‘Clean out ASIO’, Keating urges
Mr Keating says a Labor government would make ‘a huge shift’ in Australian-Chinese relations, while calling for a ‘clean out’ of spy agency ASIO. ‘I think what we have to do is recognise the legitimacy of China’, he tells the ABC. ‘China’s entitled to be there … The fact that 20 per cent of humanity has dragged itself from poverty, I mean, is this illegitimate? Of course it’s not illegitimate. It may not suit the United States as a second rate economic power in the world’. As for the security agencies that would be advising Bill Shorten as prime minister, he says: ‘You’d clean them out. You’d clean them out’.
Source: SMH
Prime Minister, Scott Morrison blew the whistle on Keating’s stupid comment…
Prime Minister Scott Morrison called for Mr Shorten to denounce Mr Keating’s comments, saying the agencies had prevented 15 terrorist attacks in Australia. “For what the Labor Party calls a Labor legend to go out there and attack the credibility of our security agencies that have been saving lives in this country, I think is very disappointing”, he told reporters
Source: 9News
and Plibersek responded:
Labor’s deputy leader Tanya Plibersek said there would ‘absolutely not’ be a full-scale clean-out under a Shorten government. She said Mr Keating did not run Labor policy, noting the opposition valued regular briefings it receives from agencies.
If the security agencies were sacked, nobody would be able to tell Tanya where China is.
Mr Morrison demanded Mr Shorten come clean about who would be home affairs minister in his government. ‘He should tell us who is going to be the home affairs minister if he is elected that will actually have responsibility for the security agencies’.
Dastyari?
Has this go something to do with it?
December, 2017: Foreign interference laws: Paul Keating may have to declare as foreign agent
Former Prime Minister Paul Keating might have to register on the Turnbull government’s agents of foreign influence list because he sits on an advisory council for a Chinese government development bank.
Source: SMH