China gives “unsatisfactory” answer for firing notification from warships, Minister says

Deputy Prime Minister and Defence Minister Richard Marles has said that China did not give a “satisfactory” answer for its warships reportedly firing into airspace off the Australian Coast.

While there’s yet to be confirmation that something was actually fired, commercial pilots were given a notification of a live firing event on short notice, Marles said on Weekend Today.

He said despite the short notice given, it was “important” to remember China has not broken international law.

“What we had yesterday was the notification of a live firing event. It’s not clear whether that actually occurred in terms of the live firing itself,” Marles said.

“The notification was very short, which meant that there were planes in the air which needed to divert around the airspace… It was for a period of time which has now elapsed.”

Marles said the issue was raised with the Chinese Government, but they had not provided an answer as to why the live firing notification could not have been sent with more notice.

“It was a very disconcerting set of circumstances yesterday… obviously we’ve raised that with the Chinese government in Canberra, in Beijing…

“And our foreign minister raised this with her counterpart, Minister Wang Yi, the foreign minister of China.

“I don’t think we have a satisfactory answer from China as to the question of the notice, we would have preferred that there was much more notice provided so that we didn’t have the disconcerting set of circumstances yesterday.”

Marles said usually the Royal Australian Navy would give between 12 to 24 hours’ notice if they were performing live firing exercises in international waters.

He said he was ensured an “unprecedented level” of assets to shadow the ships to figure out what the Chinese task group are doing.

“This is an unusual mission that we are seeing with this task group… what we have done is put in place an unprecedented level of surveillance in respect of it,” Marles said.

“They are not breaching international law, but nor are we in terms of the surveillance that we’re putting in place.”