Speaker 1: From The Australian. Here's what's on the front. I'm Claire Harvey.
Speaker 1: It's Friday, June sixth, twenty twenty five. Australia's guidelines on
Speaker 1: transgender kids have been slated by a family court judge
Speaker 1: who has removed a child from a mother who wanted
Speaker 1: doctors to prescribe puberty blockers. Australia's warplanes and navy ships
Speaker 1: are vulnerable to the same kind of drone attack that
Speaker 1: Ukraine successfully used to destroy Russian fighter jets. That's the
Speaker 1: warning from defense experts. Those exclusives are live now at
Speaker 1: the Australian dot com. Dot Au warnings this week that
Speaker 1: a war over Taiwarn is getting closer. America wants Australia
Speaker 1: to spend much more on defense, but Anthony Albanezi says
Speaker 1: that won't be happening today. What's really going on beneath
Speaker 1: the talk of war? Foreign editor Greg Sheridan joins us
Speaker 1: Donald Trump's Defense secretary. Pete Higseth is one of those
Speaker 1: colorful characters who, it seems can only exist in American politics.
Speaker 1: A former soldier and Fox News presenter who had to
Speaker 1: fight off allegations about his past to be confirmed as
Speaker 1: a member of cabinet.
Speaker 2: If there's one thing I've sort of been offended by,
Speaker 2: I don't get offended by much.
Speaker 1: Is this idea that.
Speaker 2: I don't take classification or I don't take clearances seriously.
Speaker 2: Nobody takes it more seriously than me.
Speaker 1: The job makes him one of the most significant figures
Speaker 1: in world affairs, complete with an American flag handkerchief in
Speaker 1: the breast pocket of his tailor made suits, and he's
Speaker 1: just rocked geopolitics with a blunt declaration about China.
Speaker 2: Beijing is credibly preparing to potentially huse military force to
Speaker 2: alter the balance of power in the Indo Pacific.
Speaker 3: It's public that she has ordered.
Speaker 2: His military to be capable of invading Taiwan by twenty
Speaker 2: twenty seven.
Speaker 1: Hexseth is making a frank request of Australia and the
Speaker 1: rest of America's allies pony up with more cash to
Speaker 1: defend yourselves and Taiwan. Hegseth wants allies like Australia to
Speaker 1: spend three point five percent of their GDP on defense.
Speaker 1: For US, that would be a seventy five percent uplift
Speaker 1: on our current spend. Greg Sheridan is the Australian's Foreign editor. Now, Greg,
Speaker 1: one of the things we like to do on the
Speaker 1: front is dig through what these colorful characters like Pete
Speaker 1: Heigseth say. What's your interpretation of what he really wanted
Speaker 1: allies like Australia to hear from that speech that he made.
Speaker 3: One of the things he said was that there is
Speaker 3: potentially an Chinese military action against Taiwan. Shijinping himself has
Speaker 3: told the Chinese military that they need to be ready
Speaker 3: to be able to take Taiwan by force if they
Speaker 3: so decide by twenty twenty seven. Nothing is inevitable. And
Speaker 3: one of the reasons Hegseth would have said it was
Speaker 3: to make it less likely. The more you convinced the
Speaker 3: Chinese that the Americans might respond that there'd be a
Speaker 3: very big cost if the Chinese did this, the less
Speaker 3: likely they are to do it. So Hegseth is a
Speaker 3: colorful character, but he is actually in accordance with what
Speaker 3: previous senior American officials under the Biden administration were also
Speaker 3: saying about China and Taiwan.
Speaker 1: Donald Trump's political brand for a very long time has
Speaker 1: really been isolationist that America would look after itself first
Speaker 1: and couldn't be relied on any more to be the
Speaker 1: world's policeman solving problems everywhere else. That had been interpreted,
Speaker 1: probably before or the US presidential election, as a signal
Speaker 1: that Taiwan might be on its own and that the
Speaker 1: US might look the other way if China invaded. What
Speaker 1: do you think we can say now about what Trump
Speaker 1: and hexth really think.
Speaker 3: America has always said that China should not use force
Speaker 3: to change the status quo. The Australian government says that too,
Speaker 3: But there always was a little bit of strategic ambiguity
Speaker 3: about whether America would actually automatically military come to Taiwan's
Speaker 3: aid because America also wanted to constrain Taiwan about what
Speaker 3: it did. It didn't want Taiwan to declare de jura independence,
Speaker 3: even though Taiwan has only been ruled by Beijing for
Speaker 3: four years since eighteen ninety five. But then some presidents
Speaker 3: defy the principle of ambiguity. Joe Biden. The one clear
Speaker 3: thing he used to say in his very confused presidency
Speaker 3: was that he would come to the military aid of Taiwan,
Speaker 3: and his spokespeople would then rush out and say no,
Speaker 3: the President didn't mean to say that, and he wasn't
Speaker 3: changing our policy of strategic ambiguity. But in fact, I
Speaker 3: give Biden more credit than that. I think Biden was
Speaker 3: using his dodderiness as a cover to send a clear
Speaker 3: warning to Beijing. If you move on Taiwan, we'll move
Speaker 3: on you. And going to war with the United States
Speaker 3: is a very dawting prospect. Now, Trump has always been
Speaker 3: reluctant to take any military action, But now everybody accuses
Speaker 3: Trump of being a bit of a hypocrite. The so
Speaker 3: called taco trade. Trump always chickens out. If one thing
Speaker 3: could ensure that Trump one day won't chicken out, it's
Speaker 3: being accused that he always will chicken out. And I
Speaker 3: think in the first administration he took military action against
Speaker 3: ISIS and against Iranian military commanders to show that he could,
Speaker 3: and in the second administration he's taken military action against
Speaker 3: the Hooties to show that he can. He obviously would
Speaker 3: hate a war with China, so would any civilized human being.
Speaker 3: In the past that he probably wouldn't do military intervention,
Speaker 3: He'd do economic intervention. He'd crush China economically. So Trump,
Speaker 3: I think we can say is sending out ambiguous messages.
Speaker 3: We don't know how he would react to Chinese military
Speaker 3: action against Taiwan, but it's not the worst thing that
Speaker 3: the Chinese don't know either. They could take military action
Speaker 3: against Taiwan confident that Trump won't react, or they know
Speaker 3: there's a chance they'll get that calculation wrong, and then
Speaker 3: they would be in a military conflict with the United States.
Speaker 3: And having that degree of uncertainty in the Chinese mind
Speaker 3: is perhaps not altogether a bad thing.
Speaker 1: How do you think the changing landscape in Ukraine, where
Speaker 1: Trump is trying and failing to negotiate a peace, influences
Speaker 1: Americas thinking about China and Taiwan.
Speaker 3: I think at one level, you can certainly say that
Speaker 3: if the West had been completely weak on Ukraine, it
Speaker 3: would have convinced the Chinese that the West will never intervene.
Speaker 3: Taiwan is inherently a very difficult island to invade, but
Speaker 3: Taiwan is also a difficult place to resupply for its
Speaker 3: allies because you'd have to come in against Chinese sea
Speaker 3: and air blockades. The only nation that could do that
Speaker 3: is the United States. The United States could break through
Speaker 3: any Chinese blockade, but it would be a very bloody business.
Speaker 3: The Chinese, of course, may take military action against Taiwan.
Speaker 3: Far short of invasion, they may simply blockade the island
Speaker 3: and try to sort of, so to speak, starvan into submission.
Speaker 3: I mean. The Americans in the Indo Pacific Command in
Speaker 3: Hawaii have developed battle plans for creating a healthscape for
Speaker 3: the Chinese, where through drones and missiles, the Americans could
Speaker 3: attack a thousand Chinese targets a day. This is really
Speaker 3: an incalculable potential conflict and the consequences for all of us,
Speaker 3: including for Australia, would be utterly horrendous. And the best
Speaker 3: way to avoid it is to convince the Chinese that
Speaker 3: it's too costly, that they'd be better off not doing
Speaker 3: it than engaging in that uncertainty coming up.
Speaker 1: So why don't we just spend more on defense? One
Speaker 1: thing that's loud and clear from Pete Hexf and Donald
Speaker 1: Trump is that they want all their allies, including Australia,
Speaker 1: to spend a lot more on defense. Anthony o Aneasy
Speaker 1: scene very quick to shut that down.
Speaker 3: Now, what we'll do is well determine our defense policy,
Speaker 3: and we've invested just across the fall it's an additional
Speaker 3: ten billion dollars in defense.
Speaker 1: Do we need to get to three point five percent
Speaker 1: of GDP as a defense spend to keep ourselves safe?
Speaker 1: Gregan also to participate in a US let alliance.
Speaker 3: Clear the amount of money we spend on defense is
Speaker 3: a joke. We have some symbolic capabilities, we have no
Speaker 3: capability to defend ourselves. We are one hundred percent reliant
Speaker 3: on the Americans. We won't take responsibility for ourselves, we
Speaker 3: won't take responsibility for anybody else, and we just believe
Speaker 3: the Americans will always win. They'll always be there, they'll
Speaker 3: always be committed to our security, and they'll always take
Speaker 3: care of us. Next year, the federal government'll spend seven
Speaker 3: hundred and seventy seven billion dollars. We currently spend fifty
Speaker 3: five billion on defense. If we went up from two
Speaker 3: to two and a half percent of GDP, you'd have
Speaker 3: to add another thirteen billion, and that would be very
Speaker 3: vital money. Because we have no ammunition, we have no missiles,
Speaker 3: we have no drones, we have no counter drones. The
Speaker 3: Ukrainians have just shown us what you can do with drones.
Speaker 3: They've destroyed billions of dollars of Russian warplanes with smart drones,
Speaker 3: instead of which we spend one hundred years purchasing three
Speaker 3: exquisite ships, each worth twenty billion dollars or something, so
Speaker 3: you can't possibly send them into battle, because if you
Speaker 3: lose one, you've lost a third of your navy. And
Speaker 3: the design of that is so that we can make exquisite,
Speaker 3: tiny niche deployments with the Americans in expeditionary operations in
Speaker 3: the Middle East or somewhere else. It's not to defend ourselves,
Speaker 3: it's not to be a credible alliance partner. But one
Speaker 3: day the Americans will say to themselves, you know what,
Speaker 3: if the Australians aren't interested in defending themselves, we aren't
Speaker 3: interested in defending them either, and they'll go home. And
Speaker 3: then we have no capacity at all. Where the thirteenth
Speaker 3: or fourteenth biggest economy in the world. If we put
Speaker 3: our minds to it, we could certainly produce an asymmetric
Speaker 3: defense which would make it very difficult for any power,
Speaker 3: even a superpower, to come and do us harm. We
Speaker 3: haven't done any of that. It's just an act of
Speaker 3: gross national irresponsibility.
Speaker 1: Greg. You always managed to make me laugh even when
Speaker 1: we're talking about military sustainment or nuclear armourged and so
Speaker 1: thank you very much. We really appreciate your time. Greg
Speaker 1: Sheridan is The Australian's Foreign editor. You can read his
Speaker 1: analysis and all the latest on world affairs anytime at
Speaker 1: the Australian dot com dot au