Andrew Bolt: No defence for Paul Keating’s China stance

Paul Keating has proved he’s our most shameless apologist for China’s dictatorship, abusing anyone who questions him and flaying anyone who sees China as a threat.

Paul Keating on Wednesday proved he’s our most shameless apologist for China’s dictatorship. And he’s still influential in Labor.

The former prime minister let fly at the Albanese government at the National Press Club, saying its nuclear submarines deal with the US and Britain was the worst decision by any Labor government.

That’s the kind of thing China is saying, too, enraged that we’d dare defend ourselves while it’s arming to its teeth.

Keating flayed anyone who saw China as a threat. Foreign Minister Penny Wong and Defence Minister Richard Marles were “seriously unwise”. Journalists who questioned him were abused — “psychopath”, “hang your head in shame”, “dumb”.

“China does not threaten Australia,” he raged, ignoring China’s cyber attacks and trade sanctions on us for refusing to kowtow to its crushing of democracy, its unleashing of the Covid virus, and its attempts to control our telecommunications.

Reminded of that, Keating dismissed it as a “wine dispute”.

He likewise dismissed America’s fear of the suddenly militaristic dictatorship that’s now threatening war with Taiwan.

Paul Keating has proved he’s our most shameless apologist for China’s dictatorship. And he’s still influential in Labor. Picture: Martin Ollman

America was just upset that China had committed “the great sin” of having an economy now as big as its own. Not once did Keating concede that what’s alarming the US and many other democracies is that China is genocidal communist thugocracy preparing for war and even backing Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

One journalist, after Keating abused Labor and journalists, and even mocked US president Joe Biden as someone who couldn’t “string three coherent sentences together”, asked if he had similarly acid criticism of China putting a million Uyghur Muslims in concentration camps.

Keating refused, telling the journalist he should “drum yourself out of Australian journalism”.

When the moderator repeated the question, Keating – astonishingly – defended China: “There’s dispute about what the nature of the Chinese affront to the Uyghurs are.”

He even likened China’s genocidal attempt to destroy Uyghur identity to Aborigines dying in jails (at lower rates than non-Aboriginal prisoners): “If the Chinese said, but look, what about the deaths in custody of Aboriginal people in your prison system, wouldn’t that be a valid point for them?”

Not once did Keating criticise China’s dictatorship. All his abuse was for Labor, journalists, our military, our spy chiefs, Biden, the US and Britain, “our former colonial master”.

Keating declared he was no longer paid by China for his services on the China Development Bank.

That made it worse. What, he defends this dictatorship for free?

Originally published as Andrew Bolt: No defence for Paul Keating’s China stance