New Parliamentary Petition: EN2806 Withdraw all Australian Naval Forces from the South China Sea

Reason: Australian naval forces have been deployed to the South China Sea in support of British, American, Japanese, and French naval forces. This has happened without appropriate consultation with, and approval by, the Australian people or their elected parliamentary representatives, and without any form of referendum. This is wholly unacceptable.

While it is true that China and the Communist Party of China have effected an enormous military infrastucture buildup in the South China Sea, this buildup does not threaten Australia, nor any Commonwealth or ‘Quad’ nation. Certainly not militarily.

ASEAN nations in the region such as Japan, Indonesia, Vietnam, and Malaysia are together easily able to co-secure the waters of the SCS with China, and to negotiate with China over territorial matters. The USA has never even joined the UNCLOS treaty which it claims to be defending. US and British claims to be defending the democratic freedom of Taiwan are dubious at best, and more likely misinformational propaganda designed to divert attention away from their real objective of their ongoing, and unnecessary, aggressive economically and geostrategically motivated ‘surround and contain’ campaign against China.

ADF naval personnel in this region are being completely needlessly placed in harm’s way.

Request: We therefore ask the House to order the chief of defence to immediately withdraw all Australian Naval forces from the South China Sea and redeploy them in Australia's Northern waters pending a digital referendum of the Australian people regarding, and a proper parliamentary review of, the current deployment.

References:

Grossman, D. (2019). Military build-up in the South China Sea. In The South China Sea (pp. 182–200). Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780429331480-13

Progress Party Parliamentary Petition request confirmation EN2806.pdf

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