VICTORIA Labor Premier Daniel Andrews, who this year inflicted more damage on Australia than arguably any politician in history, has capped off 2020 by cancelling Australia Day. Mr Andrews announced on Saturday that 2021 Australia Day celebrations in Melbourne were to be cancelled due to COVID-19 concerns.
CHINA views Australia as a threat to its planned domination of the South Pacific and will continue its aggression for years to come, an expert has warned. Former deputy secretary of strategy for the Defence Department Peter Jennings said the Chinese government feared that Australia held too much influence over the world’s major democracies.
FOUR in five Australians now have an unfavourable view of China – an historic 24 per cent leap since the Coronavirus outbreak. The survey, which focussed on advanced economies, was carried out by Pew Research Centre and suggested every nation surveyed had turned heavily against China.
CHINA has called Australia’s new regional security alliance an “exclusive clique” as foreign ministers from the four member States met this week for a second time. Australian Foreign Minister Marise Payne met with her US, Japanese and Indian counterparts in Tokyo on Tuesday again raising the ire of Chinese officials.
AUSTRALIANS would never sell out to China and would stand by their national principles despite calls for appeasement from Labor MPs and profit-driven executives.Australia’s ambassador to Washington Arthur Sinodinos told a US audience this week that Aussies would never “compromise national interest to safeguard economic interests”.
UNIVERSITY leaders should be hiding their faces in shame having diverted stretched national intelligence resources to deal with subversive threats on campus. The chairman of Australia’s Federal Intelligence & Security Committee Andrew Hastie said ASIO’s job was to deal with the most pressing threats to the nation – not securitising universities.
THE head of Australia’s powerful Intelligence & Security Joint Committee has called for the reinstatement of National Service as Australia’s strategic position continues to deteriorate. With rising concerns around a “strategic miscalculation” within the region, Committee chairman Andrew Hastie warned the risk of conflict was also increasing.
AUSTRALIA has been warned to further ramp up defence planning as China utilises aggression to mask its economic decline. Faced with halved economic growth, a collapsing workforce, uncontained debt and political restlessness, experts have warned the Chinese Communist Party is in a world of pain and “unpredictable”.
PRIME Minister Scott Morrison has outmanoeuvred China’s trade threats by securing alternate markets for discretionary items – strengthening Australia’s hand dealing with Beijing’s “structural” trade needs. In a move described as “smart”, the Prime Minister has made Australia a harder target for Beijing according to defence and security expert Michael Shoebridge.
SHADOW Foreign Affairs Minister Penny Wong has again questioned Prime Minister Scott Morrison’s leadership as a major factor in Australia’s deteriorating China relationship.
In an ABC TV interview this week the Labor senator said Australia needed “better leadership, true leadership” in order to restore a productive relationship with China.
