I don't mean to speak ill of Canberra, but it appears that the Australian authorities had thus far or until (very, very) rather recently failed to realize that "two can play this game."
How do you expect things to play out, especially with DC in its current state under Trump?
I only tangentially followed what can only be described as a total freak out by the Australians, but what I have seen of the responses range from the ridiculous to the downright pathetic.
They have been needlessly keen in going out of their way to needle and provoke China in the SCS and Taiwan Straits for little more reason than because they can and want to in order to score points domestically and abroad, and now a tiny PLAN flotilla does some gunnery practice in international waters hundreds of miles away from their coast and they are outraged and hysterically alarmed. Have a tiny bit of chill mate and stop acting like a total pansy why don’t you? It’s embarrassing.
If you are so desperately afraid of the big bad panda bear coming to your house to pay you a return visit, why did you keep going to shit in front of his house and in his garden in the first place?