Australia’s Wolverines Howling at China

Late last year a curious group formed within the Australian parliament. The goal of the participating politicians has been to provide a more forceful response to China’s rise and its implications for Australia. They have used increasingly inflammatory rhetoric toward Beijing as their primary tool. The group named themselves “The Wolverines,” a moniker taken from the 1984 film Red Dawn in which a gang American high school students fight off a Soviet invasion. To signify their membership in the group, each member has placed a claw-mark sticker on their parliamentary office windows.

The group’s behavior would be laughable had they not attached themselves to an issue of critical importance. By making analogies between modern day China and Nazi Germany, and calling for Australia to aggressively decouple from China, the group makes it more difficult for the government to shape a sophisticated diplomatic response regarding its current issues with Beijing. Allan Gyngell, the former head of the Office of National Assessments, has labeled the group “immature, juvenile, and destructive.” Dennis Richardson, the former head of the departments of both Defense and Foreign Affairs and Trade has said the group “adds no value” to the serious debate about Australia-China relations.

What makes this group’s activities especially hollow is the lack of a harmonious policy platform to provide substance to their combative rhetoric. There isn’t any mention of the economic, technological, security, diplomatic, and cultural capabilities Australia needs to be less compliant in the face of Beijing’s sensitivities. The approach of the Wolverines seems to be one of speaking loudly and carrying a small stick. Their tactics are incredibly strange and unsophisticated, seemingly based on the belief that simply blurting out forceful pronouncements will produce the desired results.

Were the Wolverines truly serious about protecting and promoting Australia’s autonomy they might be keen advocates for a more purposeful immigration program. Australia may be a land of abundance, with a vast wealth of natural resources, but the country’s capabilities and independence are reliant on enhancing its human resources. The country cannot stand up for its principles if its people are too few and too incapable of doing so.

A more purposeful immigration program should include not just an increase in the country’s annual intake, but also the construction of a system that gives people a quick and clear path toward citizenship in order to encourage a personal investment in the country. The current focus of the country’s immigration program on temporary migration gives people the impression that Australia wants their labor and taxes, but not their civic participation. This limits a sense of belonging for migrants, weakening the country’s national purpose as a whole.

Australia’s lack of human resources is directly related to another problem the Wolverines should wish to address: The country’s reliance on resource extraction and agriculture for its export revenue. Currently Australia simply does not have the kinds of economic activity that would allow it to diversify away from the Chinese market without tanking the economy. It is essential, therefore, that the country find a way to enhance its post-industrial industries in order to pivot Australia away from an overreliance on commodities, and become less susceptible to China’s attempts at economic coercion.

These post-industrial industries are primarily urban in nature, requiring a radical investment in public transport infrastructure to both facilitate their creation and transform Australia’s cities away from their current inefficient (and environmentally unfriendly) low-density models. Alongside this, the Wolverines might advance major investments in the education necessary to create these industries. Australia’s states currently have solid, but not exceptional, education systems, and maintain an extraordinary blindspot when it comes to the importance of learning other languages. Enhancing learning of Bahasa Indonesia, in particular, should be deemed essential for boosting the country’s most important future relationship.

These are all practical solutions to Australia’s current capability deficits, areas where Australia needs to improve in order to both protect and enhance its autonomy.

Yet none of this is being advocated by the Wolverines.

Their rhetoric is not actually about Australia’s national interests. In a similar fashion to the bluster that comes out of Beijing, the Wolverines primarily have a domestic audience in mind. Theirs is the incessant in-group signaling that passes for politics; it’s about burnishing their credentials within the ecosystem of conservative identity politics in Australia, not finding political solutions to real problems.

Of course, most politicians choose to advance simplistic narratives rather than explain complex ideas – it’s the standard approach to the job. This is an approach Australian politicians have been lucky enough  to afford, thanks to the advantageous global environment that emerged following World War II. Yet as the Indo-Pacific region moves toward a less stable environment, the temptation politicians have with regard to personal grandstanding and avoiding complexity should be reined in. Without advancing a harmonious set of ideas to actually build greater resilience to China’s increasing assertiveness, these Wolverines will simply be howling at the moon.