Kevin Andrews on China, Entitlement, and the Future: His Most Impactful Opinions in The Epoch Times

Kevin Andrews speaks for amendments to the marriage equality bill at Parliament House in Canberra, Australia on Dec. 7, 2017. Michael Masters/Getty Images

Kevin Andrews, who died last weekend after a year-long battle with cancer, had a long Parliamentary career.

From 1991 until 2022, he was the Liberal member for the blue ribbon seat of Menzies. During that time, he held ministerial positions in both the Howard and Abbott governments, including responsibility for defence, workplace relations, ageing, and immigration.

He was a senior figure in the party’s right faction, and a devout Catholic who championed conservative causes.

While still a backbencher, he first gained public notice when he introduced the Andrews bill in 1996. This restricted the power of the Australian Capital Territory (ACT) and Northern Territory to legislate for euthanasia.

The law passed and remained in place for 25 years before being repealed in 2023.

He also championed the contentious WorkChoices legislation and citizenship test, and opposed abortion, same-sex marriage, and stem cell research.

But even those who opposed his stance on such issues were forced to admit they came from deeply held beliefs and consistent principles.

Such was the respect in which he was held, which transcended party lines, that Prime Minister Anthony Albanese offered his family a state funeral.

He retired from politics after losing the preselection for Menzies—the first time a sitting federal Liberal MP was unseated in a Victorian preselection battle in more than three decades. At the time he was the longest-serving member of parliament.

Before entering Parliament, Andrews was a barrister, solicitor, sports reporter, and race caller. He also wrote several books on topics such as marriage, Italian cycling, and a biography of Australia’s 10th prime minister, Joseph Lyons.

Prolific Opinion Writer

So it’s perhaps no surprise that in retirement he once again took up the pen, writing a series of opinion pieces for The Epoch Times, setting forth his beliefs on a range of issues and occasionally warning of where he thought Australia was going wrong.

From his very first piece in January 2023, much of his focus was on Beijing.

“Failing to fully cooperate with an independent, international investigation into the origins and spread of the [COVID] virus cemented the belief that the CCP could not be trusted on the matter,” he wrote.

“Scientists, doctors and other health experts are consulted, but it is Xi Jinping who decides the policy, based on an ‘ideological understanding’ of an ‘ideological problem.’”

In July that year he warned then-New Zealand Prime Minister Chris Hipkins on the dangers of kowtowing to Beijing, characterising the country’s foreign policy as “supine” because of its “significant trade dependency.”

“The luxury of being ‘out-of-sight, out-of-mind’ at the end of the world is not something Kiwis can continue to rely upon,” he warned.

“While many countries are seeking to ‘de-risk’ their dependence on China, having recognised the very real dangers of overly relying on the ‘people’s democratic dictatorship,’ New Zealand is entwined increasingly in the tentacles of the CCP.”

He returned to this theme for his last article for this publication, published in June this year, in which he characterised Labor Defence Minister Richard Marles’ response to a CCP aircraft firing flares at an Australian military helicopter as “too little, too late.”

“Australia looks weak when our security is as challenging as it has been for decades,” he said.

The Albanese government makes regular announcements about defence, “but allows real expenditure to plateau; even decline.”

But while the CCP—and what Australia must do to counter it—was a regular theme of his writing, Andrews also canvassed a range of other topics.

Beware Entitlement, He Warned

In July this year he warned senior politicians against what he saw as a growing sense of entitlement, writing “ministers taking government planes to sporting and entertainment events are well-known. They have not been confined to the current government. The impression, however, is that ministers regard the RAAF as an almost-taxi service, which has been growing in the past months.”

The attraction of a private plane, “complete with attendants and plentiful food and drinks [and] no need to bother with the ordinary travelling public” was obvious, he said, but “these experiences are seductive, reinforcing a sense of entitlement.”

On Gaza

On the conflict in Gaza, he felt that Foreign Minister Penny Wong’s statement that a “secure and prosperous future” for Israelis and Palestinians could only come with a two-state solution was a “crass domestic political statement“ driven by ”the influence of the Left in the Australian Labor Party and Muslim groups’ campaigns against Labor MPs, especially in Western Sydney.”

“Palestinians,” he said, “have repeatedly rejected a solution to the ongoing conflict over many years.”

Australia’s Overreliance on China Could be Costly

Andrews focused most of his commentary on the here-and-now, declining—despite his years in politics—to make sweeping predictions of the future.

But in May this year, as the Budget was released, he reminded readers the document was “as much a political document as an economic blueprint, and should be read in that light.”

And the political objective of Treasurer Jim Chalmers’ document was obvious, he said, “to give the struggling government the opportunity to go to an early election.”

With some prescience, given the Dec. 16 revelation that China’s contracting demand is forcing a harsh redrawing of revenue expectations, he wrote: “The budget shows the continued heavy reliance on mineral and resource exports for revenue. With the Chinese economy slowing and the Beijing regime pursuing greater self-reliance, the quantum of these revenues cannot be guaranteed in the future.”

And so it has proven to be, far faster than Chalmers would have liked.

“At some stage,” Andrews warned, “Australia will have to engage in serious economic reform.”

Whether that comes to pass, or even whether his prediction of an early election proves true, remains to be seen.

But with Andrews no longer contributing his perspective to the debate, one thing is certain: we are all a little less wiser.