Nutters are in charge of security agencies: Paul Keating

Paul Keating has accused security agencies of undermining the China relationship.

Australian Labor Party former prime minister Paul Keating at the Australian Labor Party election launch. Picture: AFP

Paul Keating has accused the ­nation’s security agencies of undermining Australia’s relationship with China, saying “the nutters are in charge” and had gone “berko” in their approach to Beijing.

The former prime minister, who was honoured alongside Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard at Bill Shorten’s campaign launch today, said Labor would make a “huge shift” in Australia’s relationship with China by “merely making the point that China’s ­entitled to be there”.

In remarks condemned as “unhinged” by Australian Strategic Policy Institute’s executive director Peter Jennings, Mr Keating said security agencies such as ASIO had “lost their strategic bearings” when it came to China.

“When the security agencies are running foreign policy, the nutters are in charge,” Mr Keating told the ABC. “You’d clean them out. You’d clean them out.”

He said the agencies had lurched off course in their assessments on Beijing since China expert John Garnaut prepared a classified report with ASIO for Malcolm Turnbull into Beijing’s clandestine activities in Australia.

“They’ve all gone berko ever since then. (When) you have the ASIO chief knocking on MPs’ doors, you know something’s wrong,” he said, an apparent reference to the crackdown on foreign interference in the political system.

“You know, China, whatever you think, China is a great state. It’s always been a great state and now has the second-largest economy, soon the largest economy in the world. If we have a foreign policy that does not take that into ­account, we are fools.”

Mr Jennings said Mr Keating’s comments could not be taken seriously. “It’s inaccurate and insulting,” he said. “No one in the intelligence community doubts China is an immensely powerful strategic factor in our society.

“But unlike a lot of people, they aren’t denying the reality of what we actually see, which is that China is arming itself at a frightening pace, it is becoming increasingly repressive, the Communist Party is returning to its Leninist ­origins, and this does present a massive problem. There is no point trying to deny it.” Mr Jennings said he believed Labor would be cautious about China, “and I certainly hope they don’t take the counsel of someone like Paul Keating”.

“I think they’ll have the sense to listen to what the national security community will tell them. I don’t, frankly, put much stock on the ­assertion that we have as that somehow they are just going to manage the relationship better.”

A Labor spokesman told The Australian: “Labor has great respect for our security agencies. We always work co-operatively with them in the national interest.”

Labor has pledged to reframe Australia’s relationship with China, with a more “considered” approach that would not “pre-emptively frame China only as a threat’’. Scott Morrison has also tried to repair the Australia-China relationship following the departure of Malcolm Turnbull, who declared during the debate over foreign interference in Australia’s political system that Australians should “stand up” for their nation’s sovereignty.

The comments were perceived in Beijing as being aimed at China, while the ban on security grounds of Chinese companies Huawei and ZTE participating in the next-­generation 5G network also damaged the bilateral relationship.

The Garnaut-ASIO report led to the Turnbull government’s crackdown on foreign interference, including new laws that make it a criminal offence to influence a political or government process.