The ABC of alarmism

The ABC's coverage of Andrew Davies' presentation to the ASPI conference gets it pretty much backward. As I noted briefly yesterday in a wrap up of the conference highlights, the headline conclusion from Andrew's speech (which was based on this paper) is that there is no arms race in Asia. So what does the ABC lead with?:

Australia losing its military advantage: defence expert

A conference in Canberra has been told Australia's military advantage in the Asia Pacific is coming to an end and the country needs to rethink its military structure. The Australian Strategic Policy Institute conference has heard from its director of operations and capability, Dr Andrew Davies, who says countries in Asia are acquiring more high end military equipment as their economies grow.

That's a very partial reading of Andrew's remarks, with the good news about the region left to the last three paragraphs. Reuters did a much fairer job.