In this interview Peter Jennings appeared on Mornings with Graeme Goodings – fiveAA to discuss the IPA’s research into Australia’s National Defence.
All media appearances posted onto the IPA website are directly related to the promotion and dissemination of IPA research.
Below is a transcript of the interview.
Graeme Goodings:
Well, a Chinese state-owned energy company is being funded by taxpayers through Chris Bowen’s capacity investment scheme. That’s to build a $120 million battery here in South Australia. Pacific Blue, owned by our investment corporation, is involved in the Belt and Road Initiative. Alarm bells should go off there. It’s prompted national security concerns. So are there any potential security worries? Joining me now as the Director of Strategic Analysis, Peter Jennings. Peter, thanks for your time today. Should we be worried?
Peter Jennings:
My concern here is that we’re making ourselves way too vulnerable to Chinese companies coming in to dominate the electricity grid. And what Australians [inaudible 00:00:42] is that the Communist Party of China controls how those companies operate. There’s actually a national security law in Beijing, which requires all individuals and companies to work with the Chinese intelligence services if they require it. And we need to ask some pretty tough questions about, “Well, what does that mean for us? How confident can we be that the grid is going to operate without that type of interference from Chinese intelligence services?”
Graeme Goodings:
So are there any parallels with the Huawei 5G saga?
Peter Jennings:
Yes, there are many. So this is a story which goes back half a decade or more now where Australian governments decided that they couldn’t take the risk of allowing a Chinese company to become the dominant provider of 5G telecommunications services. And really the concerns were the same. Here we had a private company, which was very close to the Chinese government, offering ridiculously low prices to take over the 5G network, and very real technical concerns that what that meant was that they would be a back door for Chinese intelligence services to monitor our communications, or if not that, to be able to shut them down remotely. It’s the same thing with many aspects of Australian critical industry, and we just have to be mindful of the fact that China is a country which is going to look after its own. We can trade with China by all means, but I think we have to realise that strategically China is working to dominate the region, and it wants to give itself the control to be able to do that by being able to control critical infrastructure. Australians need to be really cautious about that.
Graeme Goodings:
This isn’t a sign of paranoia, is it? Are we overreacting potentially?
Peter Jennings:
Well, we’re not really reacting at all at the moment. And I would say no, it’s not paranoia, it’s about being realistic. It’s about understanding what modern technology can do, and understanding that China is a country which doesn’t have Australia’s national interests at heart. We need to stop being naive. That’s really what’s going on here. Just because it’s a cheap deal, just because the government thinks that this is the best thing to do to deliver their carbon reduction plans, doesn’t mean to say that it’s something that’s good for the security of Australia. And I have questions about does this actually work for our interest?
Graeme Goodings:
This is a single battery project. Could at meaningfully threaten our national power security?
Peter Jennings:
Well, on this particular occasion, it’s one battery, one project, but I can guarantee you that China is interested in getting access to our critical infrastructure in every possible way that it can. There’s not a day that goes by without there being a story which shows elements of Chinese industry is getting deeper and deeper into the vital workings of Australian critical infrastructure. So it’s everywhere. It’s not just one project. And there just doesn’t seem to be any serious attempt to think through, well, what are the implications of that? What does it mean if we find ourselves completely dependent on a country which doesn’t actually have our interests at heart, if we give them the capacity to turn off our grid or overload it or otherwise complicated it in ways which don’t suit our national interests. This is something which federal governments and state governments and individuals all have to think about. And we just can’t afford to be complacent.
Graeme Goodings:
This has been aligned or associated with the China’s Belt and Road Initiative. Can you explain that to us? What is the Belt and Road Initiative?
Peter Jennings:
So the Belt and Road is really a global Chinese project, which says we are going to build a distinctively Chinese set of relationships with countries around the world which supports China’s economy and China’s economic growth. And so Belt and Road is harbours, which are being built in Sri Lanka, it’s rail and sea-lane networks around the globe, all designed to give China the capacity to create its own economic needs at the costs of mostly developing countries around the world. And Australian governments for more than a decade now have been really reluctant to become part of this. We had the Victorian government very briefly signed up to a Belt and Road memorandum, which was actually knocked on the head by the then Australian federal government.
But know Belt and Road is something which works to suit China’s interests at the expense of countries around the world. And frankly, we are no different to any developing country where the same proposals come along. China says, “Let’s build infrastructure cheaply.” But what that means for the country which accepts that proposal is that they are forever dependent on that Chinese infrastructure. And what we now know is that China’s intelligence services are always going to be just one step behind that economic proposal, giving themselves the capacity either to spy on the country or to actually shut critical infrastructure down when they want to do so.
Graeme Goodings:
When it comes to Chinese investment in Australia, what sort of precautions or steps should Australia take to protect our national security?
Peter Jennings:
Well, the first thing is we have to actually consider those investments from the point of view of national security. It’s not just an economic play. It’s not like we’re taking money, for example, from Canadian superannuation funds. We’re actually taking investment from a country where all [inaudible 00:06:37] at the behest of the Chinese Communist Party. And China itself has a long-term plan, actually really a short-term plan to become the dominant strategic player in the Indo-Pacific region. So military security is connected to economic security. It’s not just about the cheapest price on the day, which is clearly a motivating factor for a lot of Australian businesses and government. We have to understand that what’s happening here is about how China builds a dominating position. And if we allow ourselves to be dominated in that way, we lose control. And frankly, that’s what China wants. That’s the biggest story here.
Graeme Goodings:
Peter Jennings, thanks so much for your insight. The Director of Strategic Analysis Australia and an adjunct fellow at the Institute of Public Affairs, Peter Jennings, on Chris Bowen’s scheme to take a lot of money out of China to build a big battery here in South Australia. But what comes with that, the involvement of Chinese companies. We know that every Chinese company is beholden to the government to provide them with all the information that they have. You can’t get a business licence to practise in China without signing agreements that the Chinese government has access to all your information. Should the alarm bells begun…
This transcript of Peter Jennings on Mornings with Graeme Goodings – fiveAA from 24 November 2025 has been edited for clarity.
