Sydney: Former Australian Prime Minister Paul Keating accused the Albanese government of bending to the will of the United States over AUKUS, local media reported.
Keating said in a TV programme that AUKUS is about the military control of Australia in American terms, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) reported on Saturday.
AUKUS is trilateral security partnership for the Indo-Pacific region between Australia, the United Kingdom, and the United States.
“The Albanese government and their policy is likely to turn Australia into the 51st state of the United States,” he said.
Keating said that Australia has got a continent of its own and a border with nobody, and the country was not likely to be threatened, Xinhua news agency reported quoting ABC.
“The only threat likely to come for us is because we have an aggressive ally, because of AUKUS,” Keating said.
He said that if Australia did not have an aggressive ally, like the United States, there would be nobody attacking Australia. Keating also explained that the United States is “aggressive” because it is trying to “superintend” China, and China has no strategic designs for Australia.
ABC also quoted Keating in its news report as saying that the strength and scale of the US basing in Australia will eclipse Australia’s own military capability such that Australia will be viewed in the United States as a continental extension of American power akin to that which it enjoys in Hawaii, Alaska and more limitedly in places like Guam.
“Such an outcome is likely to turn the Australian government, in defence and security terms, into simply the national administrator of what would be broadly viewed in Asia as a US protectorate,” he said.
–IANS
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