When three Chinese warships sailed through the Tasman Sea last month, then around Australia, the greater surprise was not their arrival but the hysteria in their wake.
Peter Dutton, Australia’s opposition leader – and very possibly prime minister within weeks – pledged A$3 billion to buy another 28 F-35 jet fighters from the US, taking Australia’s fleet to 100.
Judith Collins, New Zealand’s Defence Minister, grimly warned the Chinese fleet had weapons well within range of Australia’s populous east coast. “They’re not telling us what they’re planning,” Collins fretted, as the fleet sailed the furthest south China’s warships have ever travelled along eastern Australia.
Mike Pezzullo, until 15 months ago the all-powerful chief of Australia’s mega Department of Home Affairs, wrote that one of China’s motivations was rehearsing war against Australia.
Beijing would have been elated. The flotilla – a miniscule portion of China’s 500-strong combat fleet – had spooked Australia and New Zealand. Mission handsomely accomplished.
What do Canberra and Wellington expect if they continue, at the unwritten bidding of the US, to send their naval ships into waters close to China, such as the contested Taiwan Strait? Or, in Australia’s case, also its P8 maritime surveillance aircraft, of which New Zealand has four.
HMNZS Aotearoa sailed through the contested waterway alongside Australia’s HMAS Sydney last September – the first time a New Zealand Navy ship had sailed through the Taiwan Strait since 2017 – in what Collins said then was “a routine activity consistent with international law”.
Decoded, that meant chest-beating on New Zealand’s part to demonstrate solidarity with its defence partner, Australia.
Beijing has now shown how easily it can play the same game. Doubtless, it will soon be back and no one should be surprised if the next Chinese naval fleet to head far south is larger.
Australia’s and New Zealand’s defence chiefs won’t be so anguished as their political masters about China’s actions: Beijing has bolstered the case for the rapid replacement of New Zealand’s nearly 30-year-old Anzac frigates and for Australia to accelerate its own programme to replace the same vessels. Both navies acquired Anzac frigates in the 1990s in a rare period of deep defence procurement co-operation.
If Collins is dinkum about her intention to create an Anzac force by increasing the interoperability of New Zealand’s forces with Australia’s, then New Zealand should be seriously considering again acquiring the same new frigates as its trans-Tasman ally. In November, Canberra announced there were two contenders for its 11 new general purpose frigates – Japan’s Mogami and Germany’s MEKO A-200 frigates. Given the likely savings a joint order should yield, that’s a boat New Zealand should not miss.
Similarly, there is a case for New Zealand and Australia to combine the surveillance operations of their fleets of Poseidon maritime patrol aircraft by forming a joint surveillance force that shares aircraft – akin to the North American Aerospace Defense Command, under which the US and Canada combine missions to patrol the seas and the skies to the north.
A joint air surveillance force tasked with monitoring the northern approaches to Australia would likely be more palatable to Kiwis than pushing their more offensive forces closer to Australia’s. Moreover, the assistance of New Zealand’s new Poseidon aircraft would greatly ease Australia’s northern surveillance burden – which New Zealand has a vital interest in seeing maintained.
When the Chinese arrived last month, New Zealand dispatched a naval vessel and a Poseidon aircraft to aid Australia. The Chinese not only fired missiles into the Tasman, they launched a long overdue step-up of its defenders’ co-operation.
New Zealander Bernard Lagan is the Australian correspondent for The Times, London.
