Bridget McKenzie: CCP Pressure in Australia's Pacific Backyard

Senator Bridget McKenzie links High Commission flag politics at home to Chinese ballistic-missile signalling and soft power across the South Pacific.

Nationals Senate leader Bridget McKenzie closed a foreign-policy thread on Day 3 by tying domestic symbolism to regional security. She criticised Australian Labor ministers and the London High Commission for flying three flags instead of one, arguing the government was "ashamed of the British bits" in the Australian flag.

Her climax was strategic: days earlier, she said, the PRC had test-fired a long-range ballistic missile from a submerged nuclear submarine into the South Pacific — waters Pacific nations treat as a nuclear-free zone — on the same day Australia signed a defence treaty with Fiji. Soft diplomacy and aid, she argued, are ballast against the CCP; cutting Pacific engagement would be "music to Xi Jinping's ears."