The AUKUS spectre

When Covid came Eric Abetz, Joe McCarthy like, led from his Senatorial sinecure to conduct a “Loyalty Test” for three Chinese Australians appearing before a Parliamentary Inquiry hearing.

How could AUKUS be managed so that Chinese Australians would not have to endure the consequences of the next electioneering campaign shootout, or suffer from fallouts owing to our Virginia subs, built to hunt and kill China’s subs, should they venture into China’s defended coast? This is a possibly a natural progression from our current “freedom of navigation” posturing in the Taiwan Strait.

China and Chinese Australians get hitched together whenever our politicians toll the national security bell.

The continual demonisation of China as the reason for AUKUS will have an effect on Social Cohesion. We should remember that blaming China for Covid had the effect of giving permission to the populace to treat Chinese Australians as suspects requiring social retribution.

Likewise, the demonisation of Muslims since 9/11 is likely to have contributed to the Bondi attack on Jewish Australians. And the unconscionable Israeli killing of women and children and the bombing to rubble hospitals, housing and infrastructure in Gaza, are likely to have played a big part in the rise of Antisemitism in Oz and elsewhere in the West. In times like this, Israeli crimes seem to have visited upon Jewish Australians.

How can we manage AUKUS without giving permission to the populace to vent its frustrations, built up by decades of social and economic abandonment, upon the enviable Chinese Aussies living on the fat of the land?