Paul Keating has delivered another brutal broadside against Foreign Minister Penny Wong, while also calling for the boss of ASIO to be sacked for outing an alleged but unnamed MP as a Chinese spy.
The former Labor prime minister, who served on the board of the Communist Party-run China Development Bank from 2005 to 2018, said Senator Wong had been co-opted into a ‘mindless pro-American stance’.
In an address coinciding with the ASEAN summit being held in Melbourne, Senator Wong said the south east Asian region faces ‘destabilising, provocative and coercive actions,’ in a thinly veiled swipe at China and its perceived expansionism.
Mr Keating said Senator Wong’s ‘concerns’ had been unceremoniously slapped down by Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim who refused to buy into ‘s anti-China stance.
Former Labor prime minister Paul Keating has unleashed again at the Albanese government over their policies towards China
‘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.
‘Anwar Ibrahim, the Prime Minister of Malaysia, dropped a huge rock into Wong’s pond by telling not to piggyback ‘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.’
Mr Keating argued ‘that and n policy is at odds with the general tenor of ASEAN’s perceived strategic interests’.
‘That is, interests which relate to China and the United States and relations between them,’ he said.
The iconic Labor figure also blasted ASIO boss Mike Burgess, who he said was running a ‘goon show’ after the spymaster claimed a now retired MP had ‘sold out his country’ to a foreign power, which was later identified as China.
Mr Keating was not impressed by this revelation, likening it to the heavily stylized Japanese traditional kabuki theatre and saying it was a coordinated attempt to blacken China.
‘The kabuki show runs thus: (Mike) Burgess drops the claim, then out of nowhere, the Herald and The Age miraculously appear to solve the mystery – the villain, as it turns out, is China after all,’ Mr Keating said.
Mr Keating delivered another brutal verdict on Foreign Minister Penny Wong accusing her of doing the bidding of pro-US bureaucrats
‘When the Albanese government was elected, the first decision it should have taken was to dismiss Burgess, (Director-General of the Office of National Intelligence) Andrew Shearer and (former Home Affairs secretary) Mike Pezzullo … unbelievably, Burgess and Shearer still remain at the centre of a Labor government’s security apparatus,’ he said.
‘This says more about the government than it says about them.
‘These people display utter contempt for the so-called stabilisation process that the Prime Minister had decided upon and has progressed with China and will do anything to destabilise any meaningful rapprochement.
‘Burgess runs the primary goon show while Shearer does all in his power to encourage into becoming the 51st state of the United States.’
Asked about Mr Keating’s comments Prime Minister Anthony Albanese was forced to deny was sending mixed messages on China with a curt ‘no’.
Last year, Mr Keating launched a withering series of attacks on the Albanese government for signing the AUKUS nuclear submarine pact it inherited from the Morrison government.
Mr Keating said ASIO boss Mike Burgess’s (pictured) claim that a former MP was a spy who sold out to China was part of an orchestrated campaign that went against Albanese government policy
Mr Keating accused the Albanese government of accepting the $360 billion deal in just 24 hours and questioned their competence.
‘How would you do this in 24 hours?’ Mr Keating asked.
‘You can only do it if you have no perceptive ability to understand the weight of the decisions you’re being asked to make.
‘It’s what other people call incompetence. I’ll call it maybe “trying”.’
Calling it the worst decision by a Labor government since World War I, when Prime Minister Billy Hughes supported conscription, Mr Keating said the whole deal was based on the false notion that China posed a direct threat to .
‘This is a distortion and it’s untrue,’ Mr Keating said of this idea.
‘The Chinese have never implied that they would threaten us or said it explicitly.’
The famously acid-tongued former prime minister aimed a barb at Senator Wong’s conduct of foreign policy.
‘Running around the Pacific Islands with a lei around your neck handing out money, which is what Penny does, is not foreign policy. It’s a consular task,’ Mr Keating said.