Anthony Albanese must “pick up the phone” to Xi Jinping and express his dismay at a “provocative, unnecessary and dangerous” military incident.
Opposition Leader Peter Dutton said the Prime Minister must call out China for dropping flares close to an Australian navy helicopter on Saturday.
An Australian navy Seahawk helicopter, which was enforcing sanctions against North Korea in the Yellow Sea off air warfare destroyer HMAS Hobart, was forced to take emergency action about 7.30pm after a Chinese J-10 fighter dropped a number of flares in its flight path.
No one was injured, but Mr Dutton said that could have gone differently.
“The Prime Minister needs to pick the phone up, frankly, and speak to President Xi, and express our deep concern, because at some stage there’s going to be a miscalculation, and an Australian Defence Force member is going to lose their life,” he told Channel 9.
“And that is a tragic circumstance that has to be avoided at all costs. But there will be a miscalculation by somebody who’s flying that jet or somebody who’s on the deck of a Chinese naval ship, something will happen.”
He said unless Australia called China into line, things could escalate and prompt unintended consequences.
“At the moment we’ll see a response from China to deny that it happened or that we had made a mistake. We’ve seen this. We’ve seen this movie before, but it is at some stage going to escalate, perhaps by accident,” He said.
The incident has prompted a furious reaction from the Albanese government, which threatens to undermine the work done to repair the diplomatic relationship between the two countries.
Defence Minister Richard Marles condemned the incident as “unsafe and completely unacceptable”, and said the government had already lodged a protest with Beijing.
“This is a very serious incident. The consequence of being hit by the flares would have been significant,” he said.
“We have formally expressed our concerns about this incident, and formally expressed that this was both unsafe and unprofessional.
“It is our expectation in the interaction of our two militaries is that they happen in a manner which is professional and safe for all concerned.”
It follows an incident last November, when a Chinese naval sonar blasted in the vicinity of Australian divers off Japan as they cleared a fishing net from the HMAS Toowoomba’s propeller.
No one was seriously injured, but there has been ongoing questions about whether Mr Albanese raised the matter directly with Mr Xi at face-to-face meetings that took place around the time.