My AUKUS: Scott Morrison describes battle between freedom and autocratic China

Morrison, who served as the 30th prime minister of Australia from 2018 to 2022, made the comments in one of his first appearances since leaving politics and taking up a non-executive vice chairman role with US-headquartered advisory and consulting firm American Global Strategies LLC.

Morrison, a founding member of the Quad Leaders Dialogue, made the comments while discussing his role in creating the AUKUS defence agreement, with retired head of MI6 Sir Richard Dearlove and American journalist Liz Landers during a One Decision podcast.

“The key point (of AUKUS) was China’s position in the Indo-Pacific. It had moved from what had been perceived in the previous decades as quite a benign one, and clearly, that wasn’t the case. Australia was subjected to some pretty serious coercion,” he said during the podcast on 15 February this year.

“China just constantly, just kept pushing out the limits of their exertion and coercion. Particularly in the South China Sea, they turned island atolls into stationary aircraft carriers while maintaining that these were peaceful installations, which was clearly nonsense.

“Their ambitions in the region, which have been rejected by all international authorities … it was only last year they were asserting things all the way down into Indonesia, for goodness’ sake.

“Their views about where their borders end they seek to continue to define, and not by the processes of the rules-based international order. There needs to be a credible, effective deterrent.”

Morrison, who was previously made a chief commander of the Legion of Merit by President Trump in December 2020, said he was a great admirer of both the Trump and Biden administrations.

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During the podcast, he also drew on his personal friendships with former Liberal Party leader Alexander Downer, former US President Donald Trump, former US vice-president Mike Pence, and former Japanese prime minister Shinzo Abe (deceased).

Morrison described the AUKUS defence agreement, rotations of US and UK submarines, and the future transfer of three Virginia Class submarines from the US in the 2030s as Australia’s “moon shot”.

“The AUKUS partnership delivered on one of the key capabilities we would need in Australians own interest, nuclear-powered submarines but also the ability for Australia to be a much better contributor and participate in the activities of like-minded interests in the region to provide stability,” he said.

“You can’t kid yourself; the idea that China was going to liberalise and democratise because it got rich proved to be one of the worst international relations assumptions that we have seen. That’s just what happened.

“Tiananmen Square (massacre in 1989) early on was a good indicator of that, but we ignored that and pressed on anyway.

“People have woken up to the risk of investing [in] China. For a long time, in the West, we just thought you could make a ton of money there and there’s no downside. Well, they can shut you down in the afternoon, they can arrest your people, you can not get visas and not get your money out. It’s a high-risk political environment for a western investor to be engaged.

“In the Indo-Pacific, we get that. I think, particularly in the US, there has been a massive enlightenment to that view, but I don’t think that is the case in the UK and Europe. We have seen a rather patchy view in the European Union. They are wrestling with the same thing, they can see themselves selling a lot of cars in China and getting a lot of access to the things China does.

“It has been a producer economy, a trading economy, it has been one where a lot of activity has been built in the property sector. The leveraging on that is opaque. It’s hard to know as an investor just how cooked things are (in China). I never used to believe the data we got on the Chinese economy when I was treasurer.

“The property sector linked to leveraging of local government bodies and financing mechanism, which approaches a Ponzi scheme when it comes to their infrastructure development. This can be a very dangerous cycle that they could find themselves in.

“This is a country going into population decline; it has its challenges with corruption as developing countries often do. The invincibility of the Chinese economy I’m not convinced of.

“History will judge whether this is the peak of the curve … and the Chinese military build-up is heavily dependent on their economic performance. There has been assumption about the absence of risk with China, which has been proven to be absolutely floored.”

During the podcast, fellow hosts Sir Dearlove and Landers described Morrison as incredibly chatty and direct, presenting an unvarnished free-market view of the world.

Morrison also drew on the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2019 and the responsibilities of the People’s Republic of China in preventing that pandemic.

“What happened in China unleashed calamity on all forms on the world, delivering death, destruction and poverty. They have never accounted for it,” he said.

“The thing that really set them (China) off most against me, perhaps, was that I had the audacity to suggest the World Health Organisation should be able to investigate and find out how this happened.

“Whether it was from a wildlife wet market [or] workers from some dark cave in China somewhere. I don’t believe it was deliberate.

“I stand by everything I said on all of that. I think the origins of that virus clearly came out of the PRC, and there has never been accountability for it from the PRC leadership; quite the opposite.

“When you think about the death and devastation it caused, it’s hard to get your head around it. It highlights how the PRC operates. People wonder why I wanted to get nuclear-powered submarines; well, just look at how these characters operate.

“We can hope to coexist in a peaceful way, but we cannot get over the fact that there is a fundamental and, I would argue, irreconcilable set of world views between us, like-minded partners and China.

“This is the big battle we face now, autocracy and freedom, and I’m for freedom.”