National Security Committee

One former senior official has told me that...

During those decisions, the National Security Committee, NSC, was not told about the implications down the track of allowing the Americans greater and greater access to Australian territory and military facilities, or were these decisions seen as normal steps in the policy of alliance maintenance? The point is that we have not had to do this kind of thinking since the Vietnam War, and that too explains why the challenge is difficult, and the contributions we made in Afghanistan and Iraq did not cost us much.

So the debate over grand ambition is I think, even if indirectly, highlighting the frailties of contemporary Australian foreign policy.

In an age when successive governments have given more and more to Washington in terms of logistical and military access to the Australian continent, when Morrison and Albanese have stubbornly refused to win the social license for the Orca submarine project, and when the Murdoch press endlessly indulges in yellow journalism about the China threat, Keating is raising issues centrally concerned with the country's autonomy and sovereignty, and about how it learns to live in an Asia where the US may well end up being not the guarantor, but balancing power.

We know tonight that the Australian Federal Police have confirmed to News24 they are now investigating links between Australia and the co-pilot.

But where is the press conference from the Prime Minister to reassure Australians that this very serious matter has his full attention? Where is the confirmation that the National Security Committee has met? that all the resources that our intelligence agencies and police say they need are being provided to get to the bottom of these serious claims from the UAE Attorney-General.

Now, I would like to hope that every taxpayer dollar allocated to organisations connected to this man and the claims he has had made about him see that money immediately suspended.

But when Burke can't answer questions, as we saw yesterday with my colleague Andrew Clennell, then I think all Australians are right to be concerned.

And now, perhaps, on fuel efficiency.

And hey, I guess why should Joe Average think big when it comes to what car to buy, when many senior politicians don't? Even those on the National Security Committee, which, according to the Defence's own website, "...considers the highest priority, highest risk and most strategic national security matters of the day." Well, none other than Chris Bowen sits on that committee.

And yet, despite warnings from leading security officials, including Alistair McGibbon, the former special adviser to the Prime Minister on Cyber Security, for ministers not to drive Chinese EVs, Chris Bowen's private vehicle is an X-Ping.

And he's not alone.

needs of a defence force in the contemporary age.

We'd have to spend a lot of money on cyber security and all these other forms of security to keep the bases active and so on.

Then on the other hand, you've got a minister who's in the National Security Committee, Chris Bowen, on Four Corners last night, basically just brushing off the fact he's driving a Chinese connected vehicle.

No concern about the security implications, no concern about any of that.