Roggeveen argues, unequivocally, not long enough to be able easily to mount hostile operations against Chinese territory or in its near seas: “why compress the distance between us when we can exploit it?”

Whilst I agree that diplomacy should always be the primary route, having a stick is useful to diplomacy, and foreswearing the ability to hit China even in retaliation when they could certainly hit us is idiotic.
We don't need to go full "North Korea" and lob missiles over our neighbours heads in a show of dominance, we can literally buy working stuff from our allies.

This article is basically saying "In the event of war, we're definitely going to see Alice Springs go boom, so we should just stick our heads in the sand and wave a pocket knife vaguely above us until the big bois are finished".

We should absolutely have the sovereign ability to poke back and poke back hard if Australia is directly targeted.