This was published 2 years ago
Opinion
Politicising national security: The pedigree and pitfalls of wedging an opponent
By John Blaxland
The surprising intervention on the ABC’s 7.30 by director-general of security, Mike Burgess, declaring ASIO as apolitical followed provocative statements from both sides of politics evidently seeking to exploit national security for domestic political advantage. Burgess made clear: “That is not helpful to us.”
This was a rare and alarming intervention by a senior bureaucrat into the rough-and-tumble of domestic politics – one that points to an apparently dangerous breakdown in bipartisanship on national security.
ASIO director-general of security Mike Burgess made a rare public appearance this week, distancing the organisation from the political point-scoring in Canberra. Credit: Nine
Yet, there is a long pedigree of national security being politicised in the shadow of an election. Sometimes it has worked well to wedge the ALP. At other times, it has backfired on the Coalition. Throughout the 1950s and 1960s, prime minister Robert Menzies and his successors tended to play national security issues to their advantage.
The Coalition won the 1949 federal election as the Cold War was starting and when fears were rising over communist disruption following miners’ strikes linked to militant leftist politics. As the international polarisation increased with the Korean War (1950-1953), the 1951 signing of the ANZUS treaty helped allay Australian fears of abandonment by great and powerful friends.
The defection of KGB officer Vladimir Petrov and his cryptologist wife, Evdokia, in April 1954 was seen by many in the ALP to have been conveniently timed to bolster Menzies’ re-election prospects. In reality, as David Horner explained in The Spy Catchers, the coincidental timing happened to suit Menzies, and he readily exploited it for political advantage, but he was not so clever as to have masterminded the defection.
The Australian Communist Party meets in Sydney in 1949. Ever since those early days of the Cold War, national security has been used as a “wedge” issue in the nation’s political discourse. Credit:
With another approaching federal election in 1955, and the Royal Commission on Espionage concluded, the opposition leader, Labor’s Doc Evatt, lost credibility by citing a letter from the Soviet foreign minister, Molotov, declaring the espionage was faked.
For nearly two decades, the so-called domino theory (that hypothesised successive states to Australia’s north would fall to communism) was utilised by the Coalition to wedge the ALP politically as being soft on communism and therefore soft on national security.
That worked until the Vietnam War unravelled and the Cold War thawed. Opposition leader Gough Whitlam boldly went to Peking (Beijing) in July 1971. He returned to the mockery of Coalition prime minister Billy McMahon, who declared “it’s time to expose the shams and absurdities of his visit to China”. But just days later, US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger made a similar visit, bolstering Whitlam’s standing and humiliating out-of-touch McMahon. Playing on his slogan “it’s time”, Whitlam won the November 1972 election, after the Coalition’s attempt at wedging had failed spectacularly.
Whitlam’s short-lived government was removed by governor-general John Kerr in November 1975 and Labor was defeated by Malcolm Fraser in a landslide federal election at a time of financial crisis and when rumours circulated of Labor softness on the US alliance.
A decade later, ALP leader Bob Hawke came to office promising a more stable, reliable and long-lasting government. By adopting policies seen as pro-market, and promoting regional engagement and the US alliance, he put the Coalition off balance, and forced them out of power for more than a decade.
The advent of the so-called global war on terror following the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, meant security returned to its central place in Australia’s domestic political narrative. The 1999 East Timor crisis followed by prime minister John Howard’s invocation of the ANZUS Treaty in the days after the World Trade Centre attacks, rallied the Coalition’s political prospects. They also dashed the hopes of Labor leader Kim Beazley, a man seen by many as the best prime minister Australia never had.
Kevin Rudd’s 2007 victory was expected to provide a refreshing shift away from the Howard government’s close adherence to flawed US foreign and military policy priorities in the Middle East, most notably the decisions that contributed to the catastrophe in Iraq.
Rudd’s “here to help” line held for a while, but Labor’s generous and accommodating policies on border security were painted by the Coalition as too soft and blamed for generating a wave of opportunist people smuggling that resulted in many dying at sea. The electorate found that view credible and the Coalition was returned to office in 2013. The wedge had again worked for the Coalition.
In the years since then, both sides of politics have been careful to follow surprisingly similar lines.
The rise of China in the first decade of this century saw a bipartisan approach of cautious welcoming and accommodation while security ties with the US were maintained. That continued until President Xi Jinping began exercising his sharp power and practising his wolf warrior diplomacy – something which, once again, triggered a bipartisan consensus.
Today, Labor leader Anthony Albanese, from the ALP’s Left faction, has assiduously avoided taking positions that could see him portrayed as soft on national security, as some of his party’s previous opposition leaders were characterised. That is why the recent punch and counterpunch is surprising. Perhaps it speaks more to the Coalition’s insecurity following recent poor polling.
On balance, over the years, the Coalition has probably scored more “hits” by playing the national security card than Labor. But with great power contestation surging and a range of governance and environmental challenges complicating matters, the stakes are higher than they’ve been in living memory. Caution is called for – on both sides of politics. Seeing Australia as a test case, many abroad are watching to see how effective China’s sharp power and wolf-warrior diplomacy is at rendering asunder the bipartisanship on national security of recent years.
John Blaxland is Professor of International Security and Intelligence Studies in the Strategic and Defence Studies Centre, Coral Bell School of Asia and Pacific Affairs at the Australian National University.
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