval divers.

At last year’s G20 meeting, Albanese sided with the Chinese dictator against incoming President Donald Trump’s stance on tariffs and was rewarded for his appeasement by China’s propaganda arm identifying him as a “model” world leader.

On national security, we have never had a weaker PM. When he was elected, the first thing he did was kick our spy agencies, ASIO and ASIS, out of routinely attending meetings of the cabinet national security committee; he released hundreds of foreign criminals out of detention and into the community; he’s weakened border protection, such that some 20 illegal would-be migrant boats have come on his watch; he’s presided over a steady deterioration in the operational readiness of our armed forces; and, a year ago, he became the first PM in 70 years to refuse a US request for military help, declining to send a frigate to the Red Sea.

Then there’s his government’s abject failure to tackle the wave of Jew-hatred, mostly from poorly integrated migrant communities, now sweeping the country; plus its adoption of an anti-Israel stance at the UN so at odds with Bob Hawke’s statement that “if the bell tolls for Israel … it tolls for all mankind”.

Every serious defence and strategic expert will tell you that these are the most dangerous times the world has faced since the end of World War II and yet, here in Australia, our PM couldn’t care less.

Watch Peta on Credlin on Sky News, weeknights at 6pm

Originally published as Peta Credlin: Chinese warships prove weak PM is out of his depth