Kevin Rudd calls for greater Australian self-reliance while defending AUKUS and the US alliance, but key questions about sovereignty, deterrence and China remain unresolved.

Kevin Rudd’s address at the National Press Club on Thursday 10 September was fluent and knowledgeable, but contained some highly contestable assertions.

Dr Rudd was speaking in his capacity as CEO of the Asia Society. Dismissing doomsayers about Australia’s future, including the “howling banshees” of One Nation, he asserted nevertheless that everything adverse to Australia’s security was happening all at once. He singled out the rise of China, the AI revolution and climate change. The country, he said, faced unprecedented challenges, which required intelligence and courage to overcome.

Rudd asserted that despite smug boasts of some politicians to the contrary, Australia had never punched above its weight and was in fact risk averse. But incrementalism no longer worked. The nation urgently needed to become a substantial economic power in its own right – embrace a national industry policy, restart an automobile industry abandoned by Messrs Abbott and Hockey, become a world power in AI, go faster on renewable energy, expand critical mineral and rare earth extraction and processing, and develop Sydney as the hub of regional finance within a decade.

Regarding China, Rudd said that country’s stated economic ambition was to surpass the United States. In purchasing power parity terms it was a third bigger than the United States, was the world’s biggest manufacturer, spent more than the US on research and development, and........

© Pearls and Irritations