The Australian labels Albanese a “jellyfish” in the face of Chinese naval vessels, ironically the barbs came from a faceless columnist. Kudos to The Australian for keeping tabs on a US nuclear submarine in our waters, but the headline act for the Murdoch masthead was hosting its own event for weapons makers and China hawks.
A wobbly story
There is nothing wrong with newspapers publishing editorials without identifying the author, that’s what The Mocker column in The Australian is all about. However, just because it’s opinion doesn’t mean it does not rely on heavily biased and poorly informed opinions to get its message across.
This week (05/03/25) the column declared, “China’s navy mission reveals Pacific’s biggest jellyfish: the Albanese”. It’s classic Murdoch copy, to call it thinly veiled LNP propaganda would be an insult to thin veils—veils, I’m sure, Murdoch hacks would insist are produced by Uyghur child labourers in concentration camps in Xinjiang.
The Mocker writes, “The Chinese government sent a flotilla of warships, equipped with advanced technology, to sail 10,000km to Australia on a fact-finding mission. They found out what they wanted to know… You do not need a sophisticated sonar or a naval task force to work out that Australia is home to the Pacific’s biggest jellyfish, otherwise known as Anthony Albanese. Anyone here could have told them that”.
The Chinese weren’t testing Albo or Australia, as pointed out in last week’s column, the Chinese PLA Navy ships sailed across the high seas to annoy Australia. For literally decades the Australian navy and air force has deployed assets to skirt China’s territorial boundaries. This was payback.
The story goes on, “Albanese has such a great relationship with China that he did not even get a phone call to let him know it would conduct live-fire exercises just a few hundred kilometres off the east coast of Australia. I find that extraordinary.”
Does Albo get on the phone to Xi Jinping every time a frigate sails out of Sydney Harbour? Would a future prime minister Peter Dutton get on the phone?
Unlike the entire Australian mainstream media, military industry news site, Naval News reported (27/02/25) that the live fire exercises were limited to the firing of guns that were pointed at the sea, not at passenger airliners as was suggested in an earlier report in The Australian. The missile proposition was backed up by The Mocker, who wrote, “That must have been news to the airline carriers that hurriedly had to divert a total of 49 flights, including several midair. No big deal, you say?”
By the time Murdoch’s wobbly anonymous columnist had penned their article it was abundantly clear that no missiles were fired and there was no threat to commercial air traffic. As The Mocker continued to make a mockery of the truth, the column insisted that the Australian Defence Force’s surveillance systems had failed, and it only knew about the live fire exercises from a Virgin airlines pilot.
The Virgin Australia pilot found out about the exercise because the Chinese navy had sent out a broadcast, in English, over an international open radio channel. It had been reported almost a week earlier that the three ships were navigating around Australia waters, so no surprises, no Albo cover ups or the like.
Naval News’s defence analyst aptly summed it up as a Chinese mission to “poke Canberra in the eye”.
Chinese ships down under with US subs even further down under
As the three Chinese naval vessels moved, without further incident, to waters off the coast of Western Australia only The Australian (03/03/25) reported that we’d deployed some countermeasures. That countermeasure was the Virginia Class nuclear submarine USS Minnesota which has been lazily taking in the sights at the HMAS Stirling naval base outside of Perth.
The Australian got its scoop from a social media post with video showing the vessels departing port.
Joining the Minnesota, HMAS Hobart and an unidentified Collins Class RAN submarine slipped out of Stirling to keep tabs on the Chinese. There’s no shortage of irony here when the mainstream media lambasts China for the lack of transparency over its naval excursions, yet our navy send out subs in response without telling anybody. What’s more, with the exception of one report, our media is totally incurious about the movements of a strategic US naval asset in our waters.
Defending Australia or defending vested interests
This week The Australian acted as enabler to defence interests by hosting the “Defending Australia” forum in Adelaide. Jointly organised by The Australian and Murdoch’s Adelaide Advertiser, the talkfest attracted the top political players from both sides, including Defence Minister Richard Marles and shadow defence minister Andrew Hastie.
The Australian promoted the event as a gathering of “the nation’s top defence decision makers together to discuss AUKUS, submarines and the Chinese warships off the nation’s coastline.”
Jointly sponsored by, Korean weapons maker, Hanwha Systems; Britain’s BAE Systems; the Australian Submarine Corporation; and Deloitte, it was the legacy media propping up the defence industry narrative. What happened to the media whose responsibility was once to hold power to account, but now hoists power on its shoulders allowing them to preach to the masses?
In a follow up, timed nicely with the end of the forum, The Australian (05/03/25) announces that, “Australia launches industry boost to support AUKUS as China hikes defence spending.”
In this despatch of vital national interest, it’s reported: “The Albanese government is launching a game plan to bolster industry as Australia inches closer to building a fleet of AUKUS submarines against a backdrop of soaring defence spending by China.
“The AUKUS Submarine Industry Strategy targets key areas to prepare for the 20,000 direct jobs the nuclear-powered fleet is estimated to create over the next three decades.”
Where’s the analysis or even the slightest effort to substantiate the claims of this government announcement?
20,000 jobs, a number that came from Defence Minister Marles, is a joke. It’s less than one-fifth of the McDonald’s workforce in Australia. The only similarities are that the figureheads of McDonald’s and the Defence Ministry are both clowns.
It was reported Marles’s jobs boast was backed up by real numbers—a $262 million federal investment into Australian AUKUS jobs. Surely, they jest. Four weeks ago, Marles handed an $800 million cheque to the US Defense Department, a downpayment on billions Australia will provide to bolster the US’s submarine building capacity.
Marcus Reubenstein is an independent journalist with more than twenty-five years of media experience, having previously been a staffer with a federal Liberal Party senator from 1992 to 1994. He spent five years at Seven News in Sydney and seven years at SBS World News where he was a senior correspondent. As a print journalist he has contributed to most of Australia’s major news outlets. Internationally he has worked on assignments for CNN, Eurosport and the Olympic Games Broadcasting Service. He is the founder and editor of Asian business new website, APAC Business Review.