Australia's former Prime Minster Paul Keating calls Liz Truss's comments about China ‘demented’

Australia’s former Prime Minister Paul Keating has labelled comments made by Liz Truss over China as “demented”.

Writing in an op-ed for Pearls and Irritations, Keating described the comments made by the British foreign secretary about Chinese military aggression as “nothing short of demented”.

Keating also suggested Truss go “back to her collapsing, disreputable government”.

Keating wrote: “Remarks by the British Foreign Secretary Liz Truss that China could engage in military aggression in the Pacific, encouraged by Russia’s contingent moves against Ukraine, are nothing short of demented.

“Not simply irrational, demented.”

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His op-ed come as Truss, who attended meetings in Sydney with Australian counterparts last week, had warned that China could use a Russian invasion into Ukraine as a chance to launch military aggression in the Indo-Pacific.

Truss said during an interview with The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age: “I don’t think we can rule that out.”

She went on: “Russia is working more closely with China than it ever has. Aggressors are working in concert and I think it’s incumbent on countries like ours to work together.”

Keating served as Australia’s Labor Prime Minister from1991 to 1996 and has criticised Britain on its stance on east Asia.

He wrote: “Britain took its main battle fleet out of east Asia in 1904 and finally packed it in with its ‘East of Suez’ policy in the 1970s. And it has never been back.

“Britain suffers delusions of grandeur and relevance deprivation. But there they were at Admiralty House kidding the rest of us that their ‘co-operation’ added up to some viable policy.”