Paul Keating has declared that The Australian newspaper should be “contemptuously ignored” as the former Labor prime minister hit back at criticism of his plans to meet with China’s visiting foreign minister.
Keating, an outspoken opponent of the Australian government’s plans to acquire nuclear-powered submarines, also accused News Corp’s national broadsheet of being “trenchantly anti-Chinese”.
Keating levelled the criticism one year after he accused rival papers the Sydney Morning Herald and the Age of “the most egregious and provocative news presentation” in five decades for their “red alert” series about China.
The Australian newspaper was first to report that Chinese officials had invited Keating to a meeting with China’s foreign minister, Wang Yi, in Sydney later this week.
The report suggested that this could overshadow the Albanese government’s diplomatic agenda, because Keating’s recent public interventions on Australia’s foreign and defence policies had frustrated his Labor colleagues.
The report pointed out that Keating – who has denounced Aukus as “the worst international decision” by a Labor government since Billy Hughes tried to introduce conscription – had been praised by Beijing as a “voice of reason”.
In a statement issued after publication of the story on Monday, Keating confirmed that he had accepted “an unexpected invitation” from the Chinese foreign ministry to meet Wang at the end of his visit to Australia.
Keating said he had also received a communication from the Australian Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet “offering to facilitate the meeting and to make appropriate arrangements”.
He said the meeting was “hardly an ‘extraordinary intervention’ as reported in today’s Australian”, nor a “jarring addition” to Wang’s Australian visit.
Keating said: “What could be ‘jarring’ when meetings with the Australian Foreign Minister will have concluded and where the Australian government itself is offering to facilitate the meeting?
“Would The Australian so describe as ‘jarring’ and ‘extraordinary’ a similar invitation from the British Foreign Secretary to former Prime Minister Tony Abbott or Scott Morrison? Of course not.”
The Australian newspaper described the trip as “jarring” in light of the fact that Keating had, just a fortnight ago, accused the Australian foreign minister, Penny Wong, of being quick to “rattle the China can” while “sporting her ‘deeply concerned’ frown”.
Keating last year ridiculed Wong for “running around the Pacific islands with a lei around [her] neck handing out money”. Wong is scheduled to meet Wang for talks in Canberra on Wednesday, a day prior to the expected Keating meeting.
In his statement on Monday, Keating sought to minimise points of difference with the Australian government, saying he had “strongly supported” Anthony Albanese’s desire “to re-anchor Australian foreign policy in the region”.
Keating said he had also supported Wong “in her attempts to lower the loud hailer and ‘stabilise’ relations with China”.
“And, given the chance, I will be emphasising these points to Chinese foreign minister Wang Yi,” Keating said.
“Australia has moved substantially from the counterproductive baiting policy the Morrison government applied to China to now something much more civil and productive.”
Keating – who has previously said the fate of democratically governed Taiwan was “not a vital Australian interest” – took aim at the News Corp broadsheet for its “distorted report”.
“The Australian proselytises that Australia either is or could be a Chinese military target,” Keating said.
“But the same newspaper urges Australia to sell the Chinese ever more tonnages of iron ore, presumably so that China would have no trouble putting together the armaments of scale necessary to actually attack and damage us.
“This is how mixed up The Australian’s editorial policy is and why it should be ignored. More than that, contemptuously ignored.”
Comment has been sought from The Australian, but the paper’s North Asia correspondent, Will Glasgow, tweeted that Keating’s statement was issued “more than 36hrs after I contacted him” seeking comment.
“Keating objects to my characterisation of him as a critic of the Albanese government’s foreign policy,” Glasgow wrote in a post on X.
Glasgow reposted Keating’s previous statement – issued during the Australia-Asean special summit in Melbourne two weeks ago – as proof of “his most recent public deviation” from Wong.
That statement included the line that “the anti-China Australian strategic policy establishment” had been “feeling some slippage in its mindless pro-American stance and decided some new China rattling was overdue”.
Keating also said that the Malaysian prime minister, Anwar Ibrahim, had “dropped a huge rock into Wong’s pond by telling Australia not to piggyback Australia’s problems with China onto Asean”.
