Living in the 'Latter Days'

For centuries now, world power centres have been moving west – from Mongolia, to Europe, to Britain, to North America, and now Asia beckons.

The Anglo/American Empire today resembles the decadent dying days of Rome. Europe is becoming a green energy wasteland, the British Empire died with Churchill, and America has dodderers and adolescents in charge. Australia plans to defend the outback with battery-powered Bushmasters (good for battlefields with plenty of power points). The new defence minister has restored "rainbow morning teas" (banned by Peter Dutton). And an Australian iron oligarch and green hydrogen speculator, Andrew Forrest, aims to de-power Xi Jinping by inviting him to the Climate Summit.

Every chapter of history ends with a flood of barbarians.

Australia has not yet seen the campfires of an invading army – but our wealth and our powerful friends have bred a dangerous complacency in this fat lazy land.

Australians have always been sustained by hunter-gatherers, farmers and miners.

Our farmers and miners produced wool booms, gold rushes, silver booms, coal bonanzas, and a cornucopia of meat and butter, iron and steel, oil and gas, copper, lead, zinc, nickel, aluminium, lithium, cobalt, manganese and uranium. But now green dreamers think we can afford to destroy our processing and manufacturing industry with solar/wind dreams, shut the gate on mining and exploration, and turn farms, forests and grassland into industry-free world-heritage and first-nations wilderness.

The Comrade Societies have mastered one thing - conscripting all their resources to construct colossal war machines. And naive democracies are easily lulled into inaction by paper treaties such as the Munich Pact of 1938 signed by Hitler, Mussolini, Chamberlain and Daladier.

In November 1938, just after the signing of the Munich Pact, John Curtin (Leader of the Labor Party in the Australian Parliament, and later Prime Minister), made this statement:

. . I say that any increase in defence expenditure appears to be an entirely unjustifiable and hysterical piece of panic propaganda. Source: Hansard p1095, Nov 2, 1938.

Just ten months later, in September 1939, Germany attacked Poland. Then Japan attacked the US base at Pearl Harbour in 1941. By 1942, the British Navy had lost their prized battleships "Prince of Wales" and "Repulse", Singapore had fallen, Darwin had been bombed and Japanese troops crested the Owen Stanley Ranges and looked across the shallow sea to Australia. Surrender of Australia north of "The Brisbane Line" was discussed.

Then US General Douglas Macarthur came to Brisbane with men and weapons.

Of the billions of people who live in the Asia/Pacific region, less than one percent are Australian. Australia has enormous natural assets with identified but undeveloped resources of uranium, oil shale, green metals, coal, timber, sea foods and gas. Our only real title to this land is our willingness to use it and our ability to defend it.