The former Australian prime minister Paul Keating has accused two of the country’s biggest newspapers of “the most egregious and provocative news presentation” in five decades, after they published front-page stories warning the country faced war with China within three years.
The former Labor leader, who has long argued Australia should not be drawn into a war over the status of democratically governed Taiwan, took aim at the Sydney Morning Herald and the Age on Tuesday.
The papers published a special report based on assessments of five national security experts who, in a joint statement labelled “Red Alert”, said they believed Australia “faces the prospect of armed conflict in the Indo-Pacific within three years” but was not prepared for such a war.
Keating said on Tuesday: “Today’s Sydney Morning Herald and Age front-page stories on Australia’s supposed war risk with China represents the most egregious and provocative news presentation of any newspaper I have witnessed in over 50 years of active public life.
“It is way worse than the illustrated sampans shown to be coming from China in the buildup to the war in Vietnam in the 1960s.”
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The story was splashed on the front of the Sydney Morning Herald print edition under the headline “Red alert: War risk exposed”, while the Age used the title “Australia ‘must prepare’ for threat of China war”.
Both papers included a graphic showing 13 black aircraft flying from China, which was marked in red with the Chinese flag.
Keating added: “Apart from the outrageous illustrations of jet aircraft being shown leaving a profiled red-coloured map of China, the extent of the bias and news abuse is, I believe, unparalleled in modern Australian journalism.”
Nine – publisher of the two newspapers – issued a strong defence of its journalists on Tuesday afternoon.
“Mr Keating has indulged in personal slurs against the journalists at the Sydney Morning Herald and the Age instead of engaging in the substance of their reporting,” the executive editor, Tory Maguire, said in a statement.
“It’s not a useful contribution from someone well placed to have a meaningful impact on the conversation about our readiness to protect and defend Australia.
“Peter Hartcher and Matthew Knott are two of the country’s most highly respected journalists and we stand by their reporting and the expertise of the contributors to the challenging and thought-provoking Red Alert series.
“We note he had nothing to say when the Australian Broadcasting Corporation and Sky News Australia also recently examined the threat of conflict with China and our nation’s preparedness.”
The coverage to which Keating objected featured a panel of five national security experts, who warned of the risk of “a Chinese attack on Taiwan that sparks a conflict with the US and other democracies, including Australia”.
The panel said it based its assertions on Chinese president Xi Jinping’s aggressive stance and rapid military buildup. It also said Australia was not prepared for conflict and the federal government was “reluctant to openly identify the threat we face: an increasingly aggressive Communist China”.
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Xi told the 20th Communist party congress last year he would never rule out the use of force to achieve “reunification” with Taiwan, a self-governed democracy of 24 million people that he regards as central to his promise to achieve “national rejuvenation”.
Keating, who was prime minister from 1991 to 1996, is a vocal critic of the bipartisan consensus that has formed in Canberra about Australia’s security outlook and policies such as Aukus.
His latest criticism comes as Australia prepares this month to announce how it plans to acquire at least eight nuclear-powered submarines with help from the US and the UK.
At the National Press Club in November 2021, Keating ridiculed the Aukus submarine plan as “like throwing a handful of toothpicks at the mountain”.
He also urged Australia not to be drawn into a military engagement over Taiwan, “US-sponsored or otherwise”, and said Taiwan was “fundamentally a civil matter” for China. He also referred to Taiwan as China’s “front doorstep”.
Taiwan’s ministry of foreign affairs responded to Keating’s intervention in 2021 by saying a crisis in the Taiwan Strait was “by no means a domestic matter between Chinese, and the security of the Taiwan Strait involves the stability and prosperity of the Indo-Pacific region, but also the global peace, stability and development”.
In addition to the looming Aukus announcement, the Albanese government is working on its response to a sweeping defence strategic review overseen by the former defence chief Angus Houston and the former Labor defence minister Stephen Smith.
A declassified version of the review and the government’s response to it are both due to be released in April, in the leadup to a May budget that is expected to see an overall growth in defence funding.
The defence minister and deputy prime minister, Richard Marles, has repeatedly said Australia “is facing the most challenging and complex set of strategic circumstances we’ve seen since the second world war”.
Last week Marles said China was “driving the largest conventional military buildup we’ve seen anywhere in the world since the second world war – and much of this buildup is opaque”.