John Leslie Lander: Australia Is Paying $35 Million a Day for a Fictional Threat

[00:00:04]John Leslie Landis going to speak to us with um some pretty significant experience particularly in the foreign service in relation to China and other related matters.

[00:00:16]And I'll ask John uh to take the floor right now. Thank you. Welcome.

[00:00:20]>> Uh thank you very much. I don't claim expertise in all of the technical matters relating to August that we've been hearing about this morning.

[00:00:27]Um but uh I began my involvement in diplomatic relations with China in 1971 when uh we were preparing to recognize the People's Republic of China.

[00:00:39]And uh I need to point out that at that time for a variety of reasons um mainly related to the developments in the United States policy in relation to China then um we in the department wrote a policy planning paper in which we argued that we could not rely on the United States to protect our interests at every turn in the implementation of their um geopolitical strategies and policies. Uh and that therefore Australia should develop independent policies based on Australia's own national interests and the interests of our near neighbors.

[00:01:23]That was certainly my view then and it is even more strongly my view today.

[00:01:29]Uh most of my remarks um I prepared uh and tried them out. They should last about 5 minutes. Uh although I've elaborated on them slightly since putting them together.

[00:01:41]Firstly also before I forget I would like to acknowledge the um Wurundjeri people of the Kulin nation on whose lands we meet today.

[00:01:50]And I personally look forward to the day when uh their sovereignty is not only acknowledged but compensated for.

[00:02:00]>> [clears throat] >> The main point in my mind with the regard to the AUKUS submarine project is simply that it is a $368 billion burden on this and future generations and is likely to increase.

[00:02:18]I I would observe that that's $35 million per day for the next 30 years for weapons of war rather than for weapons of welfare.

[00:02:30]If we look around the hall here, we can see many of the ideals and policies that I believe the Australia and all Australian governments should be focused on. Such things as progress, peace, education, health care, and all of the matters that are of concern to the Australian people and which they would regard as being a very important element in an overall security strategy for Australia.

[00:03:07]The security is not only a defense against possible military attack. Security involves security from the effects of climate change and and many other developments of right across the whole of society that are impacting ordinary people all the time.

[00:03:32]That of course is at the moment that $35 million per day is for a system which we've heard this morning is quite useless for the defense of Australia, for the defense of Australia, but is clearly aimed at China.

[00:03:48]I think Gareth Evans made that very clear.

[00:03:52]That's $35 million a day predicated upon a fictional threat from China.

[00:04:00]A fear that has been inflamed by an incessant stream of American propaganda through a compliant mainstream media.

[00:04:09]All of the examples commonly cited as instances of China's more aggressive posture and possibly aggressive intent are in fact demonstrations of China's determination to defend its sovereign territory.

[00:04:24]Tibet, Xinjiang, Hong Kong, and Taiwan are all provinces of China.

[00:04:32]Taiwan is the only one whose status is considered somewhat ambiguous. However, under the One China principle, which is an international legal obligation, which Australia accepted long before it was reaffirmed in the joint communication communicate on the recognition of the People's Republic of China and Australia is still bound by it.

[00:04:59]Therefore, freedom of navigation operations in Taiwan sea and airspace are, as a matter of international law, intrusions into China's sovereign territory and are technically demonstrations of hostile provocative actions by Australia, usually in collaboration with the United States, and possibly under the can be seen as being under the auspices of AUKUS.

[00:05:34]I do not believe that China has any aggressive intentions towards Australia at all.

[00:05:42]China has never invaded any other country, unlike Japan.

[00:05:47]It has never evinced the slightest intention to attack Australia.

[00:05:52]China has always sought mutually beneficial relations with Australia, even during the the tense period of relations with the Morrison government.

[00:06:06]Although some of it China's actions were described as attempts at coercion, uh they were always accompanied by the plea from the Chinese side that they wished to pursue mutually beneficial relationship with Australia.

[00:06:26]As our single most important trading partner, it has underpinned our prosperity for decades.

[00:06:34]Our trade with China is of enormous importance to us.

[00:06:39]But I think we need to be careful not to overestimate the importance of our trade to China.

[00:06:48]Our trade with to China is a very small proportion of China's total global trade.

[00:06:55]So, China can do without Australia, but I don't believe Australia can do without China.

[00:07:04]So, the notion that we have to go to war to protect our trade with China and the AUKUS submarines are clearly if they're sailing out of the Sterling naval base uh will be uh potentially used to interdict China's sea routes uh >> [clears throat] >> uh and not our sea routes, but they would effectively prevent our trade with China.

[00:07:32]So, going to war against China to protect our trade with China is utterly nonsensical.

[00:07:39]China is only likely to become an enemy of Australia if by our own hostility we make it so.

[00:07:48]Sadly, because AUKUS is so clearly part of the United States geopolitical strategy to contain China, it makes it more likely that we will be, even unwillingly, cast in the role of an enemy of China.

[00:08:06]Even if we do believe that China has nefarious intentions towards us, by any hard-headed assessment of our respective capabilities, Australia will never be a match for China in a war.

[00:08:23]China's missiles can reach anywhere in Australia, even as far as Hobart.

[00:08:29]We have no defense against them.

[00:08:32]The AUKUS submarines, if we ever get them, would not protect Australia against China's stratospheric missiles.

[00:08:41]Our best defense is mutually beneficial relations.

[00:08:47]That was true the day I started, and I still believe it.

[00:08:52]$35 million per day would be much better spent on adroit diplomacy, rather than submarines that cannot operate in Australia's shallow coastal waters.

[00:09:08]The Americans also insist that the war against China will start in 2027.

[00:09:17]That's next year.

[00:09:19]The submarines will not arrive in time anyway.

[00:09:24]AUKUS is not only or even mainly about submarines.

[00:09:28]It is about locking Australia in as a key base for American dominance in the Indo-Pacific in order to {quote unquote} contain China.

[00:09:41]I believe China is quite uncontainable, by the way.

[00:09:45]AUKUS cannot be considered in isolation from the force posture agreement with the United States.

[00:09:51]The force posture agreement effectively surrenders sovereignty to the United States because it provides {quote} unimpeded access to and exclusive use of all agreed areas and facilities.

[00:10:12]My understanding of this word wording is that Australia will have no sovereign decision to determine when, where, and against whom United States assets based in Australia will be used.

[00:10:26]AUKUS is the spawn of the force posture agreement which enables both it and the militarization of Australia by the United States.

[00:10:37]Neither AUKUS nor the FPA are about the defense of Australia. They are for maintaining United States dominance in our region.

[00:10:48]Any American war against China would be launched from Australia because Australia is now {quote} the epicenter for the projection of US power in the Indo-Pacific. {unquote} AUKUS makes the projection of that power more likely.

[00:11:08]Australia is consequently the epicenter for any retaliation against that power.

[00:11:18]The interchangeability of United States and Australian defense forces under these two agreements much wanted by Defense Minister Marles further vitiates our sovereignty and reinforces the assertion that I made 2 years ago which was ridiculed at the time that the United States is not preparing to go to war against China.

[00:11:44]The United States is preparing Australia to go to war against China.

[00:11:50]So, that's $35 million per day to fund our own destruction.

[00:11:56]We need to cancel all both Orcus and the FPA. Orcus was sprung like a trap overnight with no public scrutiny nor parliamentary approval.

[00:12:08]Under the Constitution the executive must govern through the parliament not independently of it.

[00:12:17]Neither the force posture agreement nor Orcus have been fully debated and voted on by the parliament.

[00:12:27]The executive does have the power to conclude international agreements, but by unanimous ruling by the High Court in the case of Williams versus the Commonwealth some years ago any domestic legal effect arising from their implementation >> [clears throat] >> such as expenditure on assets, construction of facilities, allocation of access, and so on must each be separately and severally legislated by the parliament.

[00:13:00]I very much hope that this inquiry will bring pressure to bear on the parliament to reclaim its authority and its responsibility to fully examine all aspects of both Orcus and the force posture agreement.

[00:13:17]And to pass an act to invalidate the implementation of both unless and until parliament has legislated on each detail of domestic legal effect arising from them.

[00:13:35]Thank you.

[00:13:36]>> Ms. Leanne.

[00:13:37]>> Uh thank you, Peter. Thanks for your um presentation, Don. Uh I've got two quick questions. I'm really interested hearing a bit more about your time at working in Chinese diplomacy and what your reflections are on how Australia used to operate and how it may be operating now and where you think that relationship is. And then the second one is um you put forward the proposition that it's unlikely that we would be attacked by China and I think uh the defense minister, Marles, has also said that on a number of uh occasions publicly, but that the the most worrying thing for Australia's defense from China would more be that it would use um other tactics of oppression or isolation to get their way in uh bargaining over trade and other issues and like you to make a comment on that.

[00:14:25]Thanks.

[00:14:27]>> Uh well, the the first one in my my experience of um working in diplomacy with China, um of course, I was the first deputy ambassador to Beijing in 1974 to 1976 um during the final years of the Cultural Revolution, uh when China was extremely poor and really domestically, internally, quite unstable.

[00:14:53]Um uh but even then, uh in my dealings with Chinese officials, and at that time, it was not really possible to have much contact with the ordinary citizen, but in dealing with Chinese officials, the one thing that uh I found every single instance that we were negotiating on anything, um was that you could always take them at their word.

[00:15:19]They would not say anything they did not intend.

[00:15:23]And um I think that we really need to be looking at uh in this present time at what statements China makes about its own foreign policy and its own approach to um international relations globally um because I think when it says that it is um working to pursue mutual benefit and common prosperity for mankind, it actually means it.

[00:15:58]Um >> [clears throat] >> so that's the first and most important um result from my own personal experience in dealing with with China at uh official levels, but also more recently I've been very frequent visitor to China and I have um had many encounters with the non-officialdom and the same thing I think applies that that um the Chinese people generally mean what they say and they do what they say they will do.

[00:16:34]Uh and therefore I think it is incumbent upon us to uh bend every effort towards ensuring that China perceives a mutual advantage in its relations with Australia. Uh that um as long as each side has something significant to lose, then uh the exercise of aggression is less likely. That is not to say that I'm uh naive about the possibility that a great power would use uh many different aspects of its power and influence to try to get its own way in terms of policy decisions that Australia that it wants Australia to make.

[00:17:31]We have had a very long experience of exactly that in our dealings with the United States.

[00:17:40]The United States again I think what Gareth Evans revealed, the United States has never been shy about putting pressure on Australia when it wants Australia to act in accordance with its wishes. So And again I think Gareth made the point that the best way to deal with that was to act in our own interests and to behave in a politically and diplomatically independent manner.

[00:18:18]That we should determine our own policies and we should not be afraid of making it perfectly clear to the United States when our policy interests do not conform to the United States policy interests. And that does not mean that we would necessarily abandon the entirety of our alliance relationship with the United States. But it would mean that we should endeavor to place that alliance on a more equal footing.

[00:18:52]Ideally I would like to see Australia to be completely independent of any alliance with any other great power because with the alliance with any great power comes the potential for coercion.

[00:19:08]So I would not be recommending that we should enter into an alliance with China, for instance.

[00:19:15]>> [clears throat] >> If I might reflect on something in my diplomatic service, which is not directly related with China, when I was ambassador to the Islamic Republic of Iran during the Iraq war against Iran, Australia's policy was one of strict neutrality in the in that war.

[00:19:39]And at certain point it became known that the Australian government was considering responding to a US request to place Australian military personnel on United States warships in the Persian Gulf.

[00:19:54]And I fought very vigorously against that.

[00:19:58]And I must say I'm pleased successfully against that. And the decision was taken to maintain our strict neutrality in respect of the Iraq war against Iran in the 1980s.

[00:20:16]Um So I think even at at my humble level, it is possible to stand up to pressure to um act against our own national interest.

[00:20:32]And that it is incumbent upon us, and that's what I meant by a droid diplomacy, to stand up to any pressure on us to act against Australia's national interest.

[00:20:46]I might add that despite what has been said with regard to um our relations with Southeast Asia, um I'm particularly concerned that we appear to have been increasingly under August isolating ourselves from the Southeast Asian region because all of the Southeast Asian countries have decided to adopt a very different approach to China from the one that we are increasingly getting into.

[00:21:18]>> All right, so thanks for that, John, and I'll give Chris the opportunity to answer a few questions. I'm sorry about the time limitations.

[00:21:24]>> Uh I've got a few here, uh John, but I'll go to the one that I think's most important.

[00:21:30]Uh based on your experience in looking around the region, uh we have seen recently the visit of Trump and Putin to see Xi in Beijing.

[00:21:41]Uh and that sent certain signals to people like me looking on.

[00:21:47]But the question I've got is when we recalibrate our national security policy and our defense posture, and we take into account the experiences of our East Asian neighbors in the way they deal with Beijing or China, how would how would you see being the fundamental principles of that recalibration?

[00:22:08]>> The The fundamental principle is uh essentially one of neutrality or of um balancing between the two great powers.

[00:22:19]This is the the the obvious political endeavors of uh the our Southeast Asian neighbors in particular through the the ASEAN organization that they are not simply repudiating um the contacts and and relationship with the United States, but they are uh working I I think very hard to establish um >> [clears throat] >> a congenial relationship with China.

[00:22:49]And we should be, I think, pursuing the same objective.

[00:22:54]It's unfortunate that that the United States has to a large extent um made it pretty clear that to Australia that as they say, if you're not at the table, you're on the menu. In other words, if you're not totally with the United States, then you are potentially an enemy of the United States. And that is um uh a condition that we really have to be quite um adept at negotiating to avoid.

[00:23:31]>> All right. Uh now, you said that the uh or you made the statement that the United States was preparing Australia to go to war against China. Have you got evidence to show that that's the case or is that just your uh perception from what you've been reading?

[00:23:47]>> Well, most of the things I just cited um all of the bases, I think Pine Gap, Northwest Cape, and Tindal air base, the marine base in Darwin.

[00:23:59]The um and most importantly, the the um interchangeability that is now claimed for Australian and United States forces. That raises to me the prospect of at least the possibility that United States assets based in Australia could be designated as Australian and then used in a conflict with China over uh Taiwan, for instance, um thus enabling the United States to continue to pursue its policy, its declared policy of never going into a connect kinetic conflict with a nuclear-armed adversary.

[00:24:50]>> All right, thank you for that. Uh two quick final questions. Um well, firstly, on on the Williams case, I unfortunately time doesn't permit us the opportunity to both interrogate or analyze that case.

[00:25:04]Uh I think that it's pretty clear that subsequent governments haven't taken necessarily the same messages that that we're hearing ventilated today.

[00:25:15]Notwithstanding that, I can't just clarify, John, uh is is there an argument there that the resumption of um contested uh islands, say for example, in the South China Sea or efforts to contain or locate troops there uh by China is not contrary to international law? Have I Have I misunderstood you?

[00:25:39]>> Is not contrary to international law?

[00:25:41]>> Yeah.

[00:25:42]Uh Well, it's it's a very gray area.

[00:25:49]Um largely because of the the numerous complete competing claims that uh many countries make over um particularly the Paracels uh Paracel Islands in um the South China Sea.

[00:26:05]Uh China describes the the islands and atolls as the Nansha and Xisha Islands, and they trace their claim to sovereignty back to well before the Tang Dynasty.

[00:26:20]Uh and they base that claim on archaeological artifacts retrieved from the oceans uh on uh historical documents and maps.

[00:26:30]So, they take the view that they have a very strong claim to actual sovereignty over that area.

[00:26:36]But, of course, so does Vietnam, so does Malaysia, so does Indonesia, so indeed did Taiwan itself. Uh so, um the the contest is highly complex, and I think Australia should butt out.

[00:26:51]>> Right. Well, let I For the moment, that's probably where we should conclude that part of the discussion from Carmen Lawrence.

[00:26:59]What do you think is behind the reduced emphasis by Australian governments on {inverted commas} mutually beneficial relations with China in favor of a muscular defense posture to contain China?

[00:27:14]>> The United States.

[00:27:16]>> Okay.

[00:27:17]>> [snorts] >> Well, given that the time has been reached, we want to thank you very much, Laurie, both your submission and the presentation. Thanks very much, John Lander.