According to the country’s domestic spy agency, a group of Beijing-backed agents had convinced a serving Australian politician to betray his country and attempted to influence the child of a prime minister.
In her speech at the ASEAN meeting in Melbourne, Ms. Wong warned that coercion and threats of the use of force were risking the region’s stability, without specifically naming Beijing.
She also pledged $64 million($41.8 million) to support maritime security in the region.
Mr. Keating, however, was scathing of her assessment.
“It doesn’t take much to encourage Penny Wong, sporting her ‘deeply concerned’ frown, to rattle the China can—a can she gave a good shake to yesterday,” he said. “Before she did the rattling, the resident conjurer, Mike Burgess, who runs ASIO, gave us a week’s worth of spy mysteries.”
The former prime minister likened the whole spying episode to “a kabuki show” and implied the timing of the revelations was a result of the “Australian strategic policy establishment ... feeling some slippage in its mindless pro-American stance.”
‘Dropping a Huge Rock into Wong’s Pond: Keating
Besides Ms. Wong, he also took aim at Mr. Burgess, Andrew Shearer (director general of the Office of National Intelligence), and Mike Pezzullo (former Secretary of the Department of Home Affairs), saying the incoming Albanese Labor government should have sacked all three men.“In the event, Pezzullo shot himself,” the former prime minister said, “But, unbelievably, Burgess and Shearer still remain at the centre of a Labor government’s security apparatus.
“This says more about the government than it says about them. These people display utter contempt for the so-called stabilisation process that the prime minister had decided upon and ... will do anything to destabilise any meaningful rapprochement.
“Burgess runs the primary goon show while Shearer does all in his power to encourage Australia into becoming the 51st state of the United States.”
He claimed that Mr. Albanese was at odds with Southeast Asian leaders over his approach to the United States and enthusiasm for pacts such as Five Eyes and AUKUS.
Mr. Keating noted comments from Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim who urged Western nations not to pit southeast Asian countries against Beijing, which the former prime minister said had “dropped a huge rock into Wong’s pond.”
Keating’s Ongoing Criticism of Labor Government
Mr. Keating has long taken issue with the current Labor government’s Beijing policy—a continuation of nearly 10 years of Australian policy towards the Chinese Communist Party.For instance, he said in 2023 that the government’s decision to adopt the AUKUS pact had broken Labor’s long “winning streak” on foreign policy over the past century.
“Falling into a major mistake, Anthony Albanese, befuddled by his own small-target election strategy, emerges as prime minister with an American sword to rattle at the neighbourhood,” Mr. Keating said at the time.
Asked how Labor came to support AUKUS, he said: “The answer lies in Anthony Albanese’s reliance on two seriously unwise ministers: Penny Wong and Richard Marles.”
“Penny Wong took a decision in 2016, five years before AUKUS, not to be at odds with the Coalition on foreign policy on any core issue. You cannot get into controversy as the foreign spokesperson for the Labor Party if you adopt the foreign policy of the Liberal Party.”
