Labor at sea on Chinese warships, says Andrew Hastie
The Coalition has accused the Albanese government of keeping Australians in the dark on Chinese ‘gunboat diplomacy’.
The Coalition has accused the Albanese government of keeping Australians in the dark on Chinese “gunboat diplomacy” after it failed to alert the public that three People’s Liberation Army-Navy warships were sailing 150 nautical miles off Sydney.
The Chinese ships were being tracked by Australian Defence Force frigates and aircraft on Thursday as they headed east towards New Zealand.
Defence Minister Richard Marles said the ships were “not a threat” but the ADF was “watching every move that they take”.
“They’re entitled to be where they are. Australia is also entitled to be prudent. And we are monitoring very closely what the activities of the task group are,” he said.
But opposition defence spokesman Andrew Hastie said the ships’ presence so far south was “provocative” and Australians deserved greater transparency from the government on their location.
“Let’s call a spade a spade. The Chinese military has built a blue-water navy and are now testing us, along with other allies in the region.
“This is old school gunboat diplomacy on our coastline and the Australian people deserve to know what is going on. What is the government doing about it?
“It is pathetic that for a whole week, the Albanese government has kept Australians in the dark about the location of three Chinese warships moving down our coastline.”
Defence revealed last Thursday it was tracking the People’s Liberation Army Navy ships – a frigate, a cruiser and a replenishment vessel – in the Coral Sea off Australia’s northeast coast.
But it neglected to make public in the days since that the ships had turned south, or that they were headed for Australia’s biggest city.
Former naval officer Jennifer Parker, an adjunct fellow at UNSW Canberra, said the presence of the ships was a warning to Australia.
“China would be pleased that some elements of Australian society are getting quite agitated about it, because it reinforces conversations about the size of the Chinese navy and the capability of the Chinese navy, and by implication, what would happen if we sought to go up against them,” she said.
Ms Parker said the presence of the ships so far south underscored the need for Australia to expand its naval fleet as rapidly as possible.
“The question Australia should ask is, what if it wasn’t just one task group? What if it was a task group on the east coast and a task group on the west coast? What would be our ability to respond with presence to both?
“On the current timetable the surface combatant fleet will get smaller before it gets bigger, and as an island nation this is a reality we need to understand.”
The appearance of the vessels off Sydney on Wednesday followed an incident over the South China Sea last week in which a Chinese fighter jet dropped flares in front of an RAAF surveillance aircraft.
The Albanese government lodged an official protest with Beijing over the incident that risked the lives of up to a dozen Australians, but China’s foreign ministry spokesman defended the behaviour and said Beijing had lodged its own diplomatic protest.
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