Paul Keating has delivered another brutal critique of Foreign Secretary Penny Wong, while also calling for the ASIO boss to be sacked for exposing an alleged but unnamed MP as a Chinese spy.
The former Labor prime minister, who served on the board of the Communist Party-led China Development Bank from 2005 to 2018, said Senator Wong had been co-opted into a “foolish pro-American stance”.
In a speech to coincide with the ASEAN summit in Melbourne, Senator Wong said the Southeast Asian region is facing “destabilizing, provocative and coercive actions”, in a thinly veiled swipe at China and its perceived expansionism.
Mr Keating said Senator Wong’s “concerns” had been bluntly dismissed by Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim, who refused to address Australia’s anti-China stance.
Former Labor Prime Minister Paul Keating has once again hit out at the Albanian government over their policy towards China
“It doesn’t take much to encourage Penny Wong, with her ‘deeply concerned’ frown, to rattle the Chinese can – a can she shook quite a bit yesterday,” Keating said.
“Anwar Ibrahim, the Prime Minister of Malaysia, dropped a huge stone into Wong’s pond by telling Australia not to piggyback Australia’s problems with China on ASEAN.
“Anwar makes it clear that Malaysia, in turn, is not buying the United States’ hegemony in East Asia, lobbying states to shield China along the way.”
Mr Keating argued ‘that Australia’s and Australia’s policies run counter to the general thrust of ASEAN’s perceived strategic interests’.
“That is, interests relating to China and the United States and the relations between them,” he said.
The iconic Labor figure also slammed 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, later identified as China.
Mr. Keating was unimpressed by this revelation. He compared it to Japan’s heavily stylized traditional kabuki theater and said it was a coordinated effort to smear China.
“The kabuki show goes like this: (Mike) Burgess drops the claim, and then out of nowhere the Herald and The Age miraculously appear to solve the mystery – the bad guy, it turns out, is China, after all,” said Mr Keating.
Mr Keating has delivered another brutal assessment of Foreign Minister Penny Wong, accusing her of following the orders of pro-US bureaucrats
‘When the Albanian government was elected, the first decision it should have made was to dismiss Burgess, (director general of the Office of National Intelligence) Andrew Shearer and (former Home Secretary) Mike Pezzullo… unbelievably, Burgess and Shearer are still there at the center of the security apparatus of a Labor government,” he said.
‘This says more about the government than about them.
“These people show total disregard for the so-called stabilization process decided by the Prime Minister and achieved with China, and will do anything to destabilize any meaningful rapprochement.
“Burgess leads the primary goon show, while Shearer does everything he can to encourage Australia to become the 51st state of the United States.”
Asked about Mr Keating’s comments, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese had to deny that Australia was sending mixed messages about China with a curt ‘no’.
Last year, Keating launched a scathing series of attacks on the Albanian government over its signing of 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 had sold out to China was part of an orchestrated campaign that went against Albanian government policy.
Keating accused the Albanian 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 powers of perception to understand the weight of the decisions that are asked of you.
‘It’s what other people call incompetence. I might call it ‘trying.’
He called it the worst decision by a Labor government since the First World War, when Prime Minister Billy Hughes supported conscription, and said the entire deal was based on the false idea that China posed a direct threat to Australia.
“This is a distortion and it’s not true,” Mr. Keating said of the idea.
“The Chinese have never suggested they would threaten us, nor have they explicitly said so.”
The famously sharp-tongued former prime minister focused his criticism on Senator Wong’s foreign policy.
“Running around the Pacific Islands with a lei around your neck handing out money, which is what Penny is doing, is not foreign policy. It is a consular job,” Keating said.