The former head of Australia’s Department of Home Affairs has said it is “now too late” for the nation to be adequately prepared to defend itself from Chinese military aggression.
Mike Pezzullo said that although trade relations with China have improved under Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, Australia must prepare for a possible war and highlighted the communist country’s three main strategies to achieve power.
“We should have accelerated the pace of … our defense spending over the last decade and a half,” Pezzullo said. News from heaven features Sharri Markson on Wednesday night.
He wrote about the military threat posed by China in a 2009 Defense White Paper and said successive Australian governments have not done enough since then.
Pezzullo said Australia should have commissioned and commissioned “big platforms” like “the 12 large submarines (and) utility frigates that were announced in that white paper”.
The former head of Australia’s Department of Home Affairs has said it is “now too late” for the nation to be adequately prepared to defend itself from Chinese military aggression. In the photo, Chinese troops march in Tiananmen Square.
A Chinese warship in Sydney Harbor on June 7, 2019. Mike Pezzullo wrote about the military threat posed by China in a 2009 Defense White Paper and said successive Australian governments have not done enough since then.
“That opportunity was lost about 15 years ago and, in fact, since then,” he said.
«It is already too late to adapt these platforms to the deadlines we need. “We need to rethink the idea of having a larger fleet with perhaps more basic capabilities, like drones, to act as substitutes, because we don’t have 10 to 15 years to build that kind of force.”
Pezzullo said the lack of preparation worried him given Australia’s policy of “defence self-sufficiency”.
“We don’t want to rely on combat assistance from the United States or anyone else, (so) I’m concerned that there are some glaring gaps now,” he said.
He said there were three “dimensions” of the Chinese regime that should be the “center of our analysis” when addressing events such as military taunts and the physical blocking of journalist Cheng Lei in Parliament by Chinese officials this week, as Anthony Albanese said. . He appeared alongside Chinese Premier Li Qiang.
Pezzullo said the first dimension was China’s goal to “expel” the United States from the Indo-Pacific so it could begin issuing orders to countries in the region, including Australia.
The second was the interference China uses to affect supply chains and technology, such as changing the value of its currency to undermine trade or using sanctions, such as those imposed on Australian products such as wine.
Third, Pezzullo addressed what he called “political and cultural relativism” and said Australia should talk about the value of Western civilization, the rule of law and the prevention of arbitrary detention.
“I think we should defend the universality of those principles and not accept that relativism,” he said.
Pezzullo was fired as Secretary of the Department of the Interior last October after an investigation found he had violated the public service code of conduct.
But that has not stopped Pezzullo from attacking the Labor government.
Last September he was removed from his $900,000 role over a series of explosive texts alleging he sought to influence government affairs.
Albanese confirmed that the top bureaucrat had been fired on November 27.
Mike Pezzullo (pictured) said that although trade relations with China have improved under Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, Australia must prepare for a possible war and highlighted the communist country’s three main strategies to achieve power.
Seven months after his dismissal, Pezzullo said Australia will “fall into a trap” if it does not build coalitions and “join together” with other like-minded nations, rather than relying so heavily on China for trade.
He said that while the trade improvements achieved by the Labor government were “not negligible”, he found it strange that Australia welcomed the lifting of sanctions that had been weaponized in the first place.
“We shouldn’t accept that that’s normal behavior where turning those trade ties into political weapons and then putting up those barriers is something we should applaud and congratulate,” he said.
‘The Chinese approach is to divide and conquer. What they want is a bilateral relationship with everyone except the Americans.”
Pezzullo said his views “do not refer to the Chinese people, but to the regime (which) is a Leninist communist regime that believes in the absolute authority of the party… to control all organs, not only of the state, but also of economics, culture and, indeed, politics.
He said if the Australian government didn’t take into account exactly what the communist state’s way of operating is, “we will always be wrong and surprised by what it does.”
Markson asked him if China was trying to buy Australia’s silence on its military aggression and human rights issues by lifting trade sanctions, to which he replied “yes”.
‘Achieving those bilateral victories is important. The question is, what do you do after that? Mr. Pezzullo said.
This photo taken on January 4, 2021 shows Chinese People’s Liberation Army soldiers gathered during military training in the Pamir Mountains in Kashgar.
He said having “normalized” the relationship with China through Premier Li Qiang’s visit, it would be a “political failure” to diminish the importance of the Quad’s diplomatic partnership between Australia, India, Japan and the United States.
“If we trade those multilateral or regional groupings and bands to get these bilateral benefits, which aren’t really benefits because they shouldn’t have been punishments anyway, that’s where I think we’re at risk.” of policy failure,” he stated.
‘In other words, yes, but bilateral engagement is fine. Having the visit here is good. Despite the atrocity committed in our parliament regarding Cheng Lai. Having that commercial commitment is good.
“What worries me is what you do next.”