Warning Australian military personnel ‘will be killed’ after latest act of China aggression

The warning comes as the Deputy Prime Minister revealed why the incident was kept under wraps for two days.

Defence experts have warned an Australian will eventually be killed following the latest incident of Chinese aggression in the South China Sea, after one of its fighter jets fired flares within 30 metres of an Aussie aircraft.

Deputy Prime Minister Richard Marles on Friday defended keeping details of the incident under wraps for two days, saying the information was made public “as soon as we could” and following objections first being raised with Beijing.

Information on the incident was first publicly released on Thursday, with China’s foreign ministry spokesman Guo Jiakun shortly after blaming the Australian aircraft for “infringing on China’s sovereignty and endangering China’s national security”.

“The Chinese side took legitimate, lawful, professional and restrained measures to expel the aeroplane,” Mr Guo said.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, when asked if the incident was a step backwards in the relationship between Beijing and Canberra, said his government’s concerns had been raised with Chinese counterparts.

“We regard this action as unsafe. We’ve made that clear. We’ve made it public, as well as in private,” he said.

Mr Marles on Friday explained why information wasn’t revealed earlier, after repeated attacks from the Coalition on why the incident – which occurred early Tuesday afternoon – wasn’t revealed for two days.

Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Defence, Richard Marles during Question Time at Parliament House in Canberra. Picture: NewsWire / Martin Ollman

He said the incident had to be assessed as to whether it was genuinely dangerous for the Australians involved, before complaints were raised with Beijing.

Mr Marles said the firing of flares so close to the Royal Australian Air Force surveillance aircraft could “have done significant damage to our aircraft and that obviously puts in danger the lives of our personnel”.

It came as former home affairs secretary Mike Pezzullo warned the latest aggression in the South China Sea was part of an “intensifying pattern” of China pushing its relationship with Australia.

“In Beijing’s mind, a stabilised relationship is us keeping quiet. In Beijing’s mind, a stabilised relationship is us mining our P’s and Q’s and China doing as it wishes,” he said.

Strategic Analysis Australia director Michael Shoebridge said a death would soon occur if Beijing-directed aircraft continued to take aggressive action.

“This latest example of the Chinese military getting so close to Australian aircraft in international airspace shows that they’re going to end up killing or injuring Australian military personnel – it won’t be an accident, it’ll be deliberate,” he said.

Opposition foreign affairs spokesman Minister David Coleman on Friday said it was “incumbent on the Australian government to be transparent with the Australian people and to not hide from parliamentary scrutiny”.

“And that’s what they did here because they had the information for two days and they held it back,” he said.

The Australian air force and Navy is also tracking three Chinese warships in the Coral Sea off the coast of northeast Queensland, which are yet to breach international law.