The foreign minister accused the Coalition of seeking political advantage from ships’ exercises in the Tasman with inflammatory rhetoric on China.
The foreign minister accused the Coalition of seeking political advantage from ships’ exercises in the Tasman with inflammatory rhetoric on China.
By Matthew Knott
February 27, 2025 — 11.01am
Foreign Minister Penny Wong has accused the Coalition of “beating the drums of war” for criticising the government over its handling of the Chinese navy’s live-fire exercises in the Tasman Sea.
Wong sought to turn the tables on Opposition Leader Peter Dutton – who has been trying to rebuild relations with the Chinese-Australian community before the federal election – as Defence Minister Richard Marles stressed that the government was still not certain whether the Chinese navy had engaged in live firing last week.
In her opening address to Senate estimates hearings on Thursday, Wong said Australians faced an increasingly uncertain and dangerous geopolitical climate that the Coalition was not helping.
“What Australians don’t want in the face of these circumstances is reckless political games from people who claim to be leaders. We’ve been reminded of that just this week,” Wong said.
“The same people who left a massive gap in the Pacific, the same people who had no regard for the consequences for Australian exporters or Chinese-Australian communities, are at it again, trying to turn China into an election issue.”
Beijing imposed sanctions on $20 billion worth of Australian goods and cut off diplomatic relations when bilateral relations plummeted under the Morrison government. Chinese-Australian voters subsequently swung strongly against the Liberal Party at the 2022 election.
Dutton has accused Prime Minister Anthony Albanese of exhibiting weakness in response to the exercises. At the same time, opposition defence spokesman Andrew Hastie has attacked Beijing for engaging in “gunboat diplomacy” and “psychological warfare”.
“We have been very clear China is going to keep being China, just as Mr Dutton isn’t going to stop being Mr Dutton, the man who once said it was inconceivable we wouldn’t go to war is going to keep beating the drums of war,” Wong said.
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“The Labor government will be calm and consistent; not reckless and arrogant.”
Dutton said in 2021 it would be “inconceivable” for Australia not to join the United States if it took action to defend the self-governing island of Taiwan.
The Australian Defence Force revealed on Thursday morning that the flotilla of three Chinese ships was now 296 nautical miles (548 kilometres) west of Hobart, entering the Great Australian Bight.
Accusing the opposition of engaging in “bellicose rhetoric” and “war talk”, Wong said: “Gunboat diplomacy is a return to the guns-of-war rhetoric.”
Referring to Dutton’s courting of Chinese-Australian voters in marginal seats, Wong said: “I don’t think it’s reasonable for the leader of the opposition to tell people in Menzies and Bennelong he is ‘pro-China’ … and then engage in that sort of rhetoric in Canberra.”
Wong said she had raised concerns about the lack of warning of the live-fire drills in a meeting with Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi on the sidelines of the G20 foreign ministers’ meeting in Johannesburg over the weekend.
Defence Force chief David Johnston revealed on Wednesday that the Australian military only learned about the exercises after being alerted by Airservices Australia 40 minutes after the live-fire window began.
Airservices Australia had been tipped off by a Virgin Australia pilot 10 minutes earlier.
Marles told ABC radio the government was still not sure whether the Chinese ships had actually conducted a live-fire exercise on Friday, or simply notified that it intended to do so.
Crew on the New Zealand frigate monitoring the task group reported that it observed behaviour “consistent with a live-fire activity” and monitored the Chinese ships deploying and recovering a floating target, Australian defence officials said last week.
Wong said the government had engaged with Beijing in a “mature and responsible” way without compromising Australian values.
“Stabilisation has never meant there would be no problems,” she said.
Wong said Dutton had waited four days to seek a government briefing on the live fire exercises, saying: “If this is such a big issue for you, surely you would have been pretty quick to request a briefing from the government but you weren’t.”
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Opposition home affairs spokesman James Paterson described Wong as being “very defensive” and said the government’s handling of the incident was “utterly shambolic”.
Dutton accused Albanese of being “flustered” in his comments about foreign policy and defence at press conferences, telling 2GB radio: “The Prime Minister is either making this up, shooting from the hip, or completely out of his depth – or maybe all three.”
He continued: “But what we do know is that he is at odds with the Chief of the Defence Force, and he needs to explain why, on such a totemic issue, he either wasn’t briefed, that he’s made up the facts, that he’s got it wrong. I mean, what could possibly be the logic or the rationale here?”
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Matthew Knott is the foreign affairs and national security correspondent for The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age.Connect via Twitter or Facebook.
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