Penny Wong has warned politicians and media against playing “the most dangerous of parlour games” by adding to “frenzied” speculation about a war over Taiwan.
The Australian foreign affairs minister said on Monday that such a conflict would be “catastrophic for all” and there would be “no real winners” – but the warning was quickly overshadowed by a fresh war of words with Paul Keating.
Wong hit back at the former Labor prime minister, who ridiculed the minister for “running around the Pacific islands with a lei around [her] neck handing out money”.
“I think in tone and substance he diminished both his legacy and the subject matter,” Wong told the National Press Club in Canberra, adding that Australia had a clear interest in a peaceful, stable region.
Keating gave his latest retort two hours later, saying Wong had spoken in platitudes about keeping the balance of power but had “not a jot of an idea as to how this might be achieved”.
In a statement on Monday, Keating said Australia was “straddling a strategic divide, a divide rapidly becoming every bit as rigid” as seen in Europe in 1914 at the outbreak of the first world war.
“Australia’s major foreign policy task is to soften that rigidity by encouraging both the United States and China to find common cause and benefit in a peaceful and prosperous Pacific. Nothing Penny Wong said today, on Australia’s behalf, adds one iota of substance to that urgent task.”
Wong’s speech focused on the need for all countries to “exercise our agency to avert war and maintain peace” at a time when the Indo-Pacific region faced “the most confronting circumstances in decades”.
Wong said Australia did not want great power competition between the US and China to “career into conflict”.
In the wake of Nine newspapers’ controversial “Red Alert” series – which warned of the risk of war within three years – Wong said there was “much frenzied discussion in political and media circles over timelines and scenarios when it comes to Taiwan”.
“Anyone in positions like mine who feels an urge to add to that discussion should resist the temptation,” she said. “It is the most dangerous of parlour games.”
Wong said Australia stood against any unilateral change to the status quo over Taiwan, and opposed the threat or use of force or coercion, because this was “the proposition most capable of averting conflict and enabling the region to live in peace and prosperity”.
In the speech, without naming Keating, Wong took aim at “some” who implied that “we should attach ourselves to what they anticipate will be a hegemonic China”. She named Robert Menzies and John Howard as examples of “those throughout Australia’s history who have thought our foreign policy should simply be to attach ourselves to a great power”. But she said the Albanese government would “always be more ambitious for Australia” and pursue greater self-reliance.
China has not ruled out the use of force to take Taiwan, a self-governed democracy of 24 million people that Beijing claims as a wayward province.
Earlier this month China engaged in three days of military drills near Taiwan in what it called a “stern warning” after Taiwan’s president, Tsai Ing-wen, travelled to the US and met the house speaker, Kevin McCarthy.
Wong said the job of the Australian government was to “lower the heat on any potential conflict, while increasing pressure on others to do the same”.
“That may not sell as many newspapers today, but it will help you to sell them for a lot longer,” she said.
She said Australia shared “the objective of a world that is free of nuclear weapons” but refused to give a timeframe on Labor meeting its platform commitment to sign and ratify a landmark new UN treaty.
Wong acknowledged one of the reasons more than 90 counties had now signed the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW) was because of “frustration that there has been insufficient progress” towards disarmament.
“If this can spur more progress in that arena, that is a good thing,” she said.
“We set out very transparently in the party platform our consideration of that treaty.”
The platform commitment was subject to a number of conditions, including the need to work to achieve universal support for the TPNW, but at present the nuclear weapons states, including the US, oppose the blanket ban.
Wong confirmed, though, that the US had given an assurance that the American submarines to visit Australia on increased rotations from 2027 would be conventionally armed.
