First off, that skirmish was not "routine" but the first fatal clash along that border in decades, and only 4 soldiers died, not 43, though predictably the usual suspects howled fake news and coverups when China released the names of dead. Second, if India shares a border with China and their forces are always clashing there, while Australia is thousands of miles away and is under no imminent danger, then if the goal is to deter Chinese aggression wouldn't the sensible strategy be to sell advanced weaponry to India instead? Of course we all know that would never happen, countries like India that are just useful pawns and not true allies never get any of the high tech hardware, and nuclear submarines are offensive weapons, and therefore building them is indicative of a more offensive posture. I get that the "sensible" position these days is that we should just continue ramping up the hostility against China but stop JUST short of actual war, but walking that kind of tightrope is pretty difficult in the modern geopolitical climate.
Christ, you're not even going to deny that you believe those things?
It's nice that everyone recognizes that America has issues, but somehow we're always too busy demonizing foreign countries to ever get around to addressing any of those problems. And yeah we COULD be doing both at the same time, but right now it seems that rather than walking and chewing gum, we're more like Sean Spicer swallowing entire packs of Big Red whole every morning.