Scott Morrison’s failure in the Solomon Islands, opening the way for a major strategic advance by China on our doorstep, has been, note for note, a perfect replay of his failures in so many other areas.
There’s been the bluster and the media announcements, the vaunted “Pacific step-up”, a phrase repeated over and over for the cameras, followed by a lack of substance, and a failure both by his government and Morrison personally.
Taken by surprise by China and the government of Manasseh Sogavare, Morrison neither felt it worthwhile to interrupt Marise Payne’s electioneering to dispatch her to Honiara — preferring to send Canberra work experience kid Zed Seselja — nor to bother contacting Sogavare himself. Phones it seems are for leaking confidential texts, not calling.
As has happened so frequently under Morrison, the moment any complexity of response is required from his government, it fails miserably — at even the basics.
As the magnitude of Morrison’s failure became obvious, and he faced the unusual situation of a prime minister having to field foreign policy questions during an election campaign, the bluster and announcements returned: Australia shared a “red line” with the US in relation to China establishing a military base in the Solomon Islands, he said yesterday: “We won’t be having Chinese military naval bases in our region on our doorstep.”
When challenged on how exactly that would be prevented, Morrison fell back on Sogavare’s guarantee that that would be the case: “He clearly shares our red line.” So this is a voluntary red line, enforceable only by the subject of the red line itself. This nonsense was shredded even at News Corp, where Greg Sheridan has been openly mocking Morrison’s national security credentials.
Morrison’s national security failings were previously limited to the longer term — the alienation of France, a major Pacific power, and the decision to abandon the Naval Group submarine contract five years in, in exchange for a vague idea of a study to buy US or British nuclear submarines some time in the 2040s, leaving a major gap in Australia’s submarine capability. Now his failings extend to the here-and-now, with a Chinese strategic presence 2000 kilometres from our shores.
National security is supposed to be adults-in-the-room stuff, where the stakes are too high for political games. And national security is supposed to be at the very core of the Coalition’s claim to being a superior party of government. But Morrison has botched it in a way that no previous government ever has, by applying the same Morrison method of administration: announcements, incompetence, evasion of blame. The gap between the performance of Morrison and his idol John Howard is stark.
The problem of an incompetent government, however, is a temporary one: Morrison might lose in May, or his party might dump him thereafter, and he may be replaced with someone more competent at basic administration. It certainly seems the case that Labor has thought through what a genuine “step-up” in the Pacific would look like — though being captured by fossil fuel companies like the Coalition augurs poorly for a genuine attempt to address the concerns of island states about our climate inaction (’twas ever thus, by the way).
What is of arguably equal or greater seriousness is the culpability and attempts to evade responsibility of our intelligence agencies. The Australian Secret Intelligence Service (ASIS) — the least accountable of our major intelligence agencies — clearly failed to keep the government apprised of developments between China and the Sogavare government. That is, it failed in its core business in a region where Australia is the dominant economic, diplomatic and military power — and where our Five Eyes partners rely on us to keep across events.
But if Morrison is notorious for ducking responsibility, our spies are no slouches either. Last week senior intelligence figures approached friendly press gallery journalists — journalists with a history of running what intelligence agencies tell them to — with the story that not merely were our spies aware of the pending China-Solomons deal, but facilitated its unofficial release.
In doing so, they both contradicted the government itself — which had made clear it learnt of the deal at the same time as the rest of us — and in effect throwing Morrison and co under a bus by suggesting the government had failed to heed their warnings.
The truth can easily be determined, as Clinton Fernandes has argued — the intelligence, if it exists, can be declassified. There’s a strong public interest case — and even a political case for the interests of the Coalition — for that to happen.
It is hard to overstate just how wildly inappropriate and potentially dangerous this leaking is. First is the obvious point that, yet again, we see how there are two types of leaks in Canberra: those that serve the powerful, which are never investigated, and those that embarrass the powerful, which lead to prosecutions, secret trials and jail.
But second, no matter what you think of the Morrison government, it is democratically elected. Secretive intelligence bureaucrats — who naturally won’t put their name to the stuff they feed stenographers — are certainly not elected. But the latter feel they can undermine elected officials to escape scrutiny for their own failures. All with the cooperation of a powerful media organisation.
Morrison badly bungled the issue. But however inept, he never had a chance if ASIS and the Australian Signals Directorate failed to do their jobs. The case for an inquiry both into the failure of our intelligence services and their attempt to undermine elected officials is compelling.
The Chinese government must be unable to believe its luck that our government — spies and politicians alike — has been so incompetent.
Release the secret tapes from Timor – go to jail for life.
Release the secret tapes from Solomons – go get a promotion.
Dare I say these are Chinese standards of governance and justice.
US standards actually. Just ask Assange.
Is Sogavare’s guarantee there will be no military bases as solid as Morrison’s guarantee to Macron to purchase French subs?
You mean – is it a core guarantee?
Sogavare’s guarantee is only good for his term in office, as were any previous guarantees from Coalition governments, before Morrison’s, about submarines. It took the Morrison/Dutton duo to dream up wedging the ALP on the issue of how hostile to China Australia needs to be now that the US has decided that strategic competition is necessary to block China’s rise to economic and military supremacy without being in any way beholden to the US. Morrison possibly thought that almighty, if completely baseless, huffing and puffing about China’s “existential” threat to Australia, backed by Murdoch and Chanel 9 media, with Jennings from the mainly US defence industry and US government funded Australian Strategic Policy Institute declaring there would be a Chinese naval base in the Solomons by our election, would prompt the ALP to point out how absurd this was, so that Morrison and Dutton could rescue their reelection with the charge that the ALP is soft on China and that China wants the ALP to wine the election. To Morrison and Dutton’s horror, the ALP accused the Coalition of failure in containing the Chinese military threat. Did this stop the “soft on China” twaddle? Not at all. The preconceived script had to be played out, however absurd it made the coalition look. Barnaby Joyce, who talks nonsense about government debt being just like household debt because he’s an accountant who knows that his clients must repay their debt, but is more squeamish about blatant lies, said that the Australian government had to be respectful enough to accept Sogavare’s assurance that there would be no Chinese naval base but could not resist warning us about the Chinese naval base in Djibouti. Given that Barnaby is uncomfortable with outright lying, we can only suppose that he is unaware that there are US, UK, French, Japanese and other naval or air bases in Djibouti. Somali pirates holding shipping through the Suez from the Gulf of Aden hostage have given Djibouti its national industry of providing shipping countries with military bases to counter the pirates, with each shipping country setting up its own bases so that it does not rely entirely on other countries to stop the pirates. These bases have been successful, because we no longer hear sometimes harrowing tales of ships being held hostage for millions of dollars. This silence has left a vacuum which people like Jennings from ASPI or Barnaby from the Nationals can fill with warnings about China’s global military expansion. Unfortunately, Djibouti does no better than the Solomons in beating up hostility to China. This is not to say that Australia has no concerns about China. China has subjected Australia to economic coercion when its position is that other countries should not interfere in the internal affairs of China. Apparently, for China the hypocrisy of interfering in Australia’s internal affairs is OK. China refuses to accept that it should have no more territorial claim on the South China Sea than other countries that, like China, border the South China Sea. When Australia recognised the government of the Peoples Republic of China as the government of China in 1972, we noted its view, shared with the Republic of China ruled from Taipei, that Taiwan was part of China. Years later we now seem to have the possibility that China will return Taiwan to the motherland by force as the focal point of our entire “defence” strategy, without explaining why this will materially change how vulnerable we are to China. We have simply presumed that the US will go to war with with China in support of Taiwan and that we therefore will go to war with China. Oh please, is it too much to expect that Australia could have a rational discussion about whether the non-peaceful return of Taiwan to China is a threat to either the US or to Australia?
Many years ago in a previous life I had quite a lot to do with ASIS and I never found their ‘product to be very useful, as compared with DSD, now ASD (I think).
I would have thought this stuff up in the Solomons was a result of the downgrading and stripping out of expertise in Foreign Affairs rather than ASIS. If we had a strong Foreign Affairs presence in the region, this would never have slipped past. Urgent messages would have been going to Canberra each day from a well-connected and informed diplomatic service.
It is not that the government didn’t know or were not forewarned.
Like so much else – bushfire warnings, climate, covid, aged care, etc ad nauseam – they don’t give a flying until it becomes a crisis.
Then, as usual, went into panic mode and treat as a political, presentational problem, unconnected to reality.
S.O.P. for this pack.
The CPC could have a base built before Canberra even noticed, fully manned with a dozen of their latest FC-31 fighters. Are our F35s ready yet?
The F-35! Yet another failure by the LNP.
A persistent myth in Australian politics is the Coalition’s purported superior competence in handling Australia’s national security. Nothing could be further from the truth. Sure, if we needed some strident, bellicose tub-thumping on national security then Morrison, Dutton and the rest of them are your go-to guys. Ditto if we needed someone to bark very loudly at China like an annoying poodle, or maybe even someone to shirtfront an international figure we don’t like. But to do the hard yards? The long-term planning on a time horizon of decades? The careful diplomacy involving allies, friends and those less friendly towards us? The careful management of projects costing tens of billions? To put Australia’s long-term interests ahead of short-term political advantage? The Coalition have proved utterly incapable, untrustworthy and incompetent. We need the adults to take charge.
What an EXCELLENT and POWERFUL article, Bernard!! I doubt that you really realize what a service you are doing for the Australian people by publishing such insightful essays. Thank you!!
I cannot tell you just how much I hope that this babbling, smirking, hustler and confidence trickster Prime Minister meets a fitting end on May 21st. We must all get out there and letter-box and hand out pamphlets, etc. to do out bit to ensure that this happens. Another 3 years of this Morrison Liberal Government is more than I can bear to think about!
Then of course, there is the issue of the competence of this nation’s national security failings which you have described so succinctly. This will be an urgent issue for any new government to deal with should one be elected next month.
Thanks again, Bernard!