The lesson of history is that vigilance must be eternal

While an estimated one million Australian men and women served during World War II in Europe, Africa, Asia and the Pacific, with 39,649 killed and tens of thousands seriously wounded, the bombing of Darwin is significant.

It was the first attack by a foreign power on Australian soil and it represented the first serious threat of invasion by a foreign army.

It is clear from historical records that Australia was caught relatively unprepared for the Darwin attack.

After the devastation of World War 1, successive governments failed to invest sufficiently in our defence capability while coping with the ravages of the Great Depression.

In his book The Government and the People 1939–1941, Sir Paul Hasluck observed that:

It was true that the 1938- 39 figure was nearly twice as much as Australia had ever spent in a single year and four times as much as she had been spending five years earlier, but it was a tiny proportion of the nation's resources and the dangers were great and so immediate.

Perhaps more than anything else the modesty of the defence proposals at this period was due to a defect, not of the will but of the imagination.

The lessons from history are that threats can emerge more quickly than anticipated and it is prudent to maintain an appropriate level of preparedness at all times.

That is what makes so concerning the decision of the Labor Government to cut defence spending as a percentage of GDP to its lowest levels since 1938.

While there is no obvious threat on our horizon, even a cursory study of our own history will show how quickly the security situation can change.

The famous quote (of disputed origins) that "Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty" should never be ignored.