Former Labor prime minister says there should be greater independence within alliance and South China Sea ‘is not our fight’Australia’s “client state” obsequiousness towards the US was damaging its own interests and ignoring the rise of China as the nascent “primary economic state of the world”, Paul Keating has argued. “The alliance, if we had no document anymore, we would remain friends with the United States into the future. “What China is doing in the South China Sea, they’re marking out the space like a tiger does. The foreign affairs minister, Julie Bishop, has speculated about joint freedom of navigation naval exercises by Australia and allies in the South China Sea. “The idea that we go steaming through the South China Sea ... in a fight that’s not our fight, this is not our fight.

Source: The Guardian April 26, 2017 06:00 UTC