Labor Party embarrassed by Paul Keating and Kevin Rudd’s China comments

Paul Keating and Kevin Rudd’s attempts to denigrate Scott Morrison for standing up to China are a national disgrace, writes Piers Akerman.

Former prime ministers Kevin Rudd and Paul Keating have yet again demonstrated the appalling tendency of Labor politicians to treat the people of Australia as fools.

When the rotten submarine contract with the French-government backed and trade union-dominated Naval group (formerly DCNS) was mercifully euthanized by Prime Minister Scott Morrison and most notably and decisively, Defence Minister Peter Dutton, most of rational Australians felt as if they had been handed a hefty bonus.

The dud sub contract signed just five years ago by the disastrously tin-eared Liberal PM Malcolm Turnbull was the most costly and potentially disastrous deal ever initialled.

This was pointed out time and time again by a handful of seasoned commentators within days of it being announced on April 26, 2016, and I have to tip my hat to The Australian’s Robert Gottliebsen who published his first critical review immediately the news broke.

Former prime minister Paul Keating has criticised the AUKUS defence partnership between Australia, the US and Britain. Picture: Ryan Osland

My first dissection of the dreadful deal followed here on the first Sunday post the decision on May 1, 2016. The deal was a stinker, a duff, and Turnbull and the ever weaselly Liberal MP Christopher Pyne worked it to save a South Australian seat by promising that some work on the French nuclear-powered vessels, which were to be retro-designed as diesel-powered, would take place near Adelaide.

The cost, which our own defence establishment lied about, soared from $50 billion to a projected $90 billion and rising and the delivery date similarly blew out.

Two years ago, I personally asked then Defence Minister Marise Payne how many nations in the world relied on 50-year-old submarines for their underwater defences – but she had no answer.

The cancellation of the sub deal is part of the new AUKUS agreement with the US and the UK, a critical alliance with China making inroads into nations around the Indo-Pacific region. The Chinese, again, are angered by Australia as they have ever been since we rebuffed their attempts to take over 5G communications here with the state-controlled Huawei organisation and cancelled Victoria’s Belt and Road project. The logical demand by Scott Morrison that the origins of the catastrophic Covid virus be thoroughly investigated provoked Chinese outrage. There was a half-hearted inquiry and following the comprehensive cover-up by WHO.

Last November, an anonymous Chinese official from the Foreign Ministry provided Australian correspondents in Beijing with a 14-point charge sheet claiming falsely that Australia had unfairly blocked Chinese investment, spread “disinformation” about China’s efforts to contain coronavirus, falsely accused Beijing of cyber-attacks, and engaged in “incessant wanton interference” in Hong Kong, Taiwan and Xinjiang.

It also criticised Australia’s push against foreign interference and permitting federal MPs to issue “outrageous condemnation of the governing party of China”. Attempts by the Chinese government to interfere in domestic Australian politics have been well documented. Former Labor Senator “Shanghai” Sam Dastyari lost his job after it was revealed he’d accepted Chinese funds. Had China’s demands been taken seriously, our nation would have kowtowed to a totalitarian state run by ruthless Communist party headed by President-for-life Xi.

However, Xi has the former Labor Prime Ministers Keating and Rudd on his side. Their attempts to denigrate the Morrison government for cancelling the French subs deal and standing up to China are a national disgrace. Writing in The Sydney Morning Herald, last week, Keating (who has been a member of the China Development Bank’s international advisory board) lashed out at the Australian media for reporting on China repression of the Uighur people in Xinjiang province. The preachy, Mandarin-speaking Rudd, writing in the French newspaper Le Monde, was unable to contain his pomposity with his claim that he “rarely put pen to paper to ventilate such criticism” before he lashed the Morrison government for cancelling the putrid contract. The contrast between the ludicrous confected outrage of these two has beens and the dignified commentary occasionally offered by John Howard and Tony Abbott could not be greater.

Rudd and Keating, as national embarrassments, stand to remind us of Labor’s inadequacies.