In a conversation with reporters after a Labor Party election campaign launch on May 5, former prime minister Paul Keating called Australia’s security agencies “nutters” and said that the appropriate action should be to “clean them out.” He also said that “China is a great state.” The comments were in response to follow up questions related to improving Australia’s relationship with China.
Chinese Regime’s Interference in Australia
Liberal Party Senator Jim Molan, a former major general in the Australian Army, told The Epoch Times that he was “very angry to hear” Keating’s comments.“What I was annoyed about was that he attacked the security agencies,” Molan, who once served as the chief of operations for coalition forces in Iraq, said. “They have no political leanings to left or right. They are beautifully apolitical. You go to them with a problem and they will look at it.”
“I know about our security organisations very well,” Molan said. “I worked with intelligence for last 20-30 years and as a member of Parliamentary Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security we receive briefings from them. They are rational and logical and don’t go too far.”
Senator Duncan Spender of the Liberal Democratic Party expressed concerns over how Keating appeared to have overlooked all the oppressive activities of the Chinese regime in proclaiming it a “great state.”
“It’s very concerning that we get [Keating] saying that China is a ‘great state’ without any mention of how China is also at the same time an abhorrent state that is doing terrible things to its people,” Spender told The Epoch Times.
Spender had written in the release that the CCP “threatens trade whenever Australians mention their oppression.”
Molan told the Epoch Times that Australia should remember it cannot be influenced.
“We are an independent sovereign country,” Molan said. “I have no objection trading with China but that doesn’t mean they influence our politics. Doesn’t mean they get away with what they do in South China Sea or anything else.”
“They have agencies whose sole task is to do just that, and they are very good at it.”
Journalist Neil Mitchell of 3AW noted that Keating is a consultant to the China Development Bank.
What Did Keating Say?
An ABC reporter initially asked Keating on May 5, “Would an incoming Labor government have to do something to heal relations with China?”“Is there healing to be done?” the reporter later asked.
Keating responded: “I think there’s healing to be done but I think a Labor government would make a huge shift. Just merely making the point that China’s entitled to be there rather than being some illegitimate state that has to be strategically watched.”
“Nobody is questioning its legitimacy to be there but isn’t it the more nefarious actions of the Chinese government that has our security agencies...“ another reporter responded, before Keating interjected: “Look, when the security agencies are running foreign policy, the nutters are in charge, the nutters are in charge at the top. You clean them out.”
“I mean, once that Garnaut guy came back from China and Turnbull gave him the ticket to go and hop into the security agencies, they’ve all gone berko ever since,” Keating continued.
“When you’ve got the ASIO chief knocking on MPs’ doors, you know something’s wrong,” Keating told ABC reporters on May 5. It is unclear what specific incident Keating was referring to.
“So you think they [the spy chiefs] should be cleaned out of ASIO, ASIS, the lot?” a reporter asked Keating on May 5.
“Oh yeah. They’ve lost their strategic bearings, these organizations,” Keating responded.
Responses From Major Parties
The coalition, currently led by current Prime Minister Scott Morrison, said that Keating’s comments were “appalling,” “incredibly reckless,” and completely outrageous.”“For what the Labor Party calls a Labor legend to go out there and attack the credibility of our security agencies that have been saving lives in this country, I think is disappointing,” Morrison told reporters on May 6, AAP reported.
After Keating’s comments, opposition Labor Party leader Bill Shorten clarified that he did not agree.
“On that particular view, I don’t agree with [Keating],” Shorten said, according to AAP.
“Paul Keating is an elder statesman of Australian politics, he’s never been shy of saying what he thinks,” Shorten said, according to the ABC. “[The Labor Party has] worked very well with the national security agencies. They know that and we know that. And of course we will continue that.”
Making Sense of Keating’s Comments
Hamilton, shared in an opinion piece in The Daily Telegraph his understanding of what may have been behind Keating’s comments.Hamilton described Huang Xiangmo as “the Chinese property developer who donated shedloads of money” to the NSW Labor party, and how Huang “has now been denied entry to Australia because ASIO suspects him of being too close to the Chinese Communist Party.”
“The hard men of the NSW Right [in the Labor Party] blame ASIO and they are fuming,“ Hamilton wrote, referring to when the Labor party was ”forced to demote Wong to an unwinnable position.”
“That’s what Keating meant when he attacked ASIO for ‘knocking on MPs’ doors,’” Hamilton wrote.
Financial Donations
In 2015, ASIO warned the country’s three main political parties about CCP interference in Australian politics through considerable financial donations.Hamilton wrote on May 6: “It was Sam Dastyari’s association with Huang Xiangmo that led to Sam’s disgrace and exit from the Senate.”
In 2016, then-Labor senator Dastyari hosted a press conference with Huang for local Chinese-language media and spoke in favor of the Chinese regime’s military expansion in the South China Sea. Dastyari’s remarks contradicted the Labor Party’s stance, which supported the United States’s critique of the CCP’s aggression in the region.
The ABC later revealed that Huang’s company paid for Dastyari’s legal bills in 2014. According to Fairfax, two weeks prior to the 2016 federal election, Huang attempted to use a AU$400,000 ($284,440) donation to the Labor Party as leverage to influence the party’s policy on China.
Interfere Into Silence
Spender told The Epoch Times that the CCP’s interference efforts have succeeded in subduing Australians into silence.“The interference comes not in terms of individual statements about China like Paul Keating’s statement,” he told The Epoch Times.
“Through their various tentacles, the CCP has convinced the major parties [in Australia] that, in order to maintain a lucrative trade relationship, it is better not to talk about anything that the CCP is doing over in China, or even beyond China,” Spender said.
“The worst form of interference is the silence ... I’ve been thinking the interference is the silence, and I think that silence is quite deadly,” he added.
“Australian politicians need to be free and feel free to understand what’s going on and to be able to speak on what the Chinese Communist Party is doing,” Spender said. “Not just simply for the sake of the people subject to the Chinese Communist Party, but also for our own sake.”
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