It is obvious to any reasonable person that such threats should have been taken seriously; had they been, then the recent actions by Israel and America would not have been necessary.

On the Beach is a film starring Gregory Peck, Ava Gardner, Fred Astaire and Anthony Perkins. It is based on a novel by Neville Shute. The movie was released in 1959.

RADIOACTIVE

After a nuclear war, Australia is the only habitable place left on earth; as the radioactive cloud approaches from the Northern Hemisphere, every citizen deals with impending death differently. It’s worth watching or even better reading the book.

I saw the film during the height of the cold war and, a year after, I had been through extensive battle training on how to manage and fight if a nuclear attack was mounted. It was a grim experience at a very young age.

Over the past few weeks I thought about that film and that training as I read about the true purpose of a Caliphate and Iran.

Since the Shah was deposed, a succession of Iranian leaders, political and religious have committed Iran to a Caliphate dedicated to the elimination of the Jews, that means wiping Israel off the face off the earth.

We are told at just minutes to midnight, Israel took matters into their own hands and systematically destroyed every part of Iran’s military command; killed many of their nuclear scientists and destroyed all the military installations they could reach.

So successful were they that eventually the Israeli air force flew unchallenged over Iranian airspace bombing at will while both countries traded missiles which caused the destruction of buildings and killed people.

Finally, American airmen flew across the world in the most advanced warplanes known to man and dropped some very big bombs on Iran’s nuclear facilities buried deep in mountains. We have been assured that Iran’s ambitions have been set back for years, if not forever.

One thing is for certain; had Iran attempted to eliminate Israel with an atomic warhead then Israel would have replied with equal nuclear ferocity; then Israel’s friends could well have come to their aid, and then China, who relies on Iran for oil – and so on and so on.

The estate of the late Neville Shute would no doubt have made a fortune as the world shuddered, and we all sat on the beach and waited.

Atomic war in this century has been somewhat trivialised; people talk of “clean” and “dirty” bombs and of the “strategic” use of atomic warheads on the battle field.

Apocalyptic films have helped trivialise the real dangers the world faces if Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles (ICBMs) with their nuclear warheads start flying.

Iran was not only close to having a nuclear warhead it was also close to having an ICBM. That would have put not only America but American “facilities” in Australia within their reach.

BOOMERS

It could be that my generation and the one after, the baby boomers, were the last ones to be confronted with the pictures of Japan before and after.

Of Hiroshima and Nagasaki before and after. Of the Japanese men, women and children killed and wounded by the devastation caused by those two massive explosions.

Those pictures and films should be shown again. The training that we, that is the hundreds of thousands of troops in Germany and the rest of Europe went through in the late 50s should be shown again; nothing much has changed.

An atomic bomb is still an atomic bomb; the protection offered on the battle field may be better, but probably the same as only having pneumonia rather than double pneumonia.

It will be a great day when Anthony Albanese accepts that no man is an island, but living on one presents unique problems.

Considering how the world has changed in the past decade and how that change has accelerated in the past three or four years, Albanese and all federal government leaders going back to 2012, should be charged by the people with “dereliction of duty”.

Definition: The intentional or careless failure to carry out one’s responsibilities or doing so inadequately.

Considering that we are an island nation and therefore totally dependent on the oceans that surround us for those goods that enable us to exist; what kind of leader and government would pay no attention to the real and present danger of being 30 days away from being unable to function as a nation?

Like many other commentators, I am tired of criticising successive Australian governments concerning our lack of preparedness should a military disturbance take place in the Gulf region or in the South China Sea; should it ever happen we could well finish up like a “shag on a rock”.

Current fuel reserves in Australia are estimated (AFR 24.6.25) to be around 26 days for diesel, 31 days for petrol and 32 days for all oil and petroleum products based on consumption figures. That includes all the requirements of the ADF.

Let that sink in. If Iran had closed the Straits of Hormuz for however long – a week, a month, whatever – 90 per cent of the oil from the Gulf region and 30 per cent of global oil trade would stop and the result would be world-wide chaos.

More than 90 per cent of the fuel we use in Australia is imported as finished product; it comes, mainly, from refineries in Singapore, Japan, South Korea and sometimes even China.

Our crude oil and our refined oils have to traverse some of the most sensitive choke points and regions in the world, sometimes, in the case of the South China Sea, twice.

It was in 2012 that it was announced that Australia was not complying with the International Energy Agency (IEA) requirement of 90 days’ worth of fuel reserves.

Nothing has changed in the intervening years. Angus Taylor negotiated the brilliant arrangement for America to store our strategic crude oil reserves on their west coast, making it several weeks away by tanker.

Maybe he didn’t know that we only have two very old oil refineries in Australia, and they are only operating because the Albanese Government is subsidising them; with your money. They would have difficulty providing fuel for Victoria.

In 1961 The Australian Financial Review reported there were a string of 20 refineries and storage sites dotted around our coast; now there are just two.

Why is this? You may well ask. How did Australia as a sovereign nation finish up in such a parlous state of dependency on others thousands of kilometres away?

It is because the major fuel companies in Australia, BP et al, decided that it was cheaper for them to have crude refined offshore than onshore; and the government of the day agreed.

OVERSEAS

“Okay,” it said, “do what ever you have to do to keep your bottom line healthy and your overseas shareholders happy.”

It is disconcerting at the very least to realise that international oil cartels, not the Australian federal government, decided how secure, or in this case insecure Australia would be during times of international instability.

Men and women behind their desks and in the boardrooms in London, New York and maybe Amsterdam, have decided whether we in far-off Australia shall be able to function as a nation during a period of international instability.

All federal governments, at least since 2012, have failed the people of Australia by ignoring the need for a strategic oil reserve on shore in Australia and not 13,000km – and at least three weeks – away in America.

The question then must be asked why did successive governments agree to the closing of the twenty oil refineries that once were scattered our coastline when it was obvious, even to Bill Hayden and his famous “drover’s dog” that it was profoundly against Australia’s best interest?

Hand in glove with the demise of Australia’s oil refining industry has been a similar demise of Australia’s merchant fleet; we no longer have a Merchant Navy which can be called upon, or requisitioned, in times of war or national distress to come to the aid of the country.