Former Home Affairs boss Mike Pezzullo warns of one-in-five chance of China war

Former Home Affairs boss Mike Pezzullo says there is a one in five chance of a full-scale conflict involving China in the next six years akin to the Second World War.

Mr Pezzullo – who authored the 2009 Defence White Paper which argued the need for Australia to prepare for potential conflict by 2030 – said he found his own assessment “terrifying and horrifying”.

“I’m talking about something that looks more like the opening months and weeks of 1941-42,” he told the Bourke & Ryan podcast.

“Where there’s strikes on bases, where carriers are deployed, maybe carriers are being struck, submarines are firing torpedoes and the rest of it. When I say war in the Indo-Pacific — that’s what I mean.”

Mr Pezzullo said he had calculated the likelihood of a crisis escalating into a confrontation, escalating into war where neither side backs down occurring by the end of the decade at around 20 per cent.

“I think it’s terrifying, the chances of a Pacific War that looks like 1942 personally horrifies me,” he said of that assessment.

There is no doubt that big moves are afoot.

Mr Pezzullo said Australia was unprepared for major war as it had a Defence Force designed in the 1980s that was geared towards low-level conflict, not outright war.

“We were spending 2.5 per cent of GDP in the mid-’80s and we designed a force to deal with escalated, low-level competitors,” he said.

But he said 40 years on, Australia’s defence spending and force had shrunk, not grown, despite the security threat enlarging.

“And we’re spending 2.1 per cent of GDP and there’s a credible 10-20 per cent prospect of having to be involved in a firefight with a major power competitor,” he said.

“So we are grossly underdone.”

Last week, NATO leaders meeting in Washington significantly hardened their assessment of China, declaring the PRC a “decisive enabler of Russia’s war against Ukraine.”

NATO also condemned China’s state-sponsored cyber hacking and its attempts to divide and intimidate allies through coercion, like that faced by Australia when the CCP imposed massive tariffs on Australian wine, coal and barley in retaliation for former Prime Minister Scott Morrison’s call to investigate the origins of COVID-19.

Speaking in Sheffield, England on the weekend, Deputy Prime Minister Richard Marles — who attended NATO on behalf of Australia, after Prime Minister Anthony Albanese opted to stay at home and campaign with Queensland Labor candidates — said the Ukraine war was shaping the Indo-Pacific.

“From the moment that China and Russia signed a no-limits agreement on the eve of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is the moment that a conflict in eastern Europe, in a transformative way, became highly relevant to all of us in the Indo-Pacific,” Mr Marles said.

“Lessons will be learned, good or bad, from what plays out in Ukraine for what happens in the Indo-Pacific.

“The war in Ukraine is shaping the Indo-Pacific.”

Mr Pezzullo has previously estimated the risk of war with China to be 10 per cent but said the higher likelihood depended on Chinese President Xi Jinping’s personal appetite for risk set alongside his “obsession” with national rejuvenation by reclaiming Taiwan.

While it is often assumed China was pursuing a technocratic form of Communist government that involved a largely peaceful opening up of its economy until Xi’s ascendance in 2012, Mr Pezzullo said there were signs of the CCP’s more hostile intentions pre-dating Xi.

“That (White Paper) was completely counter-cyclical and counterintuitive for that time,” he said.

He said publications since declassified by the Pentagon dating back as far as 2006 and 2007 when John Howard and George W Bush were in power, showed patterns of Chinese investment into high-end, sophisticated military capability.

“Even before President Xi came along in his first term, now into his third term, I think some of these trends and tendencies were available to us,” he said.

“There is no doubt in my mind that they have decided that decisive action has to be taken within a window. There is no doubt that big moves are afoot.”

But crucially, he said war was not inevitable either.

Retired Major Gen Mick Ryan said even a 10 per cent probability of war with China was high and the consequences would be “in the orders of magnitude beyond the awfulness of what we’re seeing in Ukraine.”

Neither Russia nor Ukraine provide confirmed and updated casualty tolls of the war, which is in its third year, but it is estimated Russia’s losses number 500,000, including 150,000 deaths.

Earlier this year, Ukraine’s President Volodomyr Zelenksy confirmed at least 30,000 Ukrainian deaths.

Mr Ryan said 2027 could be the latest, as opposed to the earliest, that the Chinese might do something.

“My sense is the Chinese are better prepared for a conflict in the Western Pacific,” Mr Ryan said. “The only unknown is how much risk Xi is willing to take about his own position and the position of the Chinese Communist Party.

“Because if they do fail he’s finished and the Chinese Communist Party is finished.

“So, when people look at 2027, we need to look between now I think, because the Chinese might decide to do some kind of strategic surprise.

“Not that I think that’s likely but it’s an option that we absolutely need to consider.”

Former Prime Minister and China scholar Kevin Rudd has warned that Mr Xi has around a decade left to achieve his stated goal unless he is successfully deterred from reclaiming Taiwan either through coercion or force.

Mr Pezullo, who was sacked last year after revelations of private lobbying of government officials, said Australia needed a “war book” that would set out the roles of each sector of the community for civilian defence as well as a national security statement akin to the Federal Budget to prepare society for the worst-case scenario.

“It would be done like a budget night,” he said.

“I think the public would be invested because I think there is a hunger to be told more about the state of the world and what we’re doing about it.”