Paul Keating (centre) took aim at ASIO’s Mike Burgess and Foreign Minister Penny Wong.Credit:Fairfax Media
Declaring that Albanese should have fired Burgess,Office of National Intelligence chief Andrew Shearer and former Home Affairs Department secretary Mike Pezzullo when he came to power,Keating said:“These people display utter contempt for the so-called stabilisation process that the prime minister had decided upon and has progressed with China,and will do anything to destabilise any meaningful rapprochement.
“Burgess runs the primary goon show while Shearer does all in his power to encourage Australia into becoming the 51st state of the United States.”
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Describing Burgess as the government’s “resident conjuror”,Keating pointed to astory by this masthead revealing that China was the unnamed nation,referred to by Burgess in aspeech last week, running a spy network in Australia known as the A-team.
“The kabuki show runs thus:Burgess drops the claim,then out of nowhere,theHerald andThe Age miraculously appear to solve the mystery – the villain,as it turns out,is China after all,” Keating said.
“The anti-China Australian strategic policy establishment was feeling some slippage in its mindless pro-American stance and decided some new China rattling was overdue.”