Australia’s best response to China’s live-fire provocation? Don’t be provoked | Sam Roggeveen

The PLA Navy’s live-fire exercise 640 kilometres off the south coast of New South Wales was provocative and deeply regrettable.

But it does not call for an immediate aggressive Australian response.

It does not indicate that Australia is helpless as China 's military power grows.

China needs to know that, while it is free to operate in those waters, it does so in the knowledge that, in the worst case, Australia can overcome whatever Beijing sends our way.

The right response is to continue the quiet work of making Australia into an echidna: unthreatening to those who mean the nation no harm, but prickly and indigestible.