Chairman Xeating is back and he’s mansplaining!
Former prime minister Paul Keating has accused Australian Security Intelligence Organisation chief Mike Burgess of running a “goon show” and undermining efforts to stabilise ties with China, while also lashing Foreign Minister Penny Wong for being out of step with South-East Asia.
Mr Keating issued a blistering statement criticising Senator Wong’s speech on Monday on the sidelines of the ASEAN summit in Melbourne, where she warned that coercion and threats of the use of force were risking the region’s character.
“It doesn’t take much to encourage Penny Wong, sporting her ‘deeply concerned’ frown, to rattle the China can – a can she gave a good shake to yesterday,” Mr Keating said.
“Yesterday, Anwar Ibrahim, the prime minister of Malaysia, dropped a huge rock into Wong’s pond by telling Australia not to piggyback Australia’s problems with China onto ASEAN.
“Anwar is making it clear Malaysia for its part is not buying United States hegemony in East Asia – with states being lobbied to ringfence China on the way through. That difficult task, the maintenance of US strategic hegemony, is being left to supplicants like us.
All woke jokes aside, the rapidly diminishing figure of Chairman Xeating should forego the selective quotation. He of all people knows that Malaysia has a long-standing tradition of dumping on Australia to rally ASEAN to its own interests.
Where was Chairman Xeating last week when ASEAN founding member, The Philippines, beat out a drum of China resistance:
Australia and the Philippines will deepen maritime co-operation, including security for civilian shipping and surveillance, as President Ferdinand Marcos jnr warns his country is on the front line of Chinese efforts that threaten regional peace.
In a forthright address to federal parliament, Mr Marcos repeated his vow the Philippines would not surrender a square inch of territory to a foreign power, amid intensifying clashes between Chinese and Filipino maritime forces.
“Our two countries have always understood that without the predictability and stability of our rules-based order our region would not have emerged as a driver of the global economy as it is today,” Mr Marcos said.
Like Xeating, ASEAN has been browbeaten into never mentioning Voldemort. But, unlike Xeating, ASEAN nations have a lot at stake as China steals everybody’s territory and threatens their sovereignty within the “nine-dash line”:
Hence this:
Australia’s future fleet of nuclear submarines will be welcome to dock in Singapore, Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong said, as differences over how to handle China’s burgeoning military footprint dominated the early stages of a special Asean summit in Melbourne.
ASEAN nations know that if the US abandons the region, they will be at the mercy of Beijing and its regional diaporas. Why Chairman Xeating doesn’t realise it is mystery.
He is right about one thing. ASIO should release the name of the Chinese spy.
