For months, all signs pointed to a khaki election, with a hawkish Morrison government desperate to corner Labor as weak on national security.
The Coalition frontbench went on the attack during the final parliamentary sittings, with Prime Minister Scott Morrison labelling Deputy Opposition Leader Richard Marles a “Manchurian Candidate”, as Peter Dutton snarled about Labor being China’s preferred party. Despite all that, Labor is pretty much in lockstep with the Coalition on national security issues, boosting defence spending, and how to deal with China.
But the government’s language was enough for the spy chiefs to come in from the cold and deliver a rebuke, with ASIO boss Mike Burgess warning that politicising national security was unhelpful for the agency’s work.
Surprisingly then, it took some time for national security and defence to become major attack lines during the election campaign proper. Campaign insights prepared exclusively for Crikey by Isentia reflect this. During the opening week, national security, defence or China didn’t crack the top 10 issues in terms of campaign chatter.
It wasn’t until the aftermath of Wednesday’s first leaders’ debate that national security became the most discussed issue – in this case, China’s security pact with the Solomon Islands.
During the debate, Morrison accused the government of siding with China, while Labor Leader Anthony Albanese labelled the situation a “Pacific stuff-up” and a major foreign policy failure.
The government wants to fight the election on defence and national security issues, because they are traditionally considered, by some voters at least, areas where the Coalition dominates. But the Solomon Islands debacle could turn an electoral asset into more of a liability.
For starters, it raises questions about how Australia’s national security agencies, and a government that prides itself on being tough on China, were caught asleep at the wheel as Beijing grew its influence in the Pacific.
While the Biden administration sent its “Asia Czar” Kurt Campbell to Honiara, the Morrison government put junior minister Zed Seselja on a plane. Foreign Minister Marise Payne was busy campaigning in the Victorian marginal seat of Corangamite when the deal broke.
All this should give Labor a big, obvious strategic gain deep in Coalition territory. When the government attacks them for being “weak on China”, it’s easy pickings for shadow foreign affairs spokesperson Penny Wong and others to point to what the opposition calls the worst foreign policy failure since 1945.
While it makes it a whole lot easier for Labor to neutralise the China attack, it won’t go away. On the front page of The Australian this morning was an attack piece about past comments made by Marles suggesting Pacific nations should be free to deal with China as they please.
It was, according to Morrison, “chilling” stuff, and a sign that Labor’s deputy “has actually been advocating for what the Chinese government has been seeking to do”.
It’s a sign that despite the obvious failings on the Solomon Islands, the government will continue to push the khaki election line. But there’s another reason why this is a potential trip-wire for the Coalition.
Since 2020, the Morrison government has doubled down on incredibly hawkish rhetoric towards the Chinese Communist Party. Relations between Canberra and Beijing are at their lowest ebb, and there’s little sign of that changing.
That’s led to a feeling among some in Australia’s million-strong Chinese diaspora that the government is anti-China. And while that group is diverse, both in its politics and relationship with the CCP, the government’s stance on China could hurt in key marginal seats, with high Chinese-Australian populations.
In the Melbourne seat of Chisholm, Gladys Liu is barely clinging on. In the Sydney suburbs, Labor is feeling optimistic about winning Reid, and are increasingly talking up the prospect of flipping John Howard’s old seat of Bennelong, with nearby Banks also a chance.
All seats have a high Chinese-Australian population. And while the group isn’t a monolith to which the government’s China rhetoric is uniformly alienating, it’s reason for the government to handle things with care.
It does mean that while the Coalition have always seen borders, defence, national security – all the khaki stuff — as pillars of strength, it’s a far more contested, risky issue for them this time around.
“On the front page of The Australian this morning was an attack piece about past comments made by Marles suggesting Pacific nations should be free to deal with China as they please.”
Isn’t that just respecting their sovereignty?
What other option is there? Australia (or the US) dictates foreign policy for Pacifica nations?
The attack piece is not just confined to “The Australian”. Unsurprisingly, it extends to 9 media, which couldn’t allow Murdoch alone to keep up the prevailing anti-ALP wind in the prelude to an election. The AFR had displayed “an immediate existential threat” to Australia from that defence “expert” Christopher Joye, better known for his past work in finance for Goldman Sacha and the RBA. He showed his laughable “expertise” by recollecting the Japanese Empire’s attempt to establish its greater East Asian co-prosperity sphere in the Pacific after its attack on Pearl Harbour. The conquest of the Phillipines, Malaya, Singapore, the Dutch East Indies (now Indonesia) and the invasion of New Guinea from Rabaul, with Naval Bases along the way, building up to the weakening of its navy in the Battle of the Coral Sea and its first land army defeat at the Battle for Guadalcanal.
Apparently, “Following the Japanese playbook, the Chinese Communist Party is trying to lay the groundwork to establish bases, runways, naval ports and close military ties with most countries to our north and north east, including Fiji, Papua New Guinea, Samoa, Solomon Islands, East Timor, Vanuatu and, further afield, the tiny nation of Kiribati.” Being a close observer of reality, as a financial journalist, Joye did not notice that the Japanese Empire’s playbook was rather startlingly different from the path the Chinese Communist Party is taking today, which involves no military occupations, no naval bases, no additional runways, and is not an extension of existing imperial occupations of territory, so that its as yet imaginary forces in Guadalcanal have insecurely long supply lines and strategically poor long times for material support in the event of any conflict. Joye’s breathless chatter about an immediate existential threat is just plain nonsense.
To make it clear that we should support Morrison in our forthcoming election, Joye quotes Jenkins from the US funded Australian Strategic Policy Institute and Hugh White to the effect that Morrison could not have prevented to Chinese Solomons agreement and then waxed on about Richard Marles, who it seems unwisely said things that implied China’s presence to our North and North East was nothing like the presence of the Japanese Empire to our North West and North that lead to the Battle of Guadalcanal. Joye then endorses Jenkins’ wild imaginings that there would be a Chinese Naval Base in Honiara by the time of our election.
Does our mainstream media envy the internet for its capacity to spread misinformation? If so the Murdoch and 9 media are making up lost ground, so that we must have an imaginary khakis election that Morrison is supposed to win. Oh, please! Spare us this nonsense. A study of the facts makes it clear that China has perceived a threat to its national interests and the security of residents with Chinese ancestry in Honiara’s Chinatown and wants an agreement that will allow it to send police and security forces to Honiara to protect those interests. No existential threat to Australia to be seen here. And it would be good that our truth seeking journalists did not enlist in imaginary security scare campaigns on the threshold of our 2022 election.
That’s the way I see the situation. But the uneducated public will go for the threat of China attacking us quite soon! Read the comments in other MSM – quite frightening.
As an erstwhile frequent visitor to Timor leste, the locals were very proud of the very nice parliamentary building constructed by China for them. When the pressure is on just watch Horta start encouraging more from China. But not necessarily military stuff . .
“During the debate, Morrison accused the government of siding with China”
If he said that, would that be the gaffe of all gaffes?
For all those members of the Coalition, and the political pundits who didn’t see the Solomon Island’s agreement with
Mainland China coming, perhaps they missed the change 3 years ago when Solomon Island’s government dropped recognition of Taiwan and recognised mainland China.
Spot on.
If the Libs can’t win with honesty, they might need to resort to mistruths.
They would never do that, would they?
Its easy to see how biased the media in the main are, in favour of the Coalition.
Any commentator worth their salt, would have long ago zeroed in on the disaster that
is the defence of Australia, particularly under the Coalition parties.
Major assets from ships to vehicles to aeroplanes are over budget, over delivery time, with various defects that mean most of them will be useless in the defence of Australia. Prime Minister continual offering of large dollars at some undetermined time in the future are just smoke blown where is does no good.
For instant all the base upgrades with no quoted reason, promises to employ 18,000 extra ADF members over 18 years, makes no mention of the average 5,800 departed members each year and the increase of around 800 per year, means Morrison needs to recruit 6,800 per year for 18 years, to achieve his target.
most of the new acquisitions and purchases will not help defend Australia with boots on the ground.
i could go on but interest commentators only need to read the Australian Auditor General’s Reports each year on Defence to understand the disaster..
Yes for the military brass, the LNP allows them all to have nice little earners . No oversight . . Luverly!