Election 2022: Top spy Duncan Lewis slams Coalition’s ‘hawkish’ tone on China

Former ASIO chief Duncan Lewis says Australia’s diplomacy had been “rather louder than we should have been” under the Coalition.

Former ASIO chief Duncan Lewis. Picture Kym Smith

Former ASIO chief Duncan Lewis has criticised the former Morrison government’s hawkish rhetoric on China, saying Australia’s diplomacy had been “rather louder than we should have been” under the Coalition.

The retired spy chief, diplomat, Defence secretary and army major general said the change of government would give Australia a “spring in its step” and help the nation build “trust and goodwill” in the region.

In a new podcast for the Australian National University’s ­National Security College, General Lewis said the new government would need to make the case to voters to lift defence spending beyond 3 per cent of GDP to pay for the nation’s promised AUKUS nuclear submarines.

He also expressed regret at the Morrison government’s alienation of France in the fallout from the “game-changer” AUKUS agreement, saying the way in which the Attack-class subs were cancelled “had some downside”.

After a brutal election campaign in which Mr Morrison and Peter Dutton ramped up the China threat, the retired spy chief reflected on Teddy Roosevelt’s adage, “Speak softly and carry a big stick; you will go far”.

“My concern in the last few years has been that we have been rather louder than we should have been,” he told ANU national Security College head Rory Medcalf.

“We’ve been in the forefront of some of the criticism of states such as China, when we might well have been better to have been one back and one wide.”

The critique is in line with Labor’s, after Mr Dutton’s claims that the nation must “prepare for war”, and that Anthony Albanese would “appease” Beijing and be soft on national security.

Amid an array of challenges including the new China-Solomon Islands security pact, General Lewis said the new government would be able to alter the “tone and colour” of discussions with regional counterparts. “If you’re going to start a meaningful conversation with other countries in the region about the future, that needs to be done on the basis of some trust and some goodwill – you don’t start in opposite corners,” he said.

“And I think to this extent … the change of government that has just taken place might allow better, freer, more free-flowing discussions to take place.”

General Lewis said he was concerned that despite Australia’s increased defence spending, it had “bought nothing much that goes ‘bang’ for many, many years”.

He said the nation was “kidding ourselves” if it thought that defence spending of 2-3 per cent of GDP would pay for nuclear boats and other vital capabilities.

“There will need to be serious work done on the social licence to enable government to spend more on defence, because at a time when we have great debt, spending more on defence is obviously going to impact standard of living,” he said.

General Lewis, a former ambassador to the EU and NATO, said Labor’s more ambitious climate policies would also enable a better relationship with Europe.

“I had the unenviable job as diplomats do, from time to time, to share the bad news with the EU, that we had changed our policy away from some of the climate change initiatives that were looking so promising at the time,” he said.

“That’s now changed.”

As Anthony Albanese prepares to visit Jakarta, General Lewis said the Australia-Indonesia relationship “requires even more attention than it has received over the years”.

“It is a critical relationship. It is one where we have enormous resources in this country of knowledge about Indonesia, and it’s not kind of being properly harnessed,” he said.