Former Labor Party Prime Minister Paul Keating is Australia’s foremost public intellectual. Love him or loathe him, when he speaks on the ABC, the national broadcaster, people stop eating or talking, and listen. Keating commands such public attention: he doesn’t ask for it, we give it to him with the same respect we gave Prime Minister John Curtin when he declared war on Nazi Germany.

Keating spoke for many Australians when he was interviewed recently by the ABC’s flagship current affairs and cultural programme, 7.30, hosted by Sarah Ferguson. This is how the interview unfolded:

Ferguson: Defence Minister Richard Marles has been in Washington DC this week. The Deputy Prime Minister said American military involvement with Australia is in every domain – land, sea, air, cyber and space. What’s wrong with cooperating with an ally deemed indispensable for Australia’s security?

Keating: What’s wrong is that we completely lose our strategic autonomy: i.e. that right of Australia, Australian governments, and the Australian people to determine where and how they if the world is taken away [from them], and we let the United States displace our military and our foreign policy prerogatives.

Ferguson: Is it your argument that increasing American troop presence and broader military presence here in Australia that it makes Australia more of a target?

Keating: Yes. I think that we’re now defending the fact that we are in AUKUS, with the USA and Britain. But let me amplify the point. If we didn’t have an aggressive ally like the United States – aggressive to others in the region, there’d be nobody attacking Australia.

We are better left alone than we are being “protected” by an aggressive power like the United States.

Ferguson: Why is America aggressive?

Keating: It’s aggressive because it is trying to superintend from the Atlantic to the Pacific.

The largest Asian power is China. It has four times the population of the USA and an economy which is 20% larger, and a navy which is currently the same size (though spread out policing from the Atlantic to the Pacific).

America is going to try and superintend this same zone – and get this! – become the primary strategic power in Asia. That is, let me make it crystal clear, from the 9,000-mile California coast, the USA wants to belittle a country like China with its 1.4 billion people. Even the most ardent Trumpster believes that China will knock them into line.

Ferguson: Well, the rationale for this approach has been spelled out in the latest Defence Strategic Review. It clearly stated that [there has been] a rapid and undeniable escalation by the Chinese military. Why shouldn’t Australia embrace an alliance (AUKUS) that counter-balances that power?

Keating: What this is all about is China laying claim to Taiwan. And the Americans are primed to chorus, “No, no, we are merely trying to keep those Taiwanese people protected”, even though they’re sitting on Chinese real estate.

Ferguson: Let me just stop you there. What about Taiwanese real estate and the wishes of the people of Taiwan?

Keating: Well, the Taiwan real estate is part of China. It would be like the Chinese saying to us:

“Look, we think that Tasmania has been forgotten and poorly treated for many years. We want to keep open the sea route down the east coast of Australia, through Bass Strait across to Perth and the Indian Ocean. To underpin this strategy, we are going to put some frigates there, and we will support the Tasmanian people should they wish to secede from Australia…”

We would all say that’s shocking. That’s shocking.

Ferguson: Let’s just stay with Taiwan for the moment. The Chinese have said that they will, by taking back Taiwan, they would dismantle all of Taiwanese civil society. Are you prepared just to see all of that gone?

Keating:  Taiwan is not a vital Australian interest. But we fight anybody touching Tasmania, just as the Chinese will fight anyone touching Taiwan.

The thing is this, Sarah. Get this. The Chinese will fight to the last teenage soldier to defend Taiwan and the Chinese State. The Americans will not take on such a fight because they know they cannot win. And then, all of a sudden, the Americans take off and leave. That will leave us on our own to face the wrath of the whole region!

Ferguson: Let me just come back to the question I asked about the Australian Defence Strategic Review. One of the primary reasons for the reshaping of the Australian military, in concert with the United States and allies in the region, is because of the rapid escalation of the Chinese military. So the question is – why shouldn’t Australia embrace an alliance [AUKUS] that seeks to balance that power?

Keating: We’re not threatened by the Chinese military. Look, China’s got an economy now, according to the IMF, 20% larger than America. What are they expecting? Should they move around in rowboats? Canoes maybe? They have developed their own submarines, their own frigates and their own aircraft carriers.

China is the other major state in the world, and what do the Americans say? “Tsk tsk. Keep your place and go back to your canoes.” I mean, really…

Ferguson: But if you were Prime Minister, and you had the responsibility to defend Australia, wouldn’t you seek to counter China’s  unprecedented military expansion?

Keating: Australia is capable of defending itself. What is a threat, an invasion? An invasion comes in the form of an armada. With satellites today you see the Armada formed, you would see it leave its harbour. You see it for 10 or 15 days coming to Australia, and you would sink every one of them on the way. You don’t need the United States to defend Australia. Australia is quite capable of defending itself.

Ferguson: I just want to come back to what you said about Taiwan, because it sounds from what you’re saying that you would be perfectly happy to give up any support of Taiwan, for the Chinese to resume control of Taiwan. You have no objection to that.

Keating: Any military support? Absolutely.

Ferguson: What about any support for the Taiwanese people who say they don’t want that?

Keating: It’ll get resolved socially and politically over time.  That’s what will happen there. But the thing is it’s not our matter. I mean does anyone want their kids to be shot to death on a sandy beach in Taiwan? Australian kids shot to death on a sandy beach in Taiwan? This is the outcome of such a policy.

Ferguson: Let’s just go to AUKUS for a moment because there are analysts who say that developments in our Artaficial Intelligence will make it easier to track large manned submarines and that we should be focusing on building swarms of unmanned, underwater drones. Is that what you’re concerned about, defense betting on the wrong technology?

Keating: What I’m concerned about is we’re going to get AUKUS, but not the submarines.

What we’re going to get is what Kurt Campbell, the US Deputy Secretary of State has said: “We’re going to tie these guys up for 40 years.”

What AUKUS is about in the American mind is locking up the suckers in Australia for 40 years, with costly American bases all around us. What this report tells you is that the USA can build  American bases all around Australia. American bases not Australian. But all around Australia.

In American terms, AUKUS is really about the military control of Australia. What’s happened is that the Albanese Government is likely to turn Australia into the 51st state of the United States.

Ferguson: Let’s talk about what China has done. The way you put it it’s as if China is simply on the defensive from an aggressive America. But China has territorial disputes of its own with Vietnam, with India, with Malaysia, the Philippines and Brunei. Don’t you welcome a countervailing force?

Keating: But Americans are not a countervailing force.

They just think they are, Sarah. Just imagine if the Chinese blue water Navy went sailing on the coast of California, stopping off or nearby Los Angeles and San Diego.  Could you imagine the Uproar? But this is what they do every day of the week to the Chinese.

Ferguson: At the same time there’s a series of countries in Asia, democracies, who could change their countries profoundly – and want to –  who choose to have and allow to remain American bases in Asia.

Keating: Yes, good on them. But not us. We’ve got a continent of our own and a border with nobody and we’re not likely to be threatened by a soul. The only threat likely to come from us is because we have an aggressive ally. Because of AUKUS.

Ferguson: Just to finish, is it your contention as someone who was once responsible for the defense of Australia, that faced with the rapid escalation of the Chinese military, Australia should do nothing?

Keating: No. Australia should have submarines which protect the littoral waters of Australia. It should have attack and bomber aircraft to sink ships. It should have self-propelled mines. It should have all the things, the modern things that you can keep. Look there’s no way another state can invade a country like Australia with an armada of ships without it all failing. I mean Australia is quite capable of defending itself. We don’t need to be basically a pair of shoes hanging out of the American backside.

Ferguson: Paul Keating, thank you very much for joining us.

Keating gave an earlier interview in which he said: “In defence and foreign policy, this is not a Labor Government. This is a party which has adopted the defence and foreign policies of the Scott Morrison Liberal Government. This is a sellout.”

Keating attacked Deputy Labor Leader Richard Marles who told a Washington DC audience he welcomed American troops to Australia.

“What Marles said made me cringe,” Keating said. “It made any Labor person cringe. The government has sold out to the United States. They have fallen for the dinner on the White House lawn. These turkeys all fell for it.”

This is a full transcript of Paul Keating’s interview with Sarah Ferguson on the ABC’s flagship programme. Tiny changes have been made to assist the reader, but the essential course of the interview has been retained.

This transcript originally appeared on John Menadue’s Pearls & Irritations site.

Alex Mitchell, former State Political Editor of Sydney’s Sun-Herald, worked in London, Europe, the Middle East, Africa, North and South America. A Parkinson’s Disease sufferer, he now lives with his life partner and wife, Judith White, in regional Australia. He stays active by continuing to write. It is FREE. Become a subscriber today by signing up on the right, or contact judithwhite3@gmail.com

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