by ROGER CROOK – GOD help us if communist China becomes more restless. How on earth did Australia, a nation with a proud military history, finish up with a modern version of Dad’s Army?
We are being told we are closer to war than we have been since the 60s – and that we cannot defend ourselves.
- No-one can predict American politics, or the UK for that matter.
- We can’t afford to wait for decades for something we may not get.
- Labor Defence Minister Richard Marles is totally unimpressive.
As I write – as Iran rattles its scimitar against Israel and maybe the world and America moves another Battle Group, together with nuclear submarines into the Middle East – there are more talks about a Gaza cease fire.
Meanwhile in our land of the young and free; in our home that is girt by sea, we find our war ships are old; some are in mothballs.
FIGHT
Our army needs new and modern kit so it can fight a modern war, and the RAAF doesn’t have enough planes to defend this big island; all three services are short of personnel.
The British classic Dad’s Army still comforts me in a strange way as Australia’s story of incompetence unfolds. I was just a child when the real Dad’s Army did its best in the forties.
Tom Pritchard, at the age of 102 and the last of the gallant and brave the Rats of Tobruk, has just gone to God; we must cherish and honour his legacy and that of his mates.
I hope he didn’t know of the parlous state of our national defences before the bugle played lights-out for him, for the last time.
We are a damned big defenceless island in the middle of one of the hot spots in the world today and we live with the hope that anyone who wishes us ill, will have the good manners to wait for a decade or so until we think, only think mind you, we will be ready.
Another American Battle Fleet, together with war ships from many other nations fights the Houti Rebels in Yemen, in an effort to keep the Red Sea open, so world trade, and our trade, can continue.
Given our lack of preparedness, all we can do is pray America will honour the ANZUS Treaty and come to our aid if we need them.
We forget that America is the bulwark of NATO, it helps Ukraine fight the Russian invader and helps Israel fight Hamas, Hezbollah, and Iran. It patrols, with others, the South China Sea, which is vital to world trade and peace.
We are assured American nuclear submarines will use the Stirling Naval Base on Garden Island in Western Australia as a base, as it patrols the waters off the coast of Australia and out into the Pacific Ocean.
What if due to all those commitments, many for our benefit, America says, “Sorry you’re on your own with this one, Digger, we have enough to keep us fully occupied at present”.
What do we do then?
Go down to the beach with the Eski full of stubbies, light a fire and wait; when we see something out there on the horizon, do we wave the national flag or is that un-Australian and unwise these days?
A conventional war won’t be needed to conquer Australia. Any strategist knows that. There won’t be a need for an army of occupation, all that anyone who has designs on our riches, our mineral wealth, and our strategic position in this part of the Pacific Ocean needs to do, is stop ships.
Stop the ships coming to Australia and it’s all over Red Rover for this country.
Cut off the ships and in couple of months we will be buggered.
Our fuel, diesel and petrol will run out in about fifty days. We are a trucking nation, so, the trucks will stop; then we will start to get hungry as we realise the extent of our reliance on imported food; and if petrol is rationed or unavailable, a lot of people won’t be able to go to work and won’t be able to get to the shops for what food that is available.
ESSENTIALS
We had a taste of this during COVID, remember? There were some unseemly incidents around the country as people started to realise that what they believed to be the essentials weren’t available.
There was a massive run on toilet rolls; I think all of ours are now imported, strewth! We might run out of toilet rolls!
“History repeats itself, first as tragedy, second as farce” Karl Marx once said.
The World War I was “the war to end all wars”. They said it must never happen again.
Twenty years later in 1939, it did happen again. If it happens for a third time, Karl will have been on the money.
The Battle of the Atlantic started at the outbreak of World War II in 1939. Germany blockaded the Atlantic Sea routes to Britain.
It had already neutralised those on the south coast, like London, Southampton, Plymouth and Bristol – so Liverpool and the Glasgow were the British lifeline for food and the materiels of war.
In those day Britain depended, as it still does, on imported food. Germany’s objective was to starve Britain into submission, so it tried to blockade the Atlantic Ocean with submarines or U Boats and a few battle ships. The latter were quickly sunk and the deadly German U Boat Wolf Packs were born.
The blockade failed, but it cost Britain, America, the British Empire and Germany, one hundred thousand men and five thousand ships and submarines; the Battle of the Atlantic, the longest in WWII, started in 1939 and ended in 1945.
How many nuclear submarines would it take to blockade the east coast of Australia?
How many of our leaders in the Labor Government have read the military history of Australia in the Second World War?
Do they know how Australia relied on Britain; a dependence which started after World War I with the building of a garrison and a major port in Singapore?
This initiative was enthusiastically supported by Australia and New Zealand because it was designed to defend both countries from the ever growing regional ambitions of the Japanese Imperial Forces.
OUTWITTED
Do they know why Singapore fell and what happened after that fall? Do they know how the Japanese outwitted everyone including Churchill and Curtin?
How instead of invading from the sea they did what was thought to be the impossible and traversed the “impenetrable” jungle, and took Singapore, literally, from behind.
The Garrison surrendered on February 15, 1942. More than 130,000 Allied troops were taken prisoner, 15,000 were Australian and 7000 would die in captivity.
Do they know about Prime Minister Curtin’s new year address on December 26, 1941, when he said: “Without any inhibitions of any kind, I make it clear that Australia looks to America, free of any pangs as to our traditional links or kinship with the United Kingdom.
“We shall exert all our energies towards the shaping of a plan, with the United States as its keystone, which will give our country some confidence of being able to hold on until the tide of battle swings against the enemy.”
Do our leaders in Canberra know that there was a major stoush between Winston Churchill and John Curtin after the fall of Singapore? The best of friends fell out. The “mother country”, spurned her child and denied her wishes.
Curtin wanted the Australian 7th Division, fighting in the Middle East, to be returned to Australia due to the threat from Japan, who were already in Papua New Guinea and too close for comfort.
Churchill refused Curtin’s request and sent the Australians to Rangoon, to fight in what was at that time, Burma.
Curtin was furious and after several heated exchanges Churchill relented, and the 7th Division returned to Australia and relieved the “part time” troops, the Australian Militia, who were fighting the Japanese Imperial Army on the Kokoda Track.
What happened in 1942 was unexpected and unplanned and it could happen again. The best of friends fell out due to conflicting interests.
Churchill was fighting a World War; America may be called upon to do the same in the not too distant future, as tensions rise around the world.
BLOOD
The moral of that story is that even those of the same blood can fall out.
Curtin had to defend Australia from an invasion by the Japanese; today it is not the Japanese that concern us, it is China.
As I have mentioned, the Chinese will not need to wage war on Australia, but they will seek to neutralise those critical regional facilities we host for America on Australian soil.
The over the horizon radar at Pine Gap close to Alice Springs; the Harold E Holt Communications Station at Exmouth; the Stirling Naval Base at Garden Island in WA and now the Amberley Air Force Base in NSW, hosting the B2 Stealth bomber, all are of regional and global importance to America, Australia and the Indo Pacific Region.
Add the increasing presence of American Marines stationed in the Northern Territory and the conclusion must be that Australia will be a target, because it is becoming a garrison for the Indo Pacific Region, which is being built with American hardware and boots.
It would be wrong to lay all the blame for the current parlous state of the ADF at the feet of this Labor Government and the totally unimpressive Richard Marles.
The Coalition had a decade to build our defences, and they didn’t. They made a last minute rush to secure the AUKUS agreement on nuclear submarines in an attempt say they had done something.
That agreement does nothing to alleviate our current dilemma, those subs if they ever arrive (we have just been told there is a get-out clause for America and the UK) are decades away and no enemy is going to wait until we are ready.
Gareth Evans, former Australian Foreign Minister said in a recent speech to the Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia, that he believes the AUKUS deal is terrible for Australia’s national interests.
COMPLICATED
He claims AUKUS is too expensive (given the way costs always escalate) too complicated, takes too long, there are too many get out clauses for America and the UK.
He says no-one can predict American politics, or the UK for that matter, and we can’t afford to wait for decades for something we may not get.
Labor has now been in government for more than two of its three-year term.
Had they been a new management team employed to fix a failing public company, by now they would have been deemed by shareholders to have failed and would have been sacked.
Given the state of American politics at present can we, more importantly should we, continue to rely on the might of the American armed forces to defend us?
How can we possibly forecast what a Donald Trump or a Kamala Harris will do when one of them gets into the White House?
It will be claimed by the nay sayers in the Labor Government, that we cannot afford to spend more on the defence of the nation.
The question is can we afford not to spend what is needed to defend our country?
Should we not be making the sacrifices needed right now, to ensure that Australia has a secure future? PC
Australia, like the US, is governed by a pack of left wing activists who hate Australia and are more concerned with their woke issues – climate change, renewables, aboriginal rights, muslim rights, transexual rights etc – than preserving the values and integrity of this great country which has its values based in the English system of law and social structure. These values gave the world Western democracy, the best form of government invented by humans. The left on the other hand have given the world its worst forms of government, communism and islam.
People had better wake up soon. And the LNP and other conservative parties in the world had better grow testicles and courage.
Dad’s Army?
More like Aunt Mabel’s Army.
Why do monarchists want Australia’s head of state to be inferior to the UK’s head of state?