Shot down in flames: Nine’s ‘Red Alert’ series a pitiful crusade for ratings

John Peel writes: Having struggled through the first part of the Nine newspapers’ “Red Alert” series, getting angrier and angrier, I stopped reading another word of this ridiculous crap for my health’s sake (I’ve just turned 80). And crap is the word, because their “experts” were doing their best to frighten the wits out of us — with not a thought to the alternatives to war with China (“Nine’s bombastic China series aims everywhere at once, yet misses key targets”).

And there are a few alternatives. As a middle power beginning to make friends again with our most important trading partner, we could use our budding diplomatic skills to try to persuade China of a couple of facts patently obvious to everyone but the CCP under the ghastly President Xi Jinping: America is not trying to encircle China — and Taiwan, a peace-loving, independent but democratic nation, poses absolutely no threat to the mainland.

But there’s not a suggestion of this from the “Red Alert” loony tunes — just keep watching out for city-destroying missiles and the possibility of nuclear war. Australia’s defence system could well need a massive shake-up after the wasted billions poured into futile wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, but this was a pitiful attempt to boost Nine’s newspaper ratings.

Richard Crofts writes: Why are we even listening to and reading this rubbish? Why is it headline-grabbing news? Luckily most thinking Australians see this for what it is: complete and utter right-wing nonsense. Sure, we need to worry about China and Russian aggression, but we need to worry too about climate change, about big companies paying no tax and causing the current financial stress of inflation, about an opposition that routinely lies and follows the same old failed policies of the discredited Morrison government. We need accountability for the initiators of robodebt and all the other appalling schemes we have endured for the past decade under the LNP regime.

We need news sources that report the news, that don’t publish opinion pieces as fact. We need truth in reporting — and sadly that will never happen while these companies influence the gullible who believe the stuff they print and broadcast.

Stephen Lloyd-Jones writes: Given that defence can’t seem to purchase a ticket to a chook raffle without a billion-dollar overrun, I don’t think we are at the sharp end of the problem. 

Mark Kelly writes: The SMH’s “Red Alert” fear-mongering beat-up annoyed me so much I cancelled my subscription after 20 years. Crikey, Michael West Media, Guardian Australia can all have my money, but the SMH is now on the list of companies I won’t support financially. We get to vote every day with our wallets.

Jock Webb writes: I think the Nine newspapers’ series was highly irresponsible. I am all for reviewing defence and it would start with the freaking idiots who signed up for the F-35 being removed. The RAAF’s newest aircraft cannot fly any serious distance without refuelling and is already out of date. It was never a plane for long range and is the opposite of the F-111 it replaces, with a lower speed and half the range. Our navy is a joke in terms of boats that don’t work and the army is riven by scandal. This is the return on huge sums of money, much of which is pissed against the wall.

Miriam Germein writes: The SMH’s front-page graphics read like a 1950s film poster: dramatic, entertaining and attention-seeking — the content provocative. The idea that our defence capability in Australia lags behind other equivalent advanced democracies rings true. Our relative isolation geographically has long lulled us into lazy thinking and misguided conclusions, lacking sophistication.

Russia’s war in Ukraine demonstrates conclusively how a modern war can be fought using small-scale technology manned by highly motivated individuals who use all the contemporary knowledge and skills of leading-edge workplaces. We can do the same, but like the poor state of national cyber security, defence has suffered from federal governments too focused on political mileage rather than creating carefully considered, evidenced-based policy relevant to future potential conflict.

It’s a pity the series was presented as a further episode in the regular beat-ups on China by various Coalition ministers over the recent decade. In that respect, Paul Keating’s disgust has my sympathy. However, the worst-case scenario was a compelling read and a useful signpost towards a healthy realism. I suspect we are far too late to make a difference, but regardless, we must seize the moment as an opportunity to transform the national economy. The current federal government, fortunately, appears to be doing just that. Hopefully, the ideas generated in these articles will prove useful.

Edward Down writes: The Nine Network pathetically panders to the terrified two-year-old in all of us — the monster that’s going to reach out from under our beds and drag us screaming into its bloody paws. 

It’s all complete nonsense, of course. Why would China bypass half a dozen countries — with which it has territorial disputes — to attack a country with which it does not have any territorial disputes to acquire resources it can buy for a fraction of the cost of trying to steal by force? It’s another episode in Nine’s Theatre of the Absurd. 

Cheryl Parker writes: I’d really like Crikey to counter the “Red Alert” with a “Green Alert” series. Topics covered could be:

• How the USA sucker punches Australia, e.g. AUKUS

• How our Defence Department wastes our money over and over and over again

• Explain over and over again, if necessary, what the Force Posture Agreement is and what it means for all of us.

Or perhaps instead of the “Green Alert” theme, something similar to the “Dumb Ways to Die” campaign made by Metro Trains in Melbourne in 2012. Instead of being about ways to die though, themes might be: “Australia’s dumb foreign policy”; “Dumb ways to keep Australians poor”; “Dumb ways to run/’govern’ a country”.

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