Thank god for the liar from the Shire. AFR.
Two US congressmen leading a committee looking at Chinese expansion in the Indo-Pacific have thrown their support behind the AUKUS nuclear-powered submarine pact, just a day before a hearing in which former prime minister Scott Morrison will testify.
“AUKUS has received strong bipartisan support from Congress for a reason,” Republican Representative John Moolenaar and Democrat Raja Krishnamoorthi wrote in a letter to Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth that was released on Tuesday (Wednesday AEST).
Meanwhile, the Albo and Rudd China show is busy elsewhere. SMH.
Washington: The man leading Donald Trump’s push to build more ships and submarines is a critic of Australia who has questioned whether Canberra can be trusted to stick with the AUKUS agreement, and whether it is ready to help the United States take on China.
Jerry Hendrix, a retired navy captain who holds a senior role in the president’s Office of Management and Budget, said last year that “the Australians have been noticeably fickle” about AUKUS and queried if the deal had true bipartisan support.
Noticeably fickle with ANZUS, I would say. They’ve been so busy grovelling to Beijing that while the Labor cowards are busy defending China’s right to practice missile assaults on Sydney, the Americans defend our honour.
In their letter to Hegseth, Republican committee chair John Moolenaar and Democratic representative Raja Krishnamoorthi said AUKUS had bipartisan support in Congress for a reason, and that it would strengthen US security as well as that of Australia and the United Kingdom. They noted Beijing’s “unprecedented” live-fire exercises in the Tasman Sea in February.
“This attempt to project power as far south as New Zealand’s front door highlights the importance of AUKUS in cementing ties to longstanding allies like Australia, as well as advancing vital undersea capabilities that will be central to deterrence,” they wrote. “We are stronger together under the AUKUS framework.”
Yes, we are. But only if Labor wants America as a security partner, which is not clear. AFR.
Morrison, who led the Coalition government between 2018 and 2022, told reporters afterwards that the Pentagon had raised “the displacement” of Australia’s defence spending to pay for AUKUS as part of its review.
“It wasn’t [meant to be] ‘AUKUS instead’, it was ‘AUKUS as well’,” he said of Australia’s defence capability. “And ‘AUKUS as well’ was at least going to add another half a per cent of GDP, at least… [or] possibly more.”
The former prime minister said it was “very much” in Australia’s interest to lift defence spending to 3 per cent of gross domestic product by 2030 and 3.5 per cent by 2035. “The world has changed,” he said.
Instead, Albo is degrading the ADF at record speed. The Australian.
Only three New Zealanders have joined the Australian Defence Force in the year since the Albanese government allowed Kiwi citizens to enlist, in a flat start to a program that Labor once heralded as a “bold” move to help struggling recruitment numbers.
The Albanese government in June last year announced it would allow New Zealand citizens who had been Australian permanent residents for more than a year to join the ADF, and said it would expand this to citizens of Five Eyes partners – the US, UK, and Canada.
“We’re being bold in order to grow the Australian Defence Force,” Defence Personnel Minister Matt Keogh said at the time.
By keeping defence spending far too low and charting a course for a foreign policy independent of the US, Albo is behaving as if he would prefer to be a Chinese satrap.
Bravo Morrison. AFR.
In a rare appearance for a former foreign leader in front of a congressional committee, Morrison warned on Wednesday (Thursday AEST) that the Chinese Communist Party has taken advantage of its growing economic power since the 1990s to build capacity to challenge the global order.
“Rather than opening up their society, during post-Cold War globalisation the CCP used China’s newly granted access to global trade, capital markets and legitimacy in international forums to build the economic, diplomatic, technological, and military capacity to one day challenge the global order in an attempt to make it more favourable to their regime security. That day is now,” he said in opening remarks.
“I have no doubt that the primary objective of the PRC’s [People’s Republic of China’s] targeting of Australia during this time was to make an example of Australia as a key US ally in the region. To punish Australia as a warning to others,” Morrison said. “I am pleased our government provided the example of resistance and resilience, by standing firm, rather than acquiescence and appeasement.”
“This included abandoning their economic and diplomatic bullying and coercion for more inductive engagement, laced with charm and flattery,” he said. “That said the PRC still continues to engage in intimidatory behaviour by their military against Australia when it suits them without remorse.”
I wonder why they didn’t invite Rudd or Albo? Maybe because when Morrison was manning up in 2021, Labor was too busy grovelling as China declared the end of Australian democracy in its 14 conditions. Albo was nauseating.
“I remember Prime Minister [Kevin] Rudd giving a speech in China, in Mandarin, of course, which was critical of human rights issues, but done so in a way that also was designed to make clear our values but not designed to offend for offence sake,” he said.
“And what we were able to do, and the Howard government was able to do as well, is have relationships that built that economic interaction that was very important for us.
“This government seems to have presided over a complete breakdown of relationships.”
Is it all good now?
Australian exports are still falling as imports reach records, indicating rising supply-chain dependency, while the CCP practices nuking Sydney just offshore.
Not to mention, record immigration is stacking 7-8 federal electorates with ethnic Chinese vulnerable to Beijing coercion, rendering political resistance impossible.
While Chinese propaganda is pouring from every media orifice.
There is nothing quite like the filthy rich and powerful closing the door behind them to others achieving the same. Twiggy Forrest at The Australian.
The Albanese government has shown it understands that we cannot afford to drift back into the old ways of suspicion and division. If we do, we will both lose. Australia’s future prosperity and China’s blue skies, green cities dream are intertwined – and so too are our responsibilities to every child who will inherit this planet.
Treat a friend like an enemy, and one day they may well become one. But treat a friend like a partner, and together you can achieve the extraordinary. China’s modernisation has been a beautiful evolution to both witness and in a very small way, be part of. But this next chapter can surpass it all.
It is time for Australia and China to show the world – particularly my friends in North America – what is possible when respect triumphs over fear, and when ambition for a world no longer reliant on fossil fuels triumphs over complacency. We must choose a clean, pollution-free, peaceful world, where energy can no longer be weaponised. We owe it to the next century to get this right.
Cripes. That’s straight from The Global Times or the Chinese Ministry of Information.
Are CCP missile drills off Sydney with a nuclear-capable flotilla the act of a friend operating in a “peaceful world”?
Claiming that we had this coming because of freedom of navigation drills in the Taiwan Strait is irrelevant.
It was an act of overt coercion, and it is getting the appeasement that Twiggy seeks.
Why is Australia distancing itself from the US following such an unprecedented provocation?
Why is Australia doing so while refusing to lift defence spending?
We are being coerced, cajoled, and browbeaten into submission to a CCP model of social order that unites fascistic government and business in league with a foreign tyranny.
The greatest price we will pay for this, we are already paying, is the death of liberalism.
It is liberalism that underpins Australian prosperity and living standards. Not China.
It is the freedom to debate, to express, to innovate, to create, to destroy, to invest, and to advance into modernity that is the foundation of our society.
Typically, Australians are happy to curb these values in the name of fairness, which has served us well over two hundred years.
But the swing currently underway is not that. This is a shift in kind, not degree.
Hegemonic security structures impose the values of the hegemon.
If you want the creepy Albo/Twiggy duet to run the show from Beijing, then your freedoms will be curtailed accordingly.
