It was a classic Peter Dutton outing. The defence minister used a speech this week to warn that “ominous clouds are forming” in the Indo-Pacific, that China and Russia’s “unholy alliance” should ring alarm bells, and that countries in the region must confront the “mounting threats to regional stability”.
Dutton then turned his attention to threats closer to home: specifically Labor, his electoral enemy, based on a simplistic extrapolation of its previous record in defence.
