Paul Keating slams Penny Wong for speaking in ‘platitudes’ on China

Paul Keating has escalated his attacks on Penny Wong, accusing her of speaking in ‘platitudes’ and ‘failing to add one iota of substance’ to ensuring peace between China and the US.

Foreign Minister Penny Wong at the National Press Club in Canberra on Monday. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Martin Ollman

Paul Keating has escalated his ­attacks on Foreign Minister Penny Wong, accusing her of speaking in “platitudes” and “failing to add one iota of substance” to the task of ensuring peace between China and the US.

The pro-China former prime minister issued a blistering statement on Monday after a National Press Club address by Senator Wong in which she suggested Mr Keating wanted Australia to “attach ourselves” to a “hegemonic China”, as Menzies had sought to tie Australia to Britain.

Senator Wong also echoed Anthony Albanese’s response to a speech by Mr Keating in March, saying the Labor luminary had “diminished” his legacy in his attack on the government’s Pacific diplomacy.

Mr Keating said: “I never expected more than platitudes from Penny Wong’s press club speech and, as it turned out, I was not ­disappointed.”

He said Senator Wong was “unable to nominate a single piece of strategic statecraft by Australia that would attempt a solution” for tensions between China and the US.

Mr Keating also accused Senator Wong, who refused to “engage in speculation” about regional flashpoints including Taiwan, of “refusing to talk about the very power issue which threatens the region’s viability”.

Senator Wong said in her speech that Australia needed to ­work diplomatically, backed by military deterrence, to uphold a strategic equilibrium in the region “where no country dominates, and no country is dominated”.

“There have been those throughout Australia’s history who thought our foreign policy should simply be to attach ourselves to a great power,” she said.

“Now some imply that we should attach ourselves to what they anticipate will be a hege­monic China.”

She also blasted critics of the US, saying the Indo-Pacific would not have enjoyed such a long ­period of prosperity without America’s security guarantee for the region.

Mr Keating responded by accusing Senator Wong of “speaking platitudinally” about main­tain­ing the balance of power “but having not a jot of an idea as to how this might be achieved”.

“She told us she will turn her back on reality, speaking only in terms of ‘lowering the heat’ and the ‘benefit from a strategic equilibrium’, without providing one clue, let alone a policy, as to how that might be achieved,” he said.

“Never before has a Labor government been so bereft of policy or policy ambition.”

While Senator Wong urged against making “binary” choices, Mr Keating said she had done just that by “extolling the virtues of the US” as the region’s central power.

In an address to the National Press Club in March, Mr Keating attacked Senator Wong’s diplomacy in the region, describing her and Defence Minister Richard Marles as “two seriously unwise ministers”.

“Let me just make this point. Running around the Pacific Islands with a lei around your neck handing out money, which is what Penny does, is not foreign policy,” he said at the time.

The Prime Minister responded, saying Mr Keating’s remarks “diminish him”.

In her address on Monday, Senator Wong said Australia would not allow the trans-Pacific free-trade agreement’s high standards to be eroded as China lobbies to be accepted to the exclusive trading bloc.

 

She said the Albanese government’s relations with Beijing were underpinned by the fact that “China is going to keep being China”, and that the authoritarian state would use all of its tools of statecraft to maximise its own ­advantage.

Scott Morrison warned when he was prime minister that China has little hope of gaining entry to the CPTPP.

Meanwhile, Mr Albanese on Monday said “subject to logistical arrangements”, he would attend the NATO summit in Lithuania.