Paul Keating calls for the dismissal of Mike Burgess, as director-general of ASIO, for discreetly pointing out a little of the espionage China’s intelligence services have been conducting in Australia.
That’s a characteristic over-reaction from someone who has long been a critic of ASIO and of the security and intelligence organisations in general. It’s especially injudicious in the context of his remarks about our policy towards China.
Burgess didn’t say the so-called A-team were Chinese spies. Indeed, he declined to say which country they were from. But it was pretty obvious. Keating asserts that even drawing attention to the case shows “utter contempt for the so-called stabilisation process” in Australian relations with China that he attributes to the Albanese government. But, of course, having called it a stabilisation process, he then lambasted it as an “anti-China strategic policy”, rooted in a “mindless pro-American stance”.
He seems to want to have it both ways. He is all over the map and should retire hurt to quietly enjoy the many millions he has made since leaving the Lodge.
For some considerable time now Keating, along with several other well-known former politicians and academics, has openly taken China’s corner against any suggestion that its rapid military build-up, its aggressive stance towards its neighbours, its militarisation of the South China Sea, its crushing of Hong Kong, its totalitarian domestic regime of surveillance, censorship and capital punishment, its bullying posture towards this country and its support for Vladimir Putin’s brutal invasion of independent and democratic Ukraine are in any way questionable.
He savages any suggestion that we should make cautionary strategic and force structure moves to hedge against the open militarism of the PRC. He takes a scornful and ignorant stance regarding the American alliance system in East Asia. One would think, from his contemptuous remarks, that South Korea, Japan, Taiwan and The Philippines are all as mindless as he declares our own strategists and government to be.
They are all doing just what the Albanese government is doing. Perhaps he hasn’t noticed. He used to make resentful remarks about having to “tug the forelock” in Washington and London, but he tugs it vigorously in Beijing and doesn’t appear to have the slightest misgiving about this. Why would that be?
His words plainly suggest he fancies he has keener insights than Yoon Suk-yeol (South Korea), Fumio Kishida (Japan), William Lai (Taiwan), Bongbong Marcos (The Philippines), Rishi Sunak (Britain) or Joe Biden and his advisers in Washington, all of whom are conferring about how to keep Chinese ambitions and military power in check.
Keating appears to believe Chinese power and ambitions should not be kept in check, or they cannot be. The first, if it is his opinion, would be a very dubious position to take. The second is comparable to the CIA’s net assessment in February 2022 that Putin would invade Ukraine and overrun it within 72 hours. The first part of that assessment turned out to be correct. The second part turned out to be an error of judgment.
Ukraine stands and thousands of demonstrators in Russia, following the death in custody of Putin’s challenger, Alexei Navalny, have been denouncing the war and rightly calling Putin a murderer.
Let’s be clear about the so-called stabilisation process of which Keating speaks. It cannot consist of kowtowing to a totalitarian power in Beijing. China itself is in travail because of Xi Jinping’s neo-Maoist approach to politics, economics and foreign policy. We all want a free and prosperous, respected and rule-abiding China. We surely do not want a domineering and brutal one taking over primacy in Asia.
If that outcome is to be averted, however, we must co-ordinate with Washington, Tokyo, Seoul, Manila and, yes, Taipei, about how to check Xi’s imperial designs short of general war.
Keating, the self-styled elder statesman, thinks he knows better. But he’s just a tired old blowhard suffering from relevance deprivation. If he had wise counsel to offer, he would be talking quietly behind closed doors to Foreign Minister Penny Wong and Defence Minister Richard Marles and they would value his input.
The sombre reality is that we and our allies are badly unprepared for a possible confrontation with China because for far too long we have accommodated its military rise, its aggressive posture, its human rights abuses, its awful system of Communist Party-dominated “law”, in the thoughtless belief that economic growth and the emergence of a Chinese middle-class would lead to liberalisation by the CCP. They haven’t. A reckoning is coming for China and the rest of us.
If Keating had one last good fight in him, it would be to urge upon Xi the kind of economic reforms the former led in Australia in the 1980s. But don’t hold your breath on that one.
Paul Monk was head of the China desk in the Defence Intelligence Organisation when Paul Keating was prime minister.
More Coverage
Read related topics:China Ties
Join the conversation
UN’s alleged ‘peacekeepers’ should pack their bags
Their continued presence is dangerous to themselves, helpful to Hezbollah and prolongs the conflict by making it harder for Israel to clear out Hezbollah infrastructure near the border.
Read more
When navigating shares, ignore the white noise
Although financial commentary is rife with near-term events and distant prognostication, almost none of this directly helps navigate sharemarkets. So what should we be looking for?
Read more