#136 US, UK, Australia Team Up to Tackle China
on this episode of china unscripted the us uk and australia have formed a defense pack to counter china as china grows more and more aggressive over taiwan but is it too late to stop the chinese communist party welcome to china unscripted i'm chris chappell i'm shelley jung and i'm matt ganesha joining us today from australia is lincoln parker he's the chair of the liberal party's defense and national security policy branch well lincoln thank you for joining us today my pleasure absolute honor to be on the show with you guys i love what you do you're at the vanguard of tackling the probably the biggest issue that's facing not just the united states but certainly australia as we're in the thick of it so thank you for what you do it's my pleasure well thank you tell tell me more okay okay so so to get serious um you know i think australia and new zealand really have been uh sort of the chinese communist party's testing ground for uh influence tactics that they use against the west uh but it seems like china pushed too far in australia and there's been a big push back from the australian government society and the most recent example is uh august an alliance between the us uk and australia but it's uh is is august something that australia would have done even three years ago absolutely not chris you you're so right china has been trying to hollow out our i guess our will our willpower from within i mean they're very different from what the soviet union was trying to do to the west and that was frontal attacks whereas with the west and and particularly in australia we've been a test bed and you mentioned new zealand as well and and perhaps let's not use australia and new zealand in the same breath um because we are different countries and we are certainly looking at our china relations very differently and so china has been um trying to subvert our democracy for quite a long time and you mentioned the australian government it's certainly been the liberal government has been undertaking a very concerted pushback ever since the time of malcolm turnbull the the liberal party in australia being the conservative party yes that's right so we're down under so things flip right so liberals spin in the opposite direction that one too exactly so the liberal party of australia is our right of or center right party conservative party a little bit akin to your republican party we are a big tent so of course we have different views but certainly under the morrison government scott morrison is the current prime minister of australia we've been very front forwarded in tackling the chinese issues of of coercion subversion um i mean you've seen what they're doing in terms of trade they've put massive tariffs on all sorts of our products from wine barley um wheat through to even coal but now as you have seen they're running out of energy supply they can't even heat their homes and now they're having to return to buying australian coal just wait till they run out of wine well it seems they could use the australian lobsters as a fuel source you also so when they did that we it was actually great for australia right because we suddenly had 20 lobsters to buy that was fantastic yeah all right we're making a trip to australia oh i don't think we want to do that right now that is impossible right now actually uh so to get back to august like so why why now like what changed that this is something australia would want to do yeah so australia has always been reticent to go down the nuclear power path it's always been reticent to go down the nuclear weapons path and that's not what orcas includes just to be very clear it's nothing to do with nuclear weapons however it's it's inescapable and you've been living under a rock if you haven't noticed that china is the world's most aggressive bully to smaller countries in particular i mean they're even bullying the united states i don't know why and why the united states is not pushing back a little bit firmer however certainly in australia we're a population of 25 million which is a little bit over half of the population of california yet we inhabit a very large continent island so we are and particularly if we are cut off by the chinese navy and you've had cleo pascal on before i know you see what the chinese are doing in the pacific islands that could certainly cut us off from any american aid so i think australia has looked at the imminent threat that china poses us and said look it is time for us now to have a capability that can certainly uh help us defend ourselves a lot better than what conventional submarines can do and so we all understand that nuclear propulsion provides a much better stronger capability for submarine underwater forces than does a you know diesel electric submarine which has to surface all the time it doesn't have the same kind of range um it's it's not it's just not as capable and so i think that's you know some people have said that's crossing the rubicon and i'm really glad that this government has done that because at the end of the day the government's first role is to look after the safety and security and sovereignty of its citizens and we can see what china is doing we've seen what they've done to hong kong we see the constant threats that they're pushing on to taiwan we see what they're doing around the world we see what they're doing in the pacific islands and we see what they do to us every day through this cyber attacks through you know they've tried to bribe politicians in the past labor politicians you would have remembered sam dastiari senator sam dastiari who had to resign because of that they gave us a list of 14 demands this is all while they claim to not want to interfere in the domestic politics of other countries right so it's pretty clear what they're trying to do to us and we didn't want to lay down and take that like some other countries do so what's what's been the chinese communist party's response to august i mean as you mentioned earlier china has not been happy with australia sort of standing up uh the economic sanctions the import tariffs have been put on because the australian government asked for an investigation into the origin of the corona virus so how have they responded to arcus well they haven't responded um as belligerently as we'd expect actually so of course of course they've come out through their mouthpiece the global times and china daily and and other publications and they've said that you know we're warmongers um and that we're the you know the whipping boy of the united states um just all of the usual kinds of stuff but they've been saying this rubbish for so long and we see it in australia so often that it just doesn't make any difference to us anymore and so yeah we don't really listen to it um we take their threats very seriously and that's exactly why we've gone into walkers and so if anything they should be looking at themselves within to say why would australia a country that has in the past always looked to never go down the nuclear route and suddenly they are and so they are the entire reason whilst the government may not state that as bluntly as i have and i don't speak on behalf of the government but it's clear that is the exact reason why we are doing that to protect ourselves from them it's almost as if when you stand up to a bully they back down well i'm not sure they'll back down chris um i mean you know and we can get into the conversation in taiwan um at a later stage but you know things aren't looking good in taiwan right now you know i mean we're just seeing the chinese continue to increase their their flights into taiwan's air identification zone um we're continuing to see the rhetoric being ramped up on them wanting to reunify with taiwan although we know that that's you know they've never been one nation um so we're seeing the propaganda and the the threats really ramping up on taiwan and taiwan is a very significant and strategic um democracy in in asia that we need to protect and defend for all of the reasons that i just mentioned i mean they are free peoples they are a democracy they are about the same size as australia of fact they're about 25 million people we do a lot of trade with them as well we should stand as our former prime minister tony abbott said yesterday in taipei we should stand shoulder to shoulder with like-minded freedom-loving democracies but from a military perspective that's the first island chain so if china is able to take taiwan they've suddenly been they have complete access out and can break outside of the first island chain into the western pacific which you know obviously guam is going your territory is going to be one of the first targets but it also directly threatens australia it threatens all of our trade routes and we understand through their aggressive stance that it's not going to stop with taiwan and if they take taiwan it also tells the rest of the region that hey what's happened to the united states they couldn't defend taiwan don't they have a treaty with them now look i understand that the treaty doesn't oblige the united states government to necessarily go in and put boots on the ground however perception is reality we know that taiwan is an ally of the west it's an ally of the united states it's an ally of all of the democracies and so if china takes taiwan it's a big deal the rest of the asian region will fall and we understand that it may not fall immediately but but what's you know what's going to happen with malaysia what's going to happen with the philippines what's going to happen with with thailand we know that they're not strong enough at all and vietnam they're not strong enough to resist this massive bully and so that is a big deal and that that threatens our sovereignty um immensely and so from a humanitarian standpoint a freedom standpoint a democracy standpoint and a military and a sovereignty standpoint australia must stand with taiwan is that what australia is signaling by um tony abbott the former prime minister going to taiwan uh officially no so tony abbott is a former prime minister he is not employed by the government he is he has traveled there as a private citizen he is not the prime minister's envoy as he's done in the past um having said that i think it is uh it does send a strong signal um if you've been looking at the media over the last day and certainly the social media over the last day on twitter it has been full of quotes from former prime minister tony abbott his support for the free peoples of taiwan and you know maybe maybe it is time that the discussion is head is held at some point that that maybe taiwan should become independent um you know we we know that under this chinese regime we've seen a constant trajectory over the last 70 years um it's it's just been going on an upward trajectory of militarization and aggressiveness and so one could make the argument that sooner or later probably sooner than later china is going to attack taiwan so why not um but but shelley to answer your question officially the answer would be no the australian government has not changed its policy um i would think that tony abbott does probably speak on behalf of a lot of australians in a private capacity i'd certainly be one of those australians i would i absolutely support what he has done and what he has said and i think certainly if you you read the media accounts many australians also support his actions over the last couple of days so this is kind of like a page from the chinese communist playbook which is like oh you know this you know this company is a totally private company with no connection to the government and now australia is basically taking a a totally private citizen i mean i'm not saying that he's connected to the government but there's obviously that perception right i think the us did that recently too actually when yeah who was it that that went over there completely on his own it was pompeo did after he didn't he didn't he okay okay pompeo if he didn't go he was going to go but like there there are cases where they send people who are not in the government anymore when you say they send people who's doing the sending you're saying that the private citizens the private citizens go completely on their own that's right okay well as lincoln said perception is reality yeah so how so you say the um average australian citizen uh supports taiwan do you think that's the case do they know why taiwan is so important i don't think the average citizen probably knows why taiwan is important militarily and i think that's certainly a job that the government needs to to do better and and as chair of the liberal party's defense and national security policy branch that's something that i try to do both internally within the party because there's also a lot of party members who have no idea of why taiwan is strategically and militarily crucial to the safety of australia but but what we do certainly since covert times um a lot of it well all of our meetings are now just like this so they're they're done by a video conference um and we've opened up our video conferences to not just party members but to others and so yeah i i think that australian public supports taiwan more because they see taiwan as a fellow democratic freedom-loving society that doesn't want to get crushed under the boot of the chinese communists um australian public um you know our media has been quite good at showing what the chinese communists have been doing to the uyghurs and to hong kong so this whole one country two systems thing well how did that work out for hong kong it didn't chinese communists lied they had a deal in place with the british they broke the deal they did whatever they wanted and they crushed whatever democracy democracy and freedom that was left in hong kong so australians have seen that on the meat on our media and they've seen the the concentration camps where they're they're shaving the heads of these these poor uyghurs simply because they're muslim and they're they're not ethnically harmed chinese and they're sticking in them in so-called re-education camps um so the australian public kind of looks at that and goes well hang on that's not right that's not cool it's not fair why why would we support china so you know reunifying with taiwan when we know that they will crush them and they have thousands of missiles pointed at them and they fly their fighter jets at an increasing number over their island every day that doesn't sound like peaceful reunification to anybody so yeah so besides obviously these moral support uh or you know that australians the feel towards taiwan uh walk us through what would be you know over time the direct impact on australians should the communist party successfully conquer taiwan and bring it under their rule like what's going to happen to the rest of southeast asia and the neighboring islands well yeah it's a good question matt i mean it's it's scary because as i said we we aren't a major superpower we're a small country living on a very large island we only have 25 million people our armed forces whilst very high quality and awesome fighters are really tiny if if we were to have a head-to-head war with the chinese military we'd last five minutes we we have to fight with an ally we have to be able to fight with the with the united states um and and others if they were to to come along um so i think what china tries to do and we talked about this before is rather than what the soviets did which was full-on frontal attacks all of the time china tries to rot you from within and so the liberal governments under both malcolm turnbull and scott morrison have been trying to stop that from a legislative perspective so we don't you know we've banned huawei for instance we have legislation that prevents foreign interference foreign influence and all those sorts of things and they're squarely aimed at china even though that's not stated i mean it's aimed at any country but really it's only china that does that on any major scale so so what would happen if the chinese communists were to take taiwan would be as i said before the other countries in the region would begin to to submit to china's will i'm not saying that china would go and necessarily invade the philippines they may build more artificial islands they may take an island or two from perhaps from japan um that that we that we we can talk about later but we will see that these other countries in the regions will essentially become vassal states now in time when australia is ringed we are encircled what are you going to do and then you've got the other half of the australian politics being the the labor party and okay sure i'm i am partisan um but i would give them due if there was due to be given the labor party come out very strongly with an engagement policy with china they've always wanted to engage and manage the china relationship so the labour party of australia the australian labor party's patron saint is a guy called goff whitlam who was a disaster as a prime minister but his claim to fame was that he got to beijing before nixon and started our diplomatic relationship and since then you've had a number of labor leaders whose mantra is to engage engage and work with the chinese which is you know what we did right up until malcolm turnbull sort of said well hang on no this is this is not right um and scott morrison has actually taken the the ball from uh malcolm turnbull and run even further with it well so i'm glad you brought this up like australia has changed dramatically in its view of china over the years but as i understand there is still pushback against that that there are some elements of the government maybe society that want to return things to the status quo well that's right so of course you're going to have some elements of business that want to make money and i get that you know you're a business you want profit china is our largest trading partner primarily because they buy our inr and our coal but they used to buy all sorts of stuff from wines and sorghum and and you mentioned lobsters and things like that so you're going to get pushback from certain elements of the business community who want to make money and that's pretty much how new zealand runs its foreign policy it's a mercantilist sort of foreign policy like uh well mercantilist and defeatist in my opinion um and then on the other side of politics as i mentioned you've got the labor party um which is sort of similar to your democratic party in some ways however they've sort of left representing the worker and you've got former prime ministers who are on the payroll labor prime ministers are on the payroll of the chinese so you've got former prime minister paul keating who came who is always he has an acid tongue and he comes out and he insults america as much as he possibly can insults our australian government as much as he possibly can um he's also on the board of the china development bank right and and a friend of mine said well you shouldn't say that he's on the payroll because he's he's it's actually an unpaid position i said well how's that any better so he's working for the chinese for free um um and then you've got um your friend kevin rudd um who's uh who lives just around the corner in in new york and he works for the asia society and he's also a china engagement manager um and then you've got you've just got the labor party themselves who who agree with managing the china relationship through engagement we all understand what engagement means it means giving in to the chinese communist party it means going back to the old days where they had a lot of influence over us and could call the shots on foreign policy and and could go through their list of 14 demands that they had of the australian government and we would put up with it and so essentially you become a vassal state now for the elites that's great so if you're an elite academic if you're paul keating or if you know if you're an elite politician or you know you sell a lot of coal you know you're probably going to be okay right but for the average australian you don't want to be a vessel you know a lot of australians fought and died and spilled blood for this country actually alongside the americans to do that particularly in world war ii and they want to keep our freedom and they want to keep our democracy and so yeah we've we're kind of battling against that and um you know i am getting political and i am in the liberal party i do want to see scott morrison return we're going to have an election early next year um it's not just because i'm a liberal i'm certainly no one-eyed liberal and i get in trouble for saying things all the time i don't particularly want to be a politician myself but i worry that if we do elect a labor government that we will go back to the good old days of engagement and manage relationship and and bowing down and cow towing to china um that'd be disastrous you mentioned uh you know the business people who want to do business in china and do the trade and things like that and i think when you mentioned the us earlier could take a harder stance against china than it is doing i think that's one of the main battles we're facing um politically in dc it seems like uh standing up to china has become one of the few bipartisan issues that's happened over the last couple years especially with what's happened in hong kong with with the uyghurs but there's still this very large wall street business lobby that is constantly trying to um you know push back to like you know let's not decouple let's recouple uh or china as the trade representative just said you know durable co-existence yeah she also used recoupling in her speech that she used said recently uh and you know i was wondering in australia with the punishment that you've been going through on the trade sector over the last year essentially um has that changed people's minds about trading with china or are people still like are the business people still that gung-ho about it so i don't think it's changed the minds of the average citizen whatsoever so if you look at the polling that we take on a a regular basis of australians attitudes towards the chinese communist party um you know they've fallen off a cliff um so business are are aware of that um so they have to tread cautiously you know we in recent times we've we've heard the the business lobbyists come out and and say that we should start re-engaging with china so we do have some of that we don't have as powerful uh wall street that you have that makes you know trillions of billions of dollars or whatever it is off doing business with china whether people win or lose they still take their cut so we don't have that and what the australian government also did was to try and use our trade agencies as best as we could to try and find other markets for our goods and services and so when you look at the totality of trade whilst they hit us really hard on a number of our exports and we've talked about those and um sorghum and wine and whatever um the the overall trade has kept pretty steady because the price of iron oil was was at record highs and so we make a ton of money from exporting iron ore which we do to china um primarily um but but also coal so um particularly with this energy crisis the coal price has gone up so our our export earnings uh haven't taken that bigger hit actually so so it from an overall perspective it hasn't their trade war against us even though they're meant to be members of the wto their trade their trade war against us for for you know political reasons has not worked so a sort of a theme we've been having is the idea of you know perception is reality you've been saying that the australian public the view of china has fallen off a clip what is being done to sort of uh manage the perception of china both within the government and in australian society at large is just something that's naturally happening as people as the australian media is reporting on issues like hong kong the uyghurs or is there anything that can be done to really clarify in people's minds what the chinese communist party is especially when you have politicians who are arguing for recoupling yeah that's a really good question chris and and i i'd say that this trip that former prime minister tony abbott made to taiwan over the last couple of days is one of those efforts now he did that as a private citizen and probably in response to exactly what you're saying because he's he's probably hurt well he certainly would have heard um the the australian labor party starts saying these sorts of things and getting back into their old habits um and he he also wanted to support taiwan so i think i think yes i think we do need a more concerted effort and and as always we you know we're led by what you guys do so anything the united states does we listen to um you know there used to be that catchphrase in in australia all the way with lbj um so we you know we've fought alongside the united states in every single conflict you've been in and vietnam was just one of them um so i think certainly leadership from the united states would be really beneficial and shelley was talking about um you know the china issue being bipartisan in the united states and i've kind of seen that the the talk over china has has slackened a little bit from u.s government sources over the last number of months um and you you've you've seen that the your trade representative is talking about perhaps reducing some tariffs on some certain things with china that had been put in place by the former trump administration the the conference that they had up in alaska was kind of embarrassing i certainly think that given you are the world's sole superpower you you really could perhaps do more um in terms of leadership on the china question and and that would be of great benefit to the region including australia are there specific things you'd like to see well i'd like to see the administration come out and talk about it and and talk about um and talk about the situation with the uyghurs talk about what happened in hong kong um and maybe perhaps tie that to the situation that we're seeing in taiwan we've seen reports that perhaps there has been over the last year which would put this that policy back into the trump administration that there's been u.s special forces and marines in taiwan now they mentioned to a couple of dozen it's not really all that many so perhaps talk about doing more exercises with the taiwanese perhaps bring them into um joint military exercises that the united states already does with countries like australia so we we exercise all of the time military's exercising together is crucial um because when you're gonna fight together it's like playing you know american football or a rugby if you don't train together you're really not gonna play the game very well right so um you know i think that sort of i'm not saying that the administration should come out and and and say that taiwan should declare its independence i'm just saying that perhaps by taking some more concrete measures and and perhaps talking about it a little more would certainly help the region and and certainly australia also now uh you mentioned the sort of uh you know idea that australians have fought with the us and in different wars since vietnam right it'll be j all the way right but uh you know given how you know vietnam didn't seem to end very well and afghanistan uh didn't end particularly well uh are australians a bit averse maybe to getting involved in another american war or do they see it that way if it came to defending taiwan yeah so i i i wasn't alive well i was alive at the end of the vietnamese war it's a good question and i think it's a case that we need to make to the australian public so certainly the australian public as we discussed before has an affinity with the taiwanese people certainly doesn't want to see them crushed and their freedom and democracy taken away however it's a different story when you if you're the government um when you are you want to put australian lives at risk um i think the as we we talked about before there's certainly a very strong argument case true fact to be made to the australian public of why taiwan's independence or its freedom its current status is crucial to our own sovereignty and future sovereignty so i think i think you can you know if you're a good communicator i think you can make that case relatively easily that if for nothing else it's in our own interests to defend taiwan um so and and hopefully you you would think that other nations would would feel the same um but uh i think perhaps former prime minister tony abbott's trip is probably the thing to kick that off um it's getting a lot of air time it's getting a lot of coverage over here and i think that perhaps that's going to get get the ball rolling to start having more of those sorts of discussions over you know push looks it looks like push is coming to shove and that china is getting close to wanting to take taiwan um and australia should be doing something about that and standing shoulder to shoulder with them obviously it's never easy to talk about war no one really wins with war what we would i guess what we would hope to do is to free taiwan or at least you know get the chinese communists to back off well i guess the the best outcome is that china doesn't attack them at all but you know uh that's not looking positive well deterrence is certainly a major part in preventing a war and besides just occus uh australia is also a part of the quad which has seen you know a new life in the past couple of years what is uh what what is the relationship between quad and arcus all these new security alliances obviously aimed at china yeah that's exactly right chris i mean they're all aimed at china and the quad is um well you know it's an a partnership between four countries who are all facing a common enemy um you know you've got japan who are obviously geographically very close to china you've got india who share you know a border on the himalayas with china and have been attacked um you know they had that dust up not that long ago um and in fact i think we just had another incursion on the himalayas yesterday where some pla soldiers accidentally wandered into indian territory the quad is is super important because it brings you know the world's largest democracy in india together with the united states japan and australia and i think between you know those four countries particularly as orcas um perhaps kickstarts our australia's defense capabilities it brings perhaps as you were saying chris it it could be a mechanism that prevents china from taking any um overt steps to taking taiwan although i think you have to ask yourself is that the question is is would is that going to stop communist china from taking taiwan now or is it just going to delay it i mean is it better if they attempt it now versus delaying it well militarily you'd have to think so it would be good if we could potentially fortify taiwan a little bit better and perhaps include them in some joint war gaming and practice exercises and those sorts of things in in order for uh the good guys to be better prepared but at the same the same time the longer it goes on the stronger the chinese military becomes i mean we've we've seen their navy now become the the largest navy in the world and it's not just their navy they have a maritime militia you can double hull boats that they have or double hold ships can can do a lot of damage so i think the longer in some senses you wait the more powerful they become and if they can deny access to the region to the americans or anybody for that matter then you know it's all over so it sounds like the delay basically it depends what we do with the time yeah that's probably a fair point shelly it depends on what we do with the time and you know to give the the us government they're due you know they've initiated orcas together with us and and the the palms you know the the quad seems to be going quite well um perhaps we could start doing more with taiwan so yeah uh i think we're using that time quite well but i think china are also using that time so you know we've seen just in the just in the last few months look at the the number of intercontinental ballistic missiles they have stood up across uh western parts of of china um look what they're doing with their uh their their jet incursions in taiwanese airspace including the the one of their newest aircraft um that's similar to a growler so an electronic warfare and ew sort of um aircraft so they're it looks like they're training and preparing to attack pretty quickly so i think you're touching on like a really important point here that uh you know for all the talk of like durable coexistence the chinese communist party is a brutal authoritarian regime that is overtly at war with the west taiwan is just one of these issues uh what can be done to fundamentally resolve this issue it's not a matter of just defending taiwan because it's bigger than that that's the 64 million dollar question chris like it's not going to go with inflation that's not that much money yes i understand you're having some rather bad inflationary problems in the united states with five dollar a gallon gas and uh soon i'll be millionaires no it's just temporary yes so i don't know you know i mean i think that's a question for tony blinken and um you know the state department and those geniuses yeah really can we co-exist with chinese with the communist chinese personally i don't think we can i mean we've seen their trajectory we've seen what they continue to do they don't stop they keep going it it they don't have elections you know this g guy has made himself emperor for life but like i don't think we should ever get into discussion where we say it's only g the g is the problem he's not the problem he's part of the system he grew up in the system he is just a part of the system if there was some internal troubles that happened you know i i don't think it will but somehow they got rid of g yeah then perhaps you got a smarter guy that came in and started backing off a little bit it's still only a matter of time before we get back to this situation and it's even worse so that's a really hard question to to um answer chris like i mean you just want to say we've got to get rid of the chinese communist party right i mean that's that's the answer but that's how do you do that um i don't know we stop giving them money number one yeah well but they have they have nuclear weapons they have icbms they have a massive military their navy is now larger than the united states they they're not afraid to use trade sanctions um for political purpose whenever it suits them um they don't abide by any contracts any rules they're in the wto the bill clinton brought them into the wto they don't abide by the rules in the wto they don't abide by treaties they did a treaty with with the united kingdom and then broke it and and then crashed hong kong so i i can't see really what you can do with a regime like that i don't know i mean i think it really does come down to we have to stop funding them because if you look at things like the power shortage right it's bad it's so bad and it's been bad since the summer and it it kind of only started to uh like western media only started understanding how bad it was a couple weeks ago but like you have factories that are only open one day a week or two days a week um they're so short on electricity and like if that continued that would be a huge blow to the chinese economy now of course we're so interrelated now it would affect the world economy but with things like evergrand we're pumping so much money into chinese companies often chinese state-run companies blackrock still says triple investment they still say we are funding the chinese communist party so if we had you know the things like the tariffs if the trade sanctions like when you start cutting off the funding they do the economy is the primary thing for them they have to keep that running or else they will face massive internal unrest you know things like the australian coal thing that you mentioned like when they they were trying they held a hundred or they held a million metric tons of australian coal for a year in ports and then they they had no choice but to like you know let it come in because they needed it like these and that was still only a day's work yeah like if these kinds of things continue it's going to spiral out of control for them you know and but like if we keep pumping money into their system we are propping them up well that's a really good point shelly and i think we have to stop yeah the first thing to do is to stop propping them up stop funding them stop wall street pumping our a 401k money um over here in australia we call it superannuation um and and exactly rights try to to push back instead of reducing tariffs increase tariffs however i wonder is it too late so we could do all of these things or the united states could take the lead and do these things and that would cause some harm and perhaps it might make them back off for a little while and wait out for a new administration maybe that maybe they wait 10 years maybe they make 15 20 years maybe they don't care what happens to their population maybe maybe they treat their population like north korea treats their population you know we all know that they spend more money on internal security than they do on external security which is mind-blowing and at the same time they're all well they will probably have willing trade partners from other parts of the world um so you're absolutely right we should stop funding them immediately we should take a more i don't want to say an aggressive stance but just call them out for what they do just announce the facts to the public so the public is aware of of their actions um and yeah maybe we can do some of those sorts of things and that'll help i'm not sounding very positive here i feel like i mean you're a defense guy and all the all the defense people we talked to the you know you've been sounding the alarm for so long right yeah you i don't know if you've had um us navy captain jim fennell retired on but you know he's he's been studying the rise of china as part of his career in navy intelligence for 30 years you know he he was let go by the obama administration for simply mentioning that china was a potential threat like um what all of those things that people like jim fennell and grant newsham and others have been saying for all of this time and and indeed bill triplett um who wrote the year of the rat they've been saying this since you know the the 80s um if not before and yet we have not heeded any of their advice we many businesses and elites have become tremendously rich including our university system and and that's that's the same here in australia um and you know people get rich they they don't mind looking the other way so yeah from a defense perspective from an australian defense perspective as i said before you know there um there's not a lot we can do without the united states we're a very very small defense force so we have to fight alongside the the americans and or the british and the japanese and the indians so yeah it really unfortunately comes back to we the world is still led by you guys and that's meaningful perhaps you know i used to live in america for a long time and perhaps you don't realize that but you really are you are the world leaders you do represent the free world um and and other countries do follow you admire you listen to you and they want to be led so i'm putting it all on your shoulders nothing we can do no that's not true we'll stand with you as we have always have um that you can you can count on most aussies to do that well yeah i think as as we've talked about it really is a war of perception and um you know at least i've known since when i started china and censored in like 2012 uh i did it because i didn't think most americans like even were thinking about china and over the course of this like nine ten years i've seen that change tremendously and australia too like as you said the the perception of china in in the in the australian population has changed dramatically and it's all because of china uncensored also because me because of like you know covid and all the bunch of other things i think we say thank you chris okay well so this is giving me hope that like you know when the public's perception changes that can drive a lot of change in you know the financial sector stop them from you know like how long can you know you talk about free trade with china when it's like hey we're involved in slave labor yeah that that's a really good point and um it has been a little bit derm and gloom for me so i i think you know i get it we are in a kind of a tight spot down here in australia um but i think to the points that you chris and shelly have made i you know maybe it could make a difference but we do yeah we have to hold them accountable we have to stop funding the chinese communist party we have to not say well we'll take them to the wto when they break the trade rules we just have to slap tariffs on them like like the former trump administration did i think was was fantastic because you take something to the wto it's about as useful as the un you know it's going to take years before anything is done and they don't listen to it in any case so perhaps with those if it was a coordinated effort by a number of countries from the united states australia the quad and if we could get the europeans on side sounds like a really difficult thing to do um but although you've seen to your point too chris is that we've seen perceptions in the uk change dramatically also so eu too you as well okay um not as much well i'm thinking like the trade deal that they were all gung-ho about and then like they stopped that especially after china sanctioned like eu officials okay that's a fair point yeah yeah the the cai yeah exactly so i think if we could if we could do that in a coordinated fashion um perhaps it could make a difference i hope it can make a difference and and to your other point chris you've been doing this since 2012. thank you well done you've been doing since the 80s uh i know a lot of australians that that watch your show um so you you're getting cut through and um you know certainly from the my american friends and and you know some of them um what you do is is incredible and and we need this kind of voice we need your voice out there and i know you probably don't want to hear this but but you know a lot of people love the humor you bring to such an important topic um and and i think that's that's cool too yeah we do actually want to hear that i'm just remembering when we were in australia in 2018 and and uh i spoke at the what was it the australian institute oh the sydney institute the sydney institute that's right yeah that was that was a very interesting experience where some of the uh the higher-ups in that organization were not entirely happy with my message about china but in australia yeah uh but everyone in the audience was very very happy about it see oh well done oh thank you um also another question i have is you know china does have still tremendous influence around the world um i think covet is is a great example like how they spun that to their advantage and i'm just wondering you know china has has been pushing this zero covid policy and i know australia has something similar do you think there's any kind of like sense that like the the australian government was uh inspired by china's zero covet policy i don't know i don't know if we even want to get into all of this well i know matt does um yeah look i think i think a lot of the world was dipped um not just by china with regard to the virus you know being made and distributed by china but also looked at the way that they handled it and they came out and said well this is the way we're handling it by locking everything down and um well i don't think we welded anybody into their homes like the chinese did but um i think you know a lot of health bureaucrats probably looked at that and said oh well geez that seems to work there um lock people up don't let them go anywhere and you can't catch the virus right um and so perhaps that's a massive over simplification and and i'll get in trouble from the chief health officer of new south wales and um elsewhere but i don't know i i mean we'd have to ask them but i mean well what could they do to you put you under house arrest yeah yeah i guess there's not much more they can do to me um you are you are talking to us from lockdown i am talking to you from lockdown yes uh we have a new premier of the state of new south wales i'm pleased to let you know so premiers in our states are equivalent to your governors so our new premier who was newly installed as of monday of this week there's a man named dominic pereta and he is uh accelerating the timetable to freedom so he's a little bit different to his predecessor he doesn't bring out the chief health officer to provide daily updates he's accelerating the time frame for children to go back to school and for the society to open up and for australians to be able to travel overseas for australians to be able to come back um so that's that's that's good news so soon you'll be able to take kevin rudd back no thanks major i mean kevin rudd has had to kind of like do a little bit of an about face where i think he's realized at least in the us the whole like absolutely re-engagement thing is not like that's that's not a message that's like politically okay right now so he's kind of pivoted a little bit to if we just get rid of xi jinping then you know that's he's the problem oh he's on that now is he yeah you know that that anonymously written the longer telegram essentially made that argument that the west should try to essentially depose xi jinping so the communist party can get like a more reasonable leader i think it's an open secret that it was written by kevin rudd uh and then he's come out more recently with some more stuff that's kind of in the well know like china's not group like a hundred percent good like that kind of doing this thing about like oh it's xi jinping's fault you know yeah so i as we talked about before i think that's dangerous um because you're just going to replace xi jinping perhaps for a small amount of time with someone who's going to bide their time and and then hit us with an even bigger stick um and the other thing as you probably well know because kevin rudd lives in your state is that kevin rudd says different things to different audiences that whatever they want to hear so he'll say things down in australia that support the australian labor party that says well australia should be re-engaging and have an engagement policy with china and then he'll say something completely different in the united states for the engagement policy people what kind of like what is their argument essentially like what kind of china do they see us or australia engaging with well they don't see china as a threat so firstly they don't talk very much about hong kong they don't talk at all about the uyghurs they don't talk about taiwan um all you have to do is and don't do this but google paul keating um don't do that um because we can just forget about him he's you know hopefully a non-entity although he does have influence within the australian labor party which is why it concerns me but so they don't talk about those things and then they say that china is actually not an expansionary power that they don't want to control anybody okay i'm sure they're the tibetans and the uyghurs and the hong kong and taiwan would disagree with them uh india yeah and southern mongolia i mean the list does kind of go on yeah exactly but so these are the things that they say and i don't yeah it blows the mind right because you are either on the payroll or you are ideologically sympathetic with communism and you think that that would be that being a vassal state so they the other thing that they say is that the united states is spent you're done and that china is going to there's nothing you can do china is going to win they're going to be the biggest economy they're going to be much bigger than you americans we don't like americans in any case um china is in our region we are a south asia country we should be engaged with our region you know bug of the americans um you're done anyway and you're not going to come and help us so we should put our lot in with china so that makes absolutely no sense but that's that's that's what's behind their thinking well so this is kind of why i brought up uh some of the covet policies because like my concern is that there are plenty of people in in government and big businessmen who see the authoritarian control the chinese communist party has over society and that is appealing to them they would like to have that kind of power over their countries well i mean you know the state in australia with the most uh i would say restrictive lockdown policies uh has been uh victoria and that is run by premier daniel andrews who is incidentally the premier who sort of independently signed a sort of belt and road initiative deal with china in like this weird way where the federal government was like you can't do that and he's like yeah i'm gonna do it anyway i mean like what's going on in in victoria so victoria is is it's a little bit like california in that it's become a uh almost a one-party state um i think the liberal party would love to be able to get back into state government in victoria but i'm not sure that they would be that successful i hope i'm wrong i'm probably going to get a lot of people from victoria and the liberal party being very angry at me for saying that but you can see the same thing even in queensland which is the state to the north of me where you've had just consistent labor governments with with perhaps a one-term liberal government here and there and this is pretty much the same in victoria you've had a lot of labor governments and up until just very recently premier daniel andrews polling has been good like you know you get people internal that are saying well he'd still be elected despite as you point out matt that he unilaterally went out and signed a deal with the chinese communists on belton road initiative which generally states don't do because it's signing treaties and doing foreign trade deals is something that the federal government did but we just didn't have anything on on our books um on our legislation that prevented it this this liberal government has now put something on the books um and has cancelled that deal and any other future deal and in fact it's retrospective it can go back and look at any deal that any local state government has made that is not in the interests of australia and it can be cancelled by the federal government so so that's good but yeah so i think you're right um that um yeah perhaps there have been some some authoritarian sort sorts of people like dan andrews that have looked at what china has done and and copied it and done it in victoria so victoria is now the mo the world's most locked down city of melbourne melbourne um and it's a shame yeah it's funny you compare it to california because i always thought of melbourne as kind of like the the san francisco of australia you know you got the the trolleys and it's like a nice friendly place but also like but but victoria state being like california with this governor in california our gov i used to live in california but now new york their governor uh was you know had faced this recall election for a number of things including his covet hypocrisy including basically keeping kids out of public schools but then sending his own children to private schools which were in session uh as well as other things but french laundry the french laundry which which i'm i'm just jealous because i always wanted to go there uh but but then he got you know he won his recall election he survived with like um you know 60 something percent support uh which to me was like mind-boggling right that like like you you look at what he's done you think wow like how do people still support that and yet and yet they do so i think it's a it's an apt comparison you made yeah and that's right so i spent a lot of time in san francisco and i did my undergraduate at um university of california goldberg yes go bears yes and and you you somehow ended up working for the liberal party yeah san francisco berkeley and conservative okay yeah yeah that must have been interesting it was interesting so i was there in the uh early to mid 90s and let's just say lucky there were no smartphones around capturing uh video and and stuff when i was there so i was the you know i was the crazy australian tearing stuff up um but so i wouldn't say you know and i love san francisco um it's a beautiful city and i look at just even since i left just how bad san francisco has become it is just disgusting you've got junkies on the street shooting up you've got people defecating all over the place in public in front of you um so i wouldn't say melbourne is as bad as that um you need to stop slandering my home city even though i i totally agree with you ah are you from the bay you're obviously from the back yeah i'm from san francisco yeah oh wow okay and i did actually briefly go to berkeley so we have that in common ah ah awesome but yeah no san francisco i go back all the time and it's it's you know as you say but that's that's not necessarily coveted related that's just no other factors that's that's other factors and and perhaps when you have a one-party system they can get away with whatever they like and perhaps victoria is becoming and i hope it doesn't become a one-party state at a state level uh i worry that it that it perhaps is um and then when you have a one-party state i mean china's a one-party state what if australia's you know had a one-party state but it was the liberal party well i don't think that's good either i don't think that's healthy i mean democracy you need competition so people need choice and they need freedom they need to be able to say uh you're hopeless we're voting you out minority voices yeah yeah and you know i mean you do that and then hopefully you don't have interference and you don't have too much interference in the democratic process and people's voices and votes are heard and they count and they matter how victoria gets around that i don't know because you know they do have a choice they can vote whatever they like um but they seem to keep voting the labor party back in so yeah it's it's got me as as california keeps voting the democrats becky except for schwarzenegger yeah just proving that there's really no accounting for taste well thank you very much for joining us today uh this was this was great to catch up on the situation in australia and the progress being made combining the chinese communist party i think it's progress let's end on a note of hope i think so i know that might be strange for all of us tell us again how great our show is well you i mean you talked about a spray bottle last time you started in 2012 when you know you guys are the original you started in 2012 saying stuff that wasn't popular just like pewdiepie so you know kudos to you um you know one last thing i'd say is that i forgot to mention is that you know we are trying our best down here um this government's doing some good things as i've mentioned in the podcast my branch is actually going to be hosting a taiwan mp i can't just give you his name yet but he's obviously from the dpp great and and working with guys like and girls like you um yeah keeping up the fight really appreciate it well good we're with you we love australia we love your spirit and your meat pie yeah maybe someday we can go back we're just running out of places to go like in 2018 we went to australia and new zealand we can't go to either of those places in 2019 we went to hong kong several times we can't go now we can't go back to the scarborough shoal yeah i mean oh i saw that one yeah yeah wow that was fun very dangerous i can't believe we did it i can't i couldn't believe you did it either you know it was actually kind of stupid who who even organized that truth was your idea of that and we were just like yeah okay this sounds good and then in the when we were on the fishing boat i was like this may have been a bad idea it's a little blaze but again i made it back a lot and for the record i put the china uncensored flag on the scarborough shoal so i own that territory period perception is reality perception is reality well i mean i just hope it doesn't keep going because the last place we went to was taiwan are we cursed well if i were you guys i wouldn't even fly anywhere near china but i would stay so far away i'd say you're probably on a list or two i actually don't think they really care about us don't say that shelling is that is that is that wounding it's xi jinping thinks about me every day okay someday you'll get your interview someday i'll get that interesting well thanks for the the advice uh that's terrifying that's the thing i'll just move to the middle of the united states as far away from china as possible where should people go if they want to hear more for you uh they shouldn't i don't i you're not very good at this no i'm not uh well yeah i mean i don't have a website or uh anything so i mean i'm a member of the liberal party i chair uh defence mat sec policy you don't even have a twitter oh yeah i am on twitter yeah lincoln parker at lincoln parker five sorry i i didn't do that very well that's okay a link uh lincoln parker not lincoln park yes yes that that name has dogged me for for so long and um i've been doing uh i've been on sky news uh a little bit recently so they they put you on and you're listening to the producers before you actually you know the host comes on and they're just ripping into me about my name and they're yeah i'm sorry we missed her a chance yeah well you could have yeah so um and then of course everyone in australia spells it l-i-n-k-e-n let's make sure we spell it right we have a president with that name we'll be fine that's true all right well thank you uh we'll put uh uh your twitter account below so expect big follows thanks guys really appreciate it love what you do thank you thank you you know i was thinking a lot about what lincoln said about how australia really still looks to the us to be the leader like to you know as the to be the global superpower um and i was thinking about how there's been discomfort right in the us domestically about the idea with the idea that the us or why like we we shouldn't be a superpower or like we're not the police of the world why do we need a superpower right yeah and i can understand some of that with like you know things that happened in iraq and afghanistan but like if you know we are obviously going into like a new cold war with the chinese communist party believing you know fro
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