Source : Perth Now news
A flotilla of Chinese warships passed within 12km of Australian waters late last year, senior Defence officials have said.
The ships caught the attention of the Australian Defence Force after they were spotted lurking in the Philippine Sea in November.
At the time, Deputy Prime Minister Richard Marles played it down, telling reporters that “we maintain constant maritime domain awareness in the geographic areas of interest, southeast Asia, northeast Asia, the northeast Indian Ocean and the Pacific”.
“And in that context, we will routinely monitor the movements of PLA vessels,” he said.
“And when there are movements such as this, we will monitor them, particularly until we know that they are not coming in the vicinity of Australia.”
But fronting senate estimates on Wednesday, Chief of the Defence Force David Johnston revealed the ships came between 8.1-11.3km of Australia’s exclusive economic zone – much closer than the government said at the time.
“They were just clear of it, but we had very strong surveillance over those platforms while they were proximate to our near waters,” he said.
He went on to say the flotilla hit its closest point off Queensland’s northeast.
However, it then turned away, passing New Caledonia before returning north.
“We had a good understanding of the daily locations or so of those vessels that was working with partners,” Admiral Johnston said.
“We had our own aircraft deployed into the western Pacific, but a combination of means that enabled us to have an understanding of what the task groups’ movements were.”
He warned the display was “a demonstration of its ability to operate much further from China’s shores than it has routinely done”.
“It unquestionably is demonstrating into our region that the Chinese navy is capable of deploying,” he said.
“We judge the nature of its activities was both for internal training purposes as well as signalling to Australia and our region the capacity the Chinese military has.”
Admiral Johnston’s comments were echoed by outgoing Defence Secretary Greg Moriarty.
Mr Moriarty, one of Canberra’s most senior public servants, will replace Kevin Rudd as ambassador to the US in April.
He said the People’s Liberation Army Navy presence in the region had increased in “recent years”.
“We expect this to continue,” Mr Moriarty said.
“We have consistently raised the importance of China providing greater strategic transparency and reassurance about its activities in our region.”
The latest ships came less than a year after another Chinese flotilla carried out live fire drills in the Tasman Sea while circumnavigating Australia.
