Former Australian PM trying to gain clout?
Abbott is a religious far right idiot and these types tend not to view the Chinese nor Communists as particularly favourable.
There are enough far right idiots in Canberra today to make AUKUS a foregone conclusion.
"
At public forums and in private conversations, I’m often asked: What does China want? How should we deal with them? The choice of pronouns is revealing, placing me neither here nor there. I never know how to address these comically broad questions, as if I’m some kind of dragon whisperer. Those who default to such generalisations do not really want to know China as a place. They much prefer it as an idea, a geopolitical concept that can be distilled into soundbites and translated into policy. White men can rebrand as “China experts” overnight and charge a fortune for their insights, while a Chinese person is more likely to be heard as a “dissident” than a scholar. A lone crusader against an oppressive superpower makes for an appealing narrative. It substantiates the west’s notion of China as the embodiment of authoritarian evil. It affirms to a western audience their sense of superiority. Insufficient denunciation of the Chinese regime casts doubt on one’s scholarship on China, regardless of its area of focus."
China will always be a totem for the west to ascribe and transfer all of their own failings and fears and insecurities; they claim to fear a totalitarian police state and yet that's exactly what they're creating in the west whilst China enshrines individual privacy and data into law.
The West having once dominated Asia all those years ago will continue having that longing to dominate and enslave China as they once did much like a heroin addict will always have a longing for heroin despite going through rehab.