Australian Home Affairs Minister Karen Andrews absurdly accused China of meddling in her country’s upcoming elections next month through the timing of its soft security deal with the Solomon Islands. According to her, “Beijing is clearly very aware that we’re in a federal election campaign here at the moment. Why now? Why, right in the middle of a federal election campaign is all this coming to light? We talk about political interference and that has many forms.” She couldn’t be more wrong since their pact was a direct response to the Sinophobic riots that broke out in this South Pacific state late last year. It has absolutely nothing to do with Australia’s domestic political processes.

Her ridiculous conspiracy theory hints that the ruling Liberal Party might fear being unseated by their Labor rivals after next month’s election. Extrapolating from what she said by reading between the lines of her statement, it seems as though Andrews wants Australians to imagine that China concluded its soft security deal with the Solomon Islands in order to discredit the ruling party. By innuendo, it’s implied that the incumbents are supposedly more sincere about ensuring their country’s national security interests than their rivals, who she might be hinting are China’s preferred partners. In other words, she’s spinning a Russiagate-like conspiracy theory that China wants Labor to replace the Liberals.

This weaponized information warfare narrative is being waged just as much against China as it is against Andrews’ fellow Australians. In fact, her conspiracy theory itself is what veritably constitutes election meddling, not the timing of China’s soft security pact with the Solomon Islands, since it’s intended to give the incumbents an electoral edge heading into next month’s vote. The purpose behind this perception management operation is to manipulate Australians’ views about each party’s relationship to China, hoping to convince enough voters that Labor is supposedly in bed with China while only the Liberals are capable of defending their country from this “Manchurian Candidate” plot.

It’s all Sinophobic to the extreme and completely contradicts the “values” that Australia used to espouse. Instead of liberal inclusiveness, a vicious xenophobia is now wildly spreading throughout its society, influencing previously moderate folks to take up ultra-nationalist positions. Everything is based on the lie that China allegedly constitutes a latent national security threat to Australia that could presumably morph into the one that Imperial Japan posed during World War II unless it’s preemptively thwarted. The solution, as is being implied by Australia’s leadership, is to proactively reassert hegemony over their so-called “sphere of influence” in the South Pacific in order to “contain” China.

This sequence of events – which involves geo-economics, information warfare (conspiracy theories), and military-strategic planning – is completely controlled by Australia’s American overlords. It’s all part of the US’ plot to assemble an Asian-wide coalition for “containing” China in the New Cold War, within which Australia was seemingly promised a privileged position, ergo last September’s creation of the AUKUS alliance that involves the sharing of nuclear technology and even the joint development of hypersonic weapons. Seeing as how Labor is just as anti-Chinese as the Liberals are, Australians don’t have a geopolitical choice during the upcoming elections, so everything is a fait accompli at this point.