Former Australian Prime Minister Paul Keating has launched a fresh attack on Nine newspapers, marking the third anniversary of their 'Red Alert' series which predicted a Chinese attack on Australia by 2026. In a statement released on Friday, Keating said none of the claims had materialised, labelling the reporting as 'irresponsible'.
The 'Red Alert' series, published by the Sydney Morning Herald and The Age on 7 March 2023, warned that Australia needed to be 'ready to fight in just three years' based on assessments from five national security experts. The front-page report described China as the 'overwhelming source of danger' and suggested the official timeline of ten years' warning was misleading.
Keating repeated his criticism of international editor Peter Hartcher, whom he previously called a 'psychopath' and 'old acid drop'. In his latest statement, Keating described Hartcher as 'maladroit' and questioned why he remained in his role. Hartcher responded in a 2024 opinion piece, calling Keating 'Australia's foremost apologist for the Chinese Communist Party'.
The series was widely criticised at the time, including by Media Watch's Paul Barry and Guardian Australia's Margaret Simons, who described it as 'pretentious', 'irresponsible' and implicitly racist. Keating accused then-editor Bevan Shields of allowing Hartcher to 'concoct a China-threat story' with a 'handpicked group of anti-China accomplices'.
Keating noted that China had not attacked any state in nearly half a century, apart from a brief border conflict with Vietnam in 1979, while the United States had recently launched a 'premeditated attack on Iran'. He expressed hope that new SMH editor Jordan Baker would reject 'amoral standards of journalism'.
