In an episode of The Simpsons, Homer, left alone to supervise the kids, is given a simple piece of advice: “Always do the opposite of what Bart says”. There are some people in life who are just like that. Their talent for being wrong and/or venal is so pronounced that, whatever they say, it’s pretty safe to assume the opposite is true.
The same goes for regimes. Rule of thumb: if China hates it, it’s probably a good thing.
And if Paul Keating chimes along with China, it’s absolutely a good thing.
Paul Keating has lashed Anthony Albanese’s AUKUS deal with the US and UK as “the worst international decision” by an Australian Labor government in more than 100 years, accusing the Prime Minister of tying the nation’s security in Asia to the US and the “gormless Brits”.
It’s kind of sad, to see an ex-PM in his dotage, parroting the red-ragging slogans of the student rags of his youth. Somewhat ironically, it was Keating himself who coined the phrase “Relevance Deprivation Syndrome” — now, he’s the picture in the dictionary entry for it.
Which makes the following spluttering indignation unintentionally funnier.
“Signing the country up to the foreign proclivities of another country – the United States, with the gormless Brits, in their desperate search for relevance, lunging along behind is not a pretty sight,” Mr Keating said.
“Desperate search for relevance”? You’re spitting your morning gruel into the mirror, grandpa.
Another well-worn phrase is, when you’re in a hole, stop digging. But Keating didn’t come up with that one, so he’s not interested in it.
Defying the weight of political and strategic analysis, Mr Keating declared: “China does not present and cannot present as an orthodox threat to the United States.”
“And the United States possesses the greatest arsenal in all human history. There is no way the Chinese have ever intended to attack the United States and it is not capable of doing so even had it contemplated it. So, why does the United States and its Congress insist that China is a ‘threat’?”
Because, you gormless dolt, there are threats and threats. Nazi Germany never intended to attack Australia or the United States, either. Does that mean they weren’t threats?
But Keating isn’t finished with the spade, yet.
“China is a world trading state – it is not about upending the international system. It is not the old Soviet Union. It is not seeking to propagate some competing international ideology,” he said.
The Australian
Ah, so those punishing trade sanctions against Australia for daring to question the origin of Covid, let alone Covid itself, not to mention the BRI, the false territorial claims to the South China Sea… Keating hasn’t deigned to notice any of that, from the lofty perch of his taxpayer-funded retirement?
To round it all off, comes this clanger, trying to defend the Uighur genocide in Xinjiang.
When asked to comment on China’s treatment of Uighur Muslims, Mr Keating compared it to Australia’s treatment of Indigenous Australians.
“I’m not going to defend China about the Uighurs,” he said. “There’s disputes about what the nature of the Chinese affront to the Uighurs are. There’s dispute about that. But one thing that we can’t be sure.”
This comes despite comprehensive evidence of wide-scale oppression, described in the past by US officials as “genocide”.
“What if the Chinese said – what about deaths in custody of Aboriginal people in your prison system? Wouldn’t that be a valid point for them?” he added.
The Australian
Yes, he really went there. Does someone really have to explain to him the difference between a criminal dropping off from a heart attack or drug overdose, and someone whose only crime is being from a religious minority being beaten to death, raped, or killed so their organs can be harvested? Does Keating really not understand the difference between prisons and vast gulag networks of concentration camps?
The most likely answer is: of course he does. But, sitting as he also does on the advisory board of the CCP-owned China Development Bank, Keating is a senescent monkey, dancing for a handful of yuan in his little tin cup.