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April 1, 2025
Tuesday 1 April 2025
Latika Bourke
The West Australian
Anthony Albanese has defended the right of the Chinese to deploy a research vessel capable of scanning the seabed for undersea data cables of the Australian coast.
The Prime Minister has said while he would “prefer” it wasn’t there, Australia did the same in the Taiwan Strait.
The Opposition hit out at the response, saying he had again erroneously compared the nation’s actions with China’s and demanded he apologise for claiming the Australian Defence Force behaved in the same way as the Chinese Communist Party.
The Tan Suo Yi Hao is currently positioned inside Australia’s exclusive economic zone off the South Australian coast. The zone rings the country and give Australia sovereign rights over conservation and exploration.
The ship has been following a similar course to the flotilla of Chinese Navy warships that recently circumnavigated the country after conducting live firing exercises in the Tasman Sea.
The vessel has a high-tech submersible that can be sent to the seabed to scan the area as well as look for undersea cables.
China last week unveiled technology to cut underwater cables and has been accused of doing this to deprive Taiwan of communications.
There have also been several high-profile incidents of Chinese commercial vessels passing over underwater cables in the Baltic that have subsequently been cut.
However, it is unclear if this was done deliberately.
The Tan Suo Yi Hao appears to be following the path of the undersea cable that links Sydney to Perth as well as the route of a cable that is being constructed that would link Sydney, Melbourne, Adelaide and Perth.
Following repeated questions about whether he was concerned about the vessel’s presence, if he had deployed any extra protections to defend Australia’s cables from sabotage and what he was doing in response, Mr Albanese said he would not “broadcast everything”.
“The Australian Defence Force is monitoring what is happening,” he said.
“It’s going from New Zealand, we expect it to go around to China.
“I would prefer that it wasn’t there, but we live in circumstances where just as Australia has vessels in the South China Sea and vessels in the Taiwan Strait and around a range of areas, this vessel is there.”
Shadow home affairs minister James Paterson said Mr Albanese owed the defence force an apology.
“The Prime Minister has baselessly compared China’s ‘unwelcome’ research vessel operating in Australia’s exclusive economic zone to our activities in the South China Sea in another false moral equivalence which slurs the professional men and women of the ADF,” he said.
“Bass Strait and the Great Australian Bight are not hotly contested international waterways with disputed legal claims. Nor has Australia been trawling the deep seabed off China’s coast with dualpurpose vessels.
“He should apologise for this appalling reflection on the ADF and for once stand up for Australia.”
Whilst China relations were a big feature of the 2022 election campaign, this is the first time national security has entered the Federal campaign.
The Opposition regards national security as a natural strength and is poised to announce that it will increase defence spending to a level that is higher than Labor’s commitment.