Prime Minister slams China over intercept of Australian helicopter
Flare up between Canberra and Beijing this morning. This Chinese fighter jet dropping flares dangerously close to an Australian Navy chopper. Have you picked up the phone yet and spoken to anyone? Well, we’ve made the appropriate diplomatic representations as you’d expect. We regard this as unprofessional and that it is unacceptable and we’ve made clear that view to Beijing, both through Beijing and also through Canberra. The trouble is PM, you’re coming up against China, a government that really doesn’t actually care what we think. I mean this, they were in international waters. You can’t get more brazen or more toxic, this behaviour from China. Well, that’s why it’s completely unacceptable. You have Australian Defence Force personnel engaged in work, importantly for the international community, are in international waters, international airspace, and they’re doing work to ensure that the sanctions that the world has imposed through the United Nations on North Korea, due to their intransigent and reckless behaviour, are enforced. And that is the work that Australian Defence Force personnel were engaged in and they shouldn’t have been at any risk while they engaged in that behaviour. Is it not appropriate to China? Sorry Don. Well, we’ve just made it very clear to China that this is unprofessional and that it’s unacceptable. This was a close thing and and and it was aggressive. Is it not appropriate for you to pick up the phone and say what is doing what? We’ve made it very clear, Carl, through all of our channels at all measures at at our disposal, including here publicly. I’ll give you the big tip. China will be very aware about this interview, alright. So and they’ll be very aware of what our views are. Oh, and so, so they should be. I mean, how can we as a country have any kind of relationship with China when they show such scant regard for the safety of our soldiers? Well, it’s important that we speak out when events like this occur. It’s important that we make clear our position, which has been done at the diplomatic levels, at government to government, but also defense to defense as well. And all of those avenues have been made clear. This issue we have made public in order to be able to speak out very clearly and unequivocally that this behaviour is unacceptable. Alright, so what’s China’s response been to what Australia said? Is there any word from them? Well, they haven’t responded publicly at this point in time. I expect that they will do so, but I think the Australian public would expect some form of explanation about how this could occur because it it was not behaviour that we expect. When Australia is going about playing a role as we do, an important role as good international citizens, That’s what we’re doing here in helping to impose the sanctions that have been put in place by the United Nations. Does this put in any jeopardy the Chinese President’s visit to Australia later this year? The Chinese president isn’t visiting later this year. Xi Jinping. I would expect to have some face to face engagement with him at the G20 meeting that will be held later this year. There’s the G20 and then the APEC meeting which are back-to-back meetings in that the the meeting season of this year, which will be around October, November.