The polls show that Farage and Hanson have one thing in common; they talk in a language that voters across the generations share, understand and are supporting in increasing numbers.

The majority of the voters in Britain and Australia live by shared values which are inherited and based on cultures embedded in the Anglo-Celtic, Judeo-Christian ethos of their common ancestors.

MIGRANTS

The British want their country back – and Farage says he will do just that. He is adamant that his Party will stop illegal migrant traffic across the English Channel.

He has promised to rid the country of those elements – both religious and cultural – which are increasingly making the British (the indigenous people of the British Isles) despondent and progressively more restless against multiculturalism.

Such is the support for Farage that the polls are saying that Reform could be the next government in Britain, and Farage could be Prime Minister.

Pauline Hanson is doing almost the same thing in Australia, although the archaic preferential voting system will make it almost impossible for One Nation to win government.

There will be mayhem, however, and the fox could be in the hen house if there’s an exchange of preferences between One Nation and the Coalition at the next general election.

Hanson, a fierce patriot, with former National Party leader and Deputy Prime Minister Barnaby Joyce now at her side, she is enunciating what 25 per cent of voters, of all ages and walks of life now support.

Hanson claims that too many migrants, many of whom don’t share Australia’s values and customs, are ruining Australia.

To uphold safety, transparency and women’s freedom in Australia’s public places she wants a national ban on face covering garments like the burqa.

She wants a law to ban the desecration or burning of the Australian flag which she claims is deeply offensive to a great majority of Australians.

She is adamant that Labor’s manic, frantic and staggeringly expensive drive towards being a renewable super-power and net-zero by 2025, should be abolished.

The challenge of today for both the National Party and all Australians is to shrug off the Labor induced apathy of the past five years and re-kindle the drive, ambition and success of the not-too-distant past.

MAGA may seem a tad trite even banal but used as a clarion-call for Make Australia Great Again, it is a call to which all Australians will respond. History shows they have done it before in spades when the nation demanded it.

In many ways, just like Americans, we are an extraordinary people. Over the years from all over the world we have gathered on this island with the express intent to make a life better than the one we left behind.

From the very beginning – hardened by settling a new land, fighting a war where the flower of our youth died on far off fields, only to be struck down with a flu pandemic and ten years of the Great Depression, which only ended when war came again in 1939 – this nation rose to meet the challenge.

There is no greater example of what Australia is capable of achieving than the industrial revolution which took place in Australia between 1935 and 1975.

The great advance in Australia started during World War II – and fast-tracked for three decades after – is little recognised and never talked about in Australia today. Why is that? It was one of this nation’s finest achievements.

During those dark days between 1939 and 1945 Australia shrugged off its dependency on rural Australia and became close to being a balanced, self-supporting nation.

Australia’s greatness in those days was not derived from exporting raw materials; the mining boom had hardly started; it was based on this nation’s ability to compete with and beat the best in the industrial world.

In 1939 almost 80 per cent of those who were left at home to support the war effort had never worked in a factory.

Many had survived and struggled through WWI, a pandemic and ten years of the Great Depression – so they already knew what hardship was all about.

Their job was to manufacture all the materiel required to sustain a war. From boots to guns and, believe it or not, ships and aeroplanes as well as a hundred and one other items needed by those who had left the country to fight the enemy.

The Curtin Labor Government not only inspired the people to rise and meet the challenge of war, but they also had the foresight, courage and belief in the Allied Forces, to start planning, through the Department of Post-War Reconstruction, for what Australia would need after the war.

They converted factories which had hitherto been making pots and pans into workshops making what was needed to defeat Germany and Japan.

When it became evident that Australia needed ships of all kinds to defend this island – and would have to make them themselves – the Curtin Labor Government responded.

If Australia needs inspiration from the past, consider that over sixty (60) major naval and merchant ships were built in Australia between 1939 and 1945. That’s as close as you can get to ten a year.

These included:

• Bathurst‑class corvettes,
• River‑class frigates,
• Merchant vessels and auxiliary ships including landing craft for the Battle of the Pacific Islands.

After the fall of Singapore, the Cockatoo Island Dockyard became the primary Allied repair hub in the Southwest Pacific.

The men and women of NSW, the young and the old, between 1940 and 1945 repaired more than 250 ships from the Australian, Allied and particularly American fleets.

Eighty years ago the six million Australians left at home proved what extraordinarily determined people we are.

These days we don’t talk about how, out of sheer necessity and the will to win, previously unskilled men and women learned how to build war ships for the Royal Australian Navy and cargo ships for its Merchant Navy.

Today we just have warm dreams about other nations’ nuclear submarines that some still believe we’ll get in 20 years.

How many of our leaders of today know that in 1936, the Australian Government under Sir Robert Menzies had the foresight to form the Commonwealth Aircraft Corporation (CAC)?

The authorised capital was £1,000,000 and paid up to £600,000.

Between 1939 to 1945, Australia with a Labor Government in charge manufactured 755 Wirraways, 705 Beaufort bombers, 259 Boomerang fighters, 365 Beaufighters, 104 Mosquitos, 16 Mustangs and almost 2000 aero engines including the famous Rolls Royce Merlin.

BENCHMARK

At the end of that war, it was obvious to the world that the Australian Aircraft Industry, which grew from nothing, was very close to the world benchmark, with only the US, British, Russian and Canadian industries ahead of it*.

In the post war years, the CAC and the Government Aircraft Factory (GAF) built 111 Avon Sabre fighters and 48 Canberra Bombers.

The CAC also manufactured, here in Australia, every part of the world’s most advanced jet engine, the Rolls Royce Avon, which was fitted to both the Canberra and the Sabre.

The Commonwealth’s aim was for home ownership for everybody, but they continued to strive for a roof over the head of everyone and they succeeded! Now we have close to half a million who are homeless and many more on the verge.

What is poorly documented and seldom if ever celebrated, is that the seven years of WWII, Australia became a world class manufacturing nation and that drive and expertise continued into the 60s.

The 60s, by and large, continued to the 80s and vindicated Chifley’s belief that the country should not be left at the mercy of market forces and that it was possible to plan an economy and make it serve several objectives.

In 1939, 80 per cent of the workforce had no factory experience yet, working off blueprints, no computers in those days, Australia built pattern shops, foundries and assembly lines to make everything from battle ships to the Rolls Royce piston driven Merlin engines in wartime and its Avon jet engine in the 1960s.

The difference between now and 1939 is the leadership of the nation.