Albanese’s refusal to address questions about the explosives-laden caravan, due to ‘ongoing investigations’, added to confusion, anxiety and speculation. A stonewalled public is not a secure one. Similarly, his reluctance to clarify whether he discussed China’s sonar pulse attack on Australian navy personnel in a meeting with Xi Jinping just days after the incident in November 2023, citing the confidentiality of diplomatic talks, simply resulted in doubt and more questions.
...
when asked about the United States and European countries reviewing the security risk of Chinese-made smart cars, Energy Minister Chris Bowen said no such review would happen here as the priority was consumer choice. On that basis, we’d welcome Russian gas or perhaps Iranian nuclear know-how, not to mention that prioritising price now will mean consumers in the future will have few choices but Chinese-made smart cars.

The pattern of evading, ignoring or downplaying security threats is itself a security threat. It erodes public trust—and cynicism can quickly turn to conspiracy. It creates an information vacuum to be filled by conspiracy theories and speculation, leading not just to an uninformed but a misinformed public. And it has the potential to weaken Australia’s strategic position by reducing the confidence of our allies and increasing that of our rivals.

We’ve seen it before. The flood of illegal boats from 2008 and refusal to acknowledge pull factors created not only a backlash against illegal immigration but reduced confidence in legal immigration and emboldened criminal organisations.
Australian Strategic Policy Institute

Quote:


About 124 years of history show that you are wrong. This is just another lie. A very ordinary one at that.

In three decades of working closely with governments on defence strategy, I have never seen a prime minister less competent than Anthony Albanese at leading on national security.

Our national security system can carry a less-than-able minister in defence, foreign affairs or home affairs – goodness knows, the bureaucrats have had enough practice helping dud ministers look better than they really are.

It’s impossible, though, to compensate for the weakness of a below-average prime minister. The prime minister drives the show, sets the pace, determines priorities, demands action when officials advise doing nothing. In a political system such as ours, it’s only the prime minister (or on occasion a forceful and persuasive minister) who can stop policy failure and set a new course of action.

Albanese does not pass this test. On the Chinese ships, he was clearly not across the brief, did not understand Defence’s failure to properly monitor the live-fire drills, did not shape a muscular response to stand up to Beijing’s bullying and cannot explain the situation to the Australian public.

The Prime Minister’s account of the incident has been disproven in Senate committee evidence by the Chief of the Defence Force and by Airservices Australia officials.

Other than talking to his New Zealand counterpart, Albanese has not engaged personally with Chinese leader Xi Jinping or US President Donald Trump, Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba, Indonesian President Prabowo Subianto or indeed any leader who might help mount a co-ordinated response to Chinese maritime bullying.

Peter Jennings is director of Strategic Analysis Australia and was executive director of the Australian Strategic Policy Institute from 2012 to 2022. He is a former deputy secretary for strategy in the Defence Department (2009-2012).

Brian Ross wrote on Mar 1^st, 2025 at 11:50am:

China’s threatening weapons tests in the Tasman last week are a consequence of successive Australian governments failing to anticipate strategic risk, and plan sensible responses. The reality of decades of not properly funding Defence is becoming clear.

When our navy and air force are incapable of mounting a coherent operation to monitor, respond and pressure three Chinese ships firing weapons between the east coast of Australia and New Zealand, we should all understand this is an unacceptable political and military failure.


...

Something must change, and quickly. What is supposedly a bipartisan approach to defence is not working. Spending is too low; equipment programs are badly designed and will not deliver for years. As a result, good people are leaving the ADF in unsustainably large numbers.

There is no plan informing where and how we may need to use our forces, and a bureaucratic and political failure to think through how to deal with the biggest threat, China, and our most important partner, the US.




Ongoing Bbwianesque retarded faggotry is not on.

Frank wrote on Mar 1^st, 2025 at 12:05pm:




Last week the Chinese Communist Party chose to underline our weakness and isolation. Beijing’s gunboat diplomacy in a live-fire exercise off our east coast sent a powerful message: you are alone and naked at the bottom of the world.

Even if we had the planes, ships and missiles we need to defend our vast coastal waters, we do not have the fuel reserves to fight for more than a fortnight.

We produce a negligible amount of oil and have little capacity to refine it.  The debate about fuel security has been running since 2008, and yet the problem only got worse. We are an island and our fuel supplies are only secure as long as we can defend the trade routes. We can’t.

The live-fire exercise and the assaults on our planes in international airspace by the People’s Liberation Army reduces to farce the Albanese government’s boast that it has stabilised the relationship with China.  The only thing it has won is the right to be treated with contempt, as we shoot the blanks of “official protest”. How Beijing must quail at the arrival of the post withwith a bagful of letters stamped with an angry emu and kangaroo.


Australia is in no imminent threat of invasion but it could easily be cut off from its markets if China decides to take Taiwan by force.
  Virtual shots are fired in the daily cyber attacks on our business and government. Virtual bombs are already planted on our critical infrastructure. Coercion comes in threats to members of our ethnic communities and warnings issued to politicians who meet with officials from Taiwan, or dissidents from Hong Kong.

And both major parties now fear that any criticism of the Chinese Communist Party will see parts of our large Chinese-born population turn on them in elections. Beijing knows this and is leveraging it.

The next war will look different from all others. It will be fought in the virtual and real world. In your social media feed and in whispered conspiracies. Nowhere and no one will be safe. In some ways it has already begun. But we still have time to make choices. Do we stand and fight, or silently surrender?
Chris Uhlman

heh-heh

Loves Taylor Swift.
Attends Mardi Gras.
Criminalises free speech.
Supports unrestrained Third World immigration.
Nauseatingly obsequious to ethnic groups.
Prefers Hamas to Israel.
And now wants to send Aussie kids to Ukraine.
Who does @AlboMP  work for?


https://x.com/FredPawle/status/1896843127765586114


Albanian, What a buffoon.