The failure of media to ask obvious questions was on full display as three ships from the Chinese People Liberation Army-Navy completed their circumnavigation of Australia.

One of the most important, often frustrating, aspects of dealing with the Chinese is the importance of what is not said. No, it’s not some conundrum taken from the Tao Te Ching. It’s a simple matter of not getting the response to your question that you would normally expect. It plays an important role in both business and diplomatic relations and in the way in which China assesses responses to its own activity.

In its own way, the Australian media, and others, also fail to ask the obvious questions in their frenetic quest to focus on the catastrophic and the sensational. In doing so, they routinely miss the main story.

(As an aside, consider the recent example of the theft of millions in cash from an isolated farmhouse in South Australia. No reporter investigated just how and why an isolated farmhouse would be home to millions in cash. Drugs? Tax evasion? Proceeds from bank robberies? Questions begging to be asked, but ignored.)

This failure to listen for the obvious answers was on full display in the Australian community as three ships from the Chinese People Liberation Army-Navy (PLA-N) completed their circumnavigation of Australia.

We cannot know the full story on the PLA-N exercise as many motives and responses will remain behind classified walls on all sides. However, we can piece together some aspects based on what should have happened and what apparently did not, particularly as these ships were upgraded to Task Force status.

The most obvious omission from the media coverage is that no US naval assets were deployed to assist in surveillance as the flotilla sailed leisurely around the Australian coast for more than 21 days.

Despite shared US air bases in Australia, it appears that no US Airforce assets were deployed to assist in shadowing the flotilla or in a show-of-solidarity flypast as happens with FNOPs in the South China Sea. Australia was unable to stage a show of strength in response to this unwelcome activity in its own international waters, and its US alliance partner chose not to assist with hard assets even as the ships sailed up the Western Australia coast which is host to several significant US defence assets.

We do not know if a request was made, and refused, or if Australia decided to go it almost alone, relying just on the assistance of the New Zealand Navy. It’s a question never explored in the Australian media coverage or in the responses from the defence and security community.

The Australian defence department either chose not to inform the public, or was unaware that the flotilla had sailed across northern Australia and through the Torres Strait before they were officially spotted in the Coral Sea off eastern Australia.

This alert failure seems unusual because Defence and its Minister Marles seem to never miss an opportunity to highlight the China “threat”. This transit across northern Australia was not leaked to any of the tame defence reporters in the Murdoch press, the ABC or the Australian Financial Review. It begs the question; perhaps they sailed by unnoticed.

The last time two Chinese naval vessels transited the Torres Strait in 2022 it was front pages news. The Defence community was enraged, painting the government as weak on China and demanding an increase in the Defence budget to keep Australia safe.

So what did China get out of this circumnavigation of Australia?

They showed the PLA-N could undertake voyages of this duration and co-ordination. It comes as no surprise to those who already know of the level of support the PLA-N provides to UN sea-lane peacekeeping activities.

However, it also enabled the Australia defence community to promote it as a Chinese provocation. Marles was forced to point out, with some obvious reluctance, that it was no different from the FNOPs Australia engaged in which were often even closer to the territorial limits along China’s coastline.

Most importantly, but quietly ignored by the Australian media, was that the sail past exposed the lack of reciprocal support for Australia from the US. The failure to deploy assisting assets, the failure to respond in any meaningful fashion allows the security community to set the narrative of tiny Australia against the might of the PLA-N.

But not only were US assets absent from the weeks’ long charade, so too was any high level supportive commentary from the US. It was left to a US defence official to offer an androgyne statement that they were aware of the activities. This while President Trump was busy dumping US alliances, asking what AUKUS stood for, and telling all and sundry that America was not interested in assisting with their defence.

This lack of support, symbolic or otherwise, is perhaps the most important message delivered to China by this exercise.

Unfortunately, this flotilla sail-by provided ammunition to those who see China as the adversary and who nosily demand higher defence expenditure to counter China’s influence.

Rather than allocate more funds to diplomacy and to developing a better understanding of China (actions they label as appeasement), they demand billions more for military materiel sourced from the United States.

They, like the media, have not paused to ask why, apparently, a bare modicum of support was given in the face of this “provocative” circumnavigation of Australia by three vessels from the Chinese Navy.

China noted what was not said in reply to the question its flotilla asked.