Via the AFR:
“We won’t view China just through the strategic prism of worst case scenario,” he said.
“We’ve got to view China as more than just a threat. It doesn’t mean we’re not going to take advice from security agencies and understand our ongoing commitment to the Five Eyes [security alliance with the US, Canada, the UK and New Zealand], but we can’t just deal with countries from a position of fear.
“I just think deepen the ties. So when I have my disagreements with them, ideally they will hear from me first rather than through the media or the megaphone.”
…”We’re not going back to 1945. Australia’s got to become more self-reliant. That’s a good thing.”
I can’t disagree with the sentiment of self-reliance. But as described yesterday:
Penny Wong may want multilateral outcomes. But that’s not the world we live in. We live in a regional hegemony guaranteed by the US liberal empire. Is Shadow Minister Wong calling for an end to it? If so, it won’t be replaced by some fanciful regional collective flower show. It will replaced by Chinese hegemony. This is not really anything to do with China. It’s simply what great powers do. They reach out and influence in their interests. We’ve been lucky to live through a period when that power projection has been exercised by a great power governed by a liberal regime. In China’s version it will be an illiberal empire with its interest imposed through the corruption of local elites to its interests. Democracy will most assuredly be the loser.
…contrary to Shorten’s soothing words, China is a strategic rival, not just to the United States but the entire liberal democratic model of government. Intrinsically, then, Bill Shorten is also signalling his comfort with the CCP which explicitly claims the loyalty of its diaspora.
This is not a statement of race but of political orientation. Six hundred thousand Chinese have emigrated to Australia in the last decade with many more in the offing. How does this community sit with Australia sustaining its democracy when the mother country is hostile to it? How will Labor manage such a community as it grows versus the national interest of protecting Australian democracy? I don’t know and I don’t think that Bill Shorten has a clue, either.
The problem for Bill Shorten is Cold War 2.0 is already underway. A few gentlemen in Washington make the case:
This will not change when Democrats take back the White House.
Taking the middle line between the great powers only strengthens China not the US within Australia’s current policy settings. This is a pretense of alliance support boosting the possibility that one day in the not too distant future a US president will draw a line through Hawaii and give China everything west of it.
After all, why should American lives be spent on protecting that pack of CCP sellouts Downunder?
