Audio excerpt — Anthony Albanese:

“Australia and New Zealand ships and P8 aircrafts have been monitoring the Chinese fleet while they have been travelling down the coast of Australia, off the coast.”

SAM:

So we saw a flotilla of three ships, a large destroyer, a very new vessel of the type 55, the Wren high class. We also saw a frigate and then a supply ship alongside to keep the destroyers and the frigate fuelled and armed and fed.

DANIEL:

Sam Roggeveen is Director of the Lowy Institute's International Security Program.

Over the past month, he’s been watching as a flotilla of Chinese navy ships sailed around Australia.

They fired live shots and disrupted flights out of Sydney airport.

Audio excerpt — Anthony Albanese:

“It is the case that the notice was given. When that occurs, airlines are notified and stay out of the area.”

SAM:

It was international waters and the Chinese were doing nothing illegal. But nevertheless, it was pretty provocative, in my view, and could easily have been avoided if the Chinese had wanted to. It did excite a lot of reaction in the Australian media.

Audio excerpt — New Reporter 1:

“Why is the Chinese Navy here and should we be worried?”

Audio excerpt — New Reporter 2:

“Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has assured the nation a flotilla of Chinese warships is being closely watched.”

Audio excerpt — New Reporter 3:

“China's Ambassador to Australia says there is no need for his country to apologise.”

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DANIEL:

The voyage came at a time when Australia’s ability to rely on the United States is questionable and raises concerns about whether we’re prepared to handle our own security in the event of an attack.

From Schwartz Media, I’m Daniel James. This is 7am.

Today, Sam Roggeveen on why the Chinese military circled Australia and what we should do about it.

It’s Friday, March 21.

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DANIEL:

Sam, China sent one of the largest warships in the world, equipped with guided missiles, to perform drills off Australia’s coast. So, should we be scared?

SAM:

No we shouldn't. We don't need to be scared. But nevertheless, because I think this is so novel – we'd never seen anything like this before – it excited a lot of reaction in Australia. But I mean, if you’re Taiwan or if you’re Japan, for instance, this stuff is commonplace and it barely provides a headline. And Australia does it all the time. We often sail far to the north and our navy sometimes sails through the Taiwan Strait, for instance. So we shouldn't be too put off by that. You know, the opposition defence spokesman, Andrew Hastie, referred to this as gunboat diplomacy and that's true.

Audio excerpt — Andrew Hastie on Sky News:

“This is a signal from the Chinese military that they have a blue water navy and they’re prepared to flex their muscles in our region. This is gunboat diplomacy.”

SAM:

But gunboat diplomacy really only works if the nation that's being coerced is so worried about the force that can be used against it that it actually kind of gives in, it caves in. But the Chinese destroyer in the flotilla can't actually project overwhelming force against Australia. It carries a few dozen missiles that could destroy a few buildings on Australian soil in war time. But that's about it and that's not a huge return, given the expense and the risk that China would be taking if it ever used a fleet like this in war time. And by risk, of course, I mean the fact that Australia is actually quite capable of sinking a flotilla like this. We have fairly advanced capabilities. I'd argue we need more and we need a better focus on anti-ship capabilities. But we do have a very modern Air Force that's capable of presenting a serious threat to a flotilla of this kind.

DANIEL:

So what's the message China's actually trying to send? I mean, are these acts of provocation or are they acts of defence? What is the message they're actually trying to send some of these countries, including Australia?

SAM:

Well, again, we do this sort of thing ourselves. So it's worth starting an answer to that question by asking, well, what is it that we are trying to do when we do this? Now, the situations are not quite analogous. One of the things that Australia is trying to do when we send warships into the South China Sea, for instance, is to make a legal point that China's claims to those waters, as being Chinese territorial waters, are wrong and that we don't accept them. Now, in the case of the Chinese flotilla sailing off the coast of Australia, nobody has any legal dispute with those waters, so China is not trying to make a legal point. It's more a point about, one, its capabilities. We can do this and so we choose to do it. And secondly, I think, to send a message that the Pacific Ocean is no longer an American lake. That ever since the Cold War, America has been a dominant maritime power in East Asia and China is telling us that actually that time is over now.

DANIEL:

If that’s the case, that America is no longer dominant in Asia, that's obviously significant for Australia. That’s happening at a time when Donald Trump is walking away from some of America’s traditional allies. We’ve seen it most recently with how Trump is handling Ukraine and Zelensky. So what do you think this means for Australia and how much we can rely on the United States now?

SAM:

Well, actually, I prefer to start in a slightly different place, which is to separate this from Donald Trump. And what we can see, actually, if we take a slightly longer historical view, is now 30 plus years of evidence that the United States is not fully committed to its allies in Asia. Certainly rhetorically, it remains committed. Every US president since the end of the Cold War has talked about the importance of Asia for American prosperity. And since the George W Bush administration, they've talked increasingly about China as an adversary. But one thing that hasn't happened is that the United States has backed up that rhetoric with, for instance, actual military forces. So the military forces that America has committed to Asia are now roughly the same in number as they were in 1991.

Trump, I think he's important of course. I don't mean to dismiss this presidency, but really, Trump is not so much changing that picture. It's just accelerating the relative decline of American power in Asia.

But I do think the direction of American policy, whether it's more aggressive or actually quite accommodationist, that has really serious implications for Australia. In both cases, I think, it means Australia has a good argument for behaving more independently.

DANIEL:

Coming up the break – what Australia needs to defend ourselves.

RUBY:

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DANIEL:

Sam, you’ve outlined this long term trend when it comes to America’s diminishing commitment to maintaining a strong presence in the Pacific, long before Donald Trump arrived in the White House. But what have we seen from this administration when it comes to a stance on China?

SAM:

Well, it's not clear how this administration views the contest with China, because there are a group within the Trump administration known as the prioritises. These are people like Pete Hegseth, the defence secretary, JD Vance, the vice president, and Marco Rubio, the secretary of state, who say, look, America's overcommitted in Europe and in the Middle East. We simply can't afford to do all that anymore. We have to focus on China, which is the main adversary.

Audio excerpt — Marco Rubio:

The Communist Party of China leads the PRC, is the most potent and dangerous near-peer adversary this nation has ever confronted. They have elements that the Soviet Union never possessed. They are a technological adversary and competitor, an industrial competitor, an economic competitor, a geopolitical competitor, a scientific competitor now in every realm.”

SAM:

And yet there's also another group that are simply not that committed to competition against China. They certainly feel there needs to be a competition with China on an economic level. But whether they have any commitment to the strategic contest with China for military and diplomatic supremacy, that's an opening question. And that group, I would argue, is headed by President Trump himself. I just don't think there's any evidence that he sees value in staging some kind of Cold War style military strategic contest against China. Either way, I think, Australia needs to posture for a future in which we have to behave more independently. We have to be capable of strong, independent action.

DANIEL:

Okay, so what does that look like?

SAM:

Well, I wrote a book in 2023 that recommended what I called an echidna strategy. And basically what it calls for is, in a way, a kind of return to an earlier view that dates from the late 1970s of Australian defence, where we basically we consecrated this idea of defending Australia by defending the air and maritime approaches to Australia. That's an idea that went slightly out of fashion during the global war on terrorism. And now, in the era of AUKUS, it's actually been effectively abandoned as well, because AUKUS, the nuclear submarine project, is an attempt to not defend Australia's air and sea approaches but to defend Australia by essentially supporting America's efforts to uphold its preferred order in the Asian region by operating submarines that can sail, you know, thousands of kilometres away and even fire missiles onto the Chinese landmass. So I want to return to that earlier doctrine where we focus on the air and sea approaches to Australia, and where we basically make it impossible for any adversary to operate its ships and its aircraft safely in those areas. And that's an achievable task. Even in an era where we can have far less confidence in America as an ally, Australia can independently defend itself if it adopts an echidna strategy.

DANIEL:

And so what kind of escalation in our sort of capability would we need, just to defend Australia as a landmass alone?

SAM:

Well, a lot, a lot more capability to shoot down aircraft and sink ships. That's basically it. Now, there are a lot of ways to do that. The big talking point in Australian defence policy, the perennial debate is submarines and submarines are very useful for sinking ships, but they're not the only way to do it. There are much cheaper ways to achieve the same effect and we do that by purchasing a lot of highly advanced and stealthy missiles that can be mounted on aircraft and can be mounted on diesel submarines. We should also be focusing on mine warfare. And we need capabilities to defend ourselves against incoming missiles. Not just slow cruise missiles, but fast hypersonic missiles or ballistic missiles. Our northern bases are not well protected in that regard. But again, with those kinds of improvements and with that refocus, I think it's perfectly possible for Australia to mount a plausible defence even without American help.

DANIEL:

So with that in mind, how would you characterise our approach at this point? What are your thoughts on AUKUS and, specifically, our plan to have nuclear submarines as part of our capability?

SAM:

I tend to think that for a middle power, such as Australia, when we pursue a strategy like that, we are escalating and when you escalate against a great power, you lose. We're far better off pursuing capabilities that keep any dispute or any conflict at a much lower level and we leave it up to the adversary to escalate if they choose to. So what we should be focusing on is, is an ability to absorb punishment if we have to, and to protect the continent from military attack. But I think it's counterproductive to pursue capabilities that actually threaten China's territory and its key interests.

I think Australia's learned some appropriate lessons here from the economic pressure campaign that we suffered from 2019 to 2022. And in that campaign, despite all the pressure that China applied by, you know, imposing tariffs and other sanctions against our exports, Australia never retaliated. Our exporters were able to find new markets for their products. And so effectively, the Chinese pressure campaign failed. And at a certain point when our government changed in 2022, the Chinese recognised this and their policy changed. So I think the appropriate lesson from that is, you don't need to escalate and you don't need to make a lot of fuss. You just need to build a strong defence with an ability to absorb pressure.

DANIEL:

Sam, thanks so much for your time and for your analysis.

SAM:

Thanks, Daniel. Appreciate it.

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DANIEL:

Also in the news...

Peter Dutton and Anthony Albanese have both vowed to protect the pharmaceutical benefits scheme, saying medicines on the scheme will never become a bargaining chip in trade negotiations with US President Donald Trump.

The assurances come after a powerful drugs lobby in the US asked President Trump to put tariffs on Australian pharmaceutical imports to the US, arguing the PBS is “discriminatory” and threatens billions of dollars in lost sales for American drug makers.

And,

At least six Australian universities have had American research funding paused or cancelled since president Trump took office, the ABC has reported.

Australian universities received about $400 million dollars in US government funding last year, making it Australia’s largest research partner.

According to the ABC, American government staff are now flagging all research grants with a foreign partner, meaning they will be reviewed and could be cancelled.

I’m Daniel James, this is 7am. And tomorrow I’m bringing you a fascinating conversation with pollster and political strategist Kos Samaras. He lays out exactly how polling works and which group of Australians is ultimately going to decide the outcome of the upcoming election. See you then.

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