Paul Keating unleashes on the SMH/Age ‘Red Alert’ hysteria

Nine newspapers by Peter Hartcher and Matthew Knott published an extraordinary series titled “” on March 7, 2023.Red Warning“, claimed that Australia should be ready for a military conflict with China within three years. Based on the views of anti-China hawks, the series led to accusations that the government was being dishonest with Australians and that Australia was not prepared to engage in a full-scale military conflict with China. At the time, former prime minister Paul Keating described the series as “the most egregious and provocative news presentation of any newspaper I have witnessed in over 50 years of active public life… far worse than this.” Preparations for the war in Vietnam in the 1960s illustrated samples shown to have come from China during the