Keating: The Musical hit Canberra yesterday for its 2023 return season — and let’s face it, the reviews have been mixed.
Oddly enough, those he targeted have hit back hard. They include, well, pretty much all the media, in addition to Labor’s new high-rating breakfast crew of Anthony Albanese, Richard Marles and Penny Wong. Thankfully Keating was able to fossick out his old ALP membership card hidden behind the antique French clock collection to speak for grassroots Labor.
Characteristically, though, Keating belled the cat on major AUKUS issues glossed over in the joint Labor-Coalition thrust to tie Australia into a forever deal with the USA and the UK.
Keating is of course an apex predator when it comes to words, and the one he used with laser precision yesterday was “neo-con”, a term denoting the worst excesses of the US defence and security apparatus that surrounded George W Bush and propelled the invasion of Iraq by America, along with the UK — with Australia panting gratefully behind.
The decision to invade Iraq was based on faulty, if not falsified, intelligence. Saddam Hussein had the means to strike the UK. Saddam was building weapons of mass destruction. Saddam had a human shredder. Somewhere.
Remember John Howard, man of steel? Paul Wolfowitz? General Colin Powell, the man of unimpeachable integrity whose name for some reason rhymes with colon and who fudged the facts at the UN?
Keating evoked all these meanings in his attack.
Australia now had “an accommodating prime minister, a conservative defence minister and a risk-averse foreign minister — and all surrounded by a neo-con bureaucracy,” he avered.
The grouping that advised Scott Morrison comprised, he said, the “security agencies led by Andrew Shearer” and ASPI (the Australian Strategic Policy Institute), with no reference to the Department of Foreign Affairs or its minister.
“Rather, and remarkably, a Labor government has picked up Shearer’s neo-con proclivities and those of ASPI, a pro-US cell led by a recent former chief of staff to Liberal foreign minister Marise Payne,” he said.
The backstory to AUKUS is opaque, and perhaps deliberately so. Scott Morrison has been happy to take the credit and didn’t quibble when it was put to him by Sarah Ferguson on ABC’s 7.30 that he was the “father” of AUKUS.
But dad, it turns out, had a few strange habits himself. One was to keep things secret while quietly taking over his own government. Another was to appoint whoever he wished to key positions.
Andrew Shearer emerged as a key player in Morrison’s inner circle. He is now head of the Office of National Intelligence (ONI), and his rise in Canberra has been closely tied to conservative Liberal governments.
Shearer’s Canberra career has seen him on the staff of former Liberal defence minister Robert Hill, as well as adviser to prime ministers John Howard and Tony Abbott, although not Malcolm Turnbull. (Shearer was opposed to Australia’s decision to contract with France’s Naval Group over Japan.)
Shearer’s conservative pedigree includes time as a CD Kemp Fellow at the conservative Institute of Public Affairs. He was also a senior adviser on Asia-Pacific security at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, DC, and director of the centre’s project on alliances and American leadership.
As Crikey reported last year, Morrison appointed him as cabinet secretary in August 2019, just weeks before his apparent lightbulb moment, all on his own, regarding the AUKUS subs deal.
A year later, Morrison appointed Shearer to run the ONI, a role that gave him almost daily access to the prime minister for security briefings. Morrison made the appointment over Labor’s objections that Shearer was a “partisan operative” who reportedly did not have their confidence.
However, the ONI job is a statutory appointment running until 2025, so the Albanese government has lived with it, whatever its previous complaints.
History repeats — maybe
Once again, the USA, the UK and Australia are teaming up on an expensive venture, again in the name of defending Western values, and again based on intelligence assessments. Maybe they are right this time. Who would know? Last time they were deeply flawed. Not that this fact has prompted any serious media questioning. When a big national defence project gets a head of steam, it isn’t long before it becomes unpatriotic to ask questions.
There are similar barrackers in the wings. Institutionally News Corp has a deep and long-term commitment to the Australia-US alliance. Only yesterday the Murdochs opened a new “Murdoch Centre” housed in the American Australian Association in New York.
The Australian reported the opening this way:
Rupert Murdoch has invoked a “belligerent China” as a reason for the US and Australia to grow their close relationship as he spoke at the opening of a special centre dedicated to promoting the relationship between the two allies in New York.
“Alongside his son Lachlan, US ambassador to Australia Caroline Kennedy and Australian ambassador to the US Arthur Sinodinos, Mr Murdoch launched a centre in New York City to promote relations between Australia and the US, funded by grants from News Corp, Fox Corporation and Australian businessman Anthony Pratt, who was also at the event.
The American Australian Association itself was established by Rupert’s father, Sir Keith Murdoch, in the 1940s.
Where are the doubts?
Keating no doubt threw some haymakers at his old party yesterday. But he wasn’t the only former prime minister to raise questions. Malcolm Turnbull, in less florid terms, spelt out why Australia loses its sovereignty under the AUKUS arrangement.
Keating’s accusation is that Albanese went along with it in 24 hours without due thought and with poor advice, meaning he went to the 2022 election with a commitment to implement AUKUS.
If that is the case, Australia now has a $368 billion commitment engineered by daddy Morrison and picked up by a Labor leader seeking to gain office — and desperate to avoid a shellacking at the hands of the Murdoch media once in office.
So far it has worked. Albanese has now been granted the greatest accolade possible from the Murdoch stable: he has been compared with John Howard, and his move has been blessed as a revolutionary moment in the history of the Australian Labor Party.
Crikey encourages robust conversations on our website. However, we’re a small team, so sometimes we have to reluctantly turn comments off due to legal risk. Thanks for your understanding and in the meantime, have a read of our moderation guidelines.