My Take | Australian security lies in defence of country, not challenging China

Warmongers from the Rupert Murdoch press and defence-funded “think” tanks such as the Australian Strategic Policy Institute were predictably up in arms.

Chinese naval drills, conducted in the Tasman Sea between Australia and New Zealand last month, were denounced as “unprecedented”, and an unwarranted act of “intimidation” and “provocation”.

The consensus is that it’s a wake-up call for Australia to reinforce its defences, from developing more advanced drones to better radars and other forward detection systems.

It’s probably right that Canberra needs to boost domestic defences. Apparently, those in charge of defending their country were asleep at the wheel, as, according to some reports, it was commercial pilots who alerted the authorities of the Chinese naval presence.

However, Australia did admit the Chinese alerted them a couple of hours ahead of time. Perhaps Canberra should be angrier with its military than Beijing.

You do wonder, though, whether China wasn’t responding, tit-for-tat, to a joint naval exercise conducted between Japan, Australia and New Zealand back in September, in the Taiwan Strait and South China Sea, not to mention countless other so-called freedom of navigation exercises by navies of the Western alliance!

When the allied navies keep sailing up and down someone’s coastlines, that too may be perceived as “intimidation” and “provocation”.