Bunch of bogans in a Monaro try to goad China to war

We are being seen as a delusional minnow, inexplicably trying to drag superpowers into a fight they don’t want. How embarrassing.

Chinese Navy personnel are seen onboard a ship in Sydney in 2019. Picture: AAP`

Australia at war? With China? No thank you. Not interested.

Not interested in experiencing it. Not interested in sending off the young to die. Not interested in normalising it, with loose and irresponsible rhetoric.

To those in positions of power inflaming the issue; shame on you. You should know better.

To those wondering what the hell this is all about; let’s see it for what it is; a convenient distraction for the federal government, from important jobs it is not performing well.

This dreadful business all started on Anzac Day. As we were remembering one war, we were told to anticipate the next. Peter Dutton talked up the prospect on the ABC Insiders program, saying a conflict over Taiwan shouldn’t be discounted.

Home Affairs secretary Mike Pezzullo sent a message to staff, which was read in advance by his minister, and thus approved.

“In a world of perpetual tension and dread, the drums of war beat — sometimes faintly and distantly, and at other times more loudly and ever closer,” Pezzullo said, and: “Let us continue to search unceasingly for the chance for peace while bracing again, yet again, for the curse of war.”

He warned us to be prepared “to send off, yet again, our warriors to fight”.

With the country reeling, the Home Affairs Minister urged us to be “alert, but not alarmed” but on May 4, reports of a leaked secret briefing note were made, where Major-General Adam Findlay said that Australia must plan for a “high likelihood” for an actual conflict with China.

The next day, an article on CNN was titled “Why are Australian officials hinting at a war with China?” Good question.

“For a country with a much smaller military and no nuclear weapons, Australia is suddenly hinting an awful lot about a war with China,” joint authors Ben Westcott and James Griffiths wrote, injecting a bit of reality into the situation.

They describe the “idea of Australia fighting a war against China on its own” as “ridiculous”.

The article points out our military spending last year, at $27bn, compared to China’s, estimated at $252bn, the second highest in the world. Plus, it says: “China is a nuclear power. Australia is not.”

On Fox News, an article detailing our actions appeared, titled “US gets dragged into fight as Australia-China war of words escalates”.

Our Prime Minister is categorised as “pressing on” with inflammatory rhetoric despite the fact France and Britain have made it clear that they are not interested.

So, internationally, we are being seen as a delusional minnow, inexplicably and irresponsibly trying to drag the world’s greatest superpowers into a fight they don’t want.

How embarrassing. We look like a bunch of bogans in a Monaro, doing burnouts on the world stage, yelling obscenities out the window while giving people the finger.

Domestically, people are in disbelief, alarmed and anxious. We are in the middle of a pandemic. There is a faltering vaccine program, a lack of adequate quarantine facilities and an inability to bring overseas Australians home. We don’t need talk of a war.

It has taken until this week for someone to interrupt the nonsense with something sensible. Innes Willox, of the Australian Industry Group, urged the government to tread carefully. “You will hear no talk of ‘drums of war’ from Australian business,” he said.

Another constructive contribution came from Warwick Smith, a former Liberal MP who now runs the Business Council of Australia’s international engagement efforts.

“Some actions of our government might have been dealt with more nuance,” he said, and “Some of the commentators have really accelerated the issues.”

Indeed.

In the groundbreaking 1992 book, Trauma and Recovery, The Aftermath of Violence — From Domestic Abuse to Political Terror, author Judith Herman studies the trauma of war. She says: “Certain violations of the social compact are too terrible to utter aloud: this is the meaning of the word unspeakable.”

Of course, it is too late now, but the prospect of us having a war with China should have been unspeakable. Not because we want to have our heads in the sand, and not because anyone doesn’t understand the differences between us, the dangers, the things that could go wrong.

No, it is because loose lips sink ships. Because talk can be dangerous, it can bring about the worst. It can cause a drift, towards what is seen as inevitable, simply because it has been talked about so much. I am aware that there are those who will disagree. They think this issue should be elevated, argued over, and ventilated, endlessly.

But there is a way for the Prime Minister and his team to vigorously protect our interests, and our security, without using this issue to achieve their own domestic purposes. They should immediately cease and desist with the irresponsible and inflammatory rhetoric; it is called diplomacy for a reason.