On 15 September 2021, Australia’s Anthony Albanese Labor Government agreed with America’s Biden and UK’s Sunak to form together against China in the Southern Hemisphere a Pacific Ocean mutual-‘defense’ Treaty like America’s 1949 original one for the Northern Hemisphere and the Atlantic Ocean (NATO), to be called AUKUS, for U.S., UK, and Australia, thus jointly committing themselves to wage a war against China, which is Australia’s main trading-partner. For Australians, it’s insanity.
Ever since 2022, Australia’s Lowy Institute polling organization has polled Australians about this, and has been finding that, pretty consistently, half of Australians think that AUKUS “will make Australia/our region more safe”; only 8% say “less safe”.
On 14 June 2023, Australia’s Financial Review headlined “Labor’s internal dissent over AUKUS is building”, and reported that behind the scenes, “criticism of AUKUS that has been levelled by Labor elders Paul Keating and Gareth Evans, as well as” others, was growing in the Labor Party.
Finally, on 8 August 2024, Britain’s Guardian bannered “Aukus pact will turn Australia into ‘51st state’ of the US, Paul Keating says: Former prime minister argues Australia has made itself a target by aligning with American ‘aggression’ towards China”. It reported that on that night, Australia’s former Prime Minister, Keating, was interviewed at length about AUKUS, and,
Australia had no quarrel with China, Keating said, and concerns about China’s designs on Taiwan were not justified because the island was “Chinese real estate”.
“Taiwan is not a vital Australian interest,” he said, adding that the American attitude to Taiwan was like China deciding that Tasmania needed help to secede from Australia.
“What Aukus is about in the American mind is turning Australia into suckers, locking us up for 40 years with American bases all around … not Australian bases,” he said.
“So Aukus is really about, in American terms, the military control of Australia. I mean, what’s happened … is likely to turn Australia into the 51st state of the United States.”
Keating told the show’s presenter, Sarah Ferguson: “We’re now defending the fact that we’re in Aukus.
“If we weren’t in Aukus, we wouldn’t need to defend it. If we didn’t have an aggressive ally like the United States – aggressive to others in the region – there’d be nobody attacking Australia. We are better left alone than we are being ‘protected’ by an aggressive power like the United States. …
Keating, a longstanding opponent of Labor’s support for the pact, said Australia had not been threatened by China, whose expanding military presence, he said, was in line with its position as the world’s second superpower.
“What do they expect [the Chinese] to do?” he said. “To move around in row boats? Canoes, maybe?
Hellbound and Down 