Deputy Prime Minister Richard Marles has firmly rejected Paul Keating’s assessment that the Quad dialogue was a “piece of strategic nonsense”.
The former Labor prime minister made headlines after he rubbished Australia’s strategic and security key alliances including AUKUS and the Quad.
Mr Keating appeared at Melbourne’s La Trobe University on Wednesday night where he suggested “it would be a tragedy for Australia” if Labor pushed ahead with AUKUS.
He also criticised the Quad for attempting to “contain China”, arguing the dialogue between Japan, Australia, India and the United States was a “piece of strategic nonsense”.
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But the Deputy Prime Minister did not share the Labor veteran’s assessment and said the Quad was an “important piece of regional architecture”.
“In terms of our relationship with the United States I think the alliance is as important today as it’s ever been,” Mr Marles told Sky News Australia Chief Anchor Kieran Gilbert on Thursday.
“America is really important in helping provide Australia with growing capability.
“We’ve also said and said really clearly we want to stabilise the relationship with China and we value a productive relationship with China.”
While Mr Marles said the former prime minister was a much-respected figure in Australian public discourse, his views did not align with the government’s.
“Former prime minister Keating is obviously a revered figure in the nation and certainly within Labor,” Mr Marles continued.
“His views are views I have always sought and he’s got every right to articulate those views.
“I can only speak to what we see our national interests as being in terms of the Albanese Government and that’s the interests I’ve described.”
The Quad focuses on tackling shared concerns with a specific eye towards economic and security issues in the Indo-Pacific.
China’s influence in the region and its spread throughout the Pacific has been a significant point of discussion between Australia’s strategic allies including the Quad.
Canberra and Beijing’s recent soured relationship also coincided with the signing of the AUKUS agreement which will see the US, UK and Australia develop closer security and intelligence ties with Australia expected to procure nuclear submarines out of the alliance.
Mr Keating pleaded with the government to exit AUKUS and suggested China could take a more prominent role in the global order.
“The US could run the world co-operatively with China. In other words, the US consolidates the Atlantic, which includes bringing Russia into Europe, and in the east, the stability is provided by the Chinese,” he said.
But another prominent Labor figure condemned the former prime minister and said Mr Keating refused to pay attention to China’s growing coercion across the globe.
Former cabinet minister Stephen Conroy said ignoring China’s behaviour was to “misunderstand the nature of the beast”.
Mr Conroy served as communications minister when the then-Labor government shut out Chinese state owned telco Huawei from Australia’s NBN infrastructure rollout and said Beijing had “no intention” of working cooperatively in the existing global framework.
“Paul Keating refuses to say anything about China, its behaviour, its treatment of its own population,” Mr Conroy told Sky News Australia.
“Paul Keating just needs to listen to what China are saying and watch what they are doing.
“Paul’s just still living in the benign hope that China’s rise will be peaceful.”
Source: Sky News
