Australia in 2025 stands at a crossroads not seen since the darkest days of the Cold War. Our military is a shadow of its former self. Our infrastructure is vulnerable. Our leadership appears either asleep at the wheel or dangerously naïve. And while global tensions rise—especially with the aggressive posturing of Communist China—our nation drifts further into complacency.
In 1914, a nation of fewer than five million people understood what it meant to defend itself. We didn't just contribute to the Great War—we led with courage and conviction. We built steelworks, manufactured small arms, and funded the world's most expensive warship, the dreadnought-class HMAS Australia. We had a clear grasp of national duty. Today, with a population five times greater, we have a military that struggles to recruit volunteers, lacks basic industrial support, and is drowning in bureaucracy.
How did we fall so far?
Nothing epitomises our decline more than the disgraceful leasing of Darwin Port to a Chinese commercial entity for 99 years. This wasn't some obscure bureaucratic mistake. It was a calculated betrayal—a transaction carried out by a minor territorial government in exchange for money, with Canberra turning a blind eye. The port, critical to Australian defence and a base for both our Navy and American fuel reserves, is now effectively under foreign influence.
No serious country would allow its critical maritime infrastructure to be controlled by an increasingly belligerent foreign power. China is not a neutral actor. It is a totalitarian regime engaged in the largest military build-up since World War II. Its interests are not Australia's. It seeks dominance, and we have handed it the keys to our northern gate.
Successive governments have bent over backwards to maintain "friendly relations" with China, refusing to challenge its economic coercion, its expansionism, and its aggression in the South China Sea. Under Anthony Albanese, this appeasement has reached alarming new depths. His reluctance to even discuss revoking the Darwin lease is emblematic of a broader failure: an unwillingness to recognise that China is not a strategic partner, but a strategic adversary.
The Chinese Communist Party does not respect weakness. It exploits it. Beijing has already shown it will weaponise trade, influence politics, and exploit internal divisions to further its aims. A meek Australia is exactly what it wants—a resource-rich land, geographically strategic, with leaders too timid to resist.
Urbanisation has also played a corrosive role. The rugged self-reliance of rural Australia, which once birthed the ANZAC spirit, has been replaced by a culture obsessed with comfort, convenience, and consumption. Too many Australians live as if peace is permanent and prosperity guaranteed.
We have forgotten a brutal truth: freedom is not free. It must be defended—sometimes with words, sometimes with weapons.
Australia needs to reawaken that wartime spirit of unity, sacrifice, and national pride. But first, we need to accept a hard truth: we are not ready for what's coming.
Once, places like Lithgow powered our national defence. Today, they are ghosts. We must urgently rebuild our domestic industrial base—not just to ensure economic security, but to guarantee that when the next crisis comes, we are not dependent on foreign powers for the basics of war: fuel, ammunition, steel, and ships.
This isn't just good policy—it's national survival.
We need a sovereign defence industry, capable of building and maintaining the tools of modern warfare: drones, satellites, missile systems, and secure communications. These are the sinews of strength in the 21st century.
It's an open secret that the Australian Defence Force is top-heavy with generals and admirals presiding over diminishing numbers of actual combat troops. This bureaucratic bloat is a national embarrassment. We need fewer PowerPoint presentations and more boots on the ground. We need leadership that trains warriors, not consultants.
We must slash red tape, invest in rigorous training, and ensure every soldier, sailor, and pilot is battle-ready.
The Voice Referendum has only deepened divisions in our country. While the desire to uplift Indigenous communities is noble, granting any group separate political power undermines our most precious asset: national unity.
A divided nation is a vulnerable nation.
Our enemies are watching. They see the fractures. They hear the apologies and the self-doubt. And they are preparing to exploit it.
Every citizen must be an Australian first. That identity must be forged in duty and shared destiny—not in grievance and guilt.
The AUKUS agreement and future nuclear-powered submarines are promising, but they are decades away. We need immediate solutions: drones, fuel reserves, mobile defences, and serious investment in people and production. We must harden our society, both materially and mentally.
We cannot rely on the United States to bail us out. The world is changing, and America's appetite for foreign commitments is uncertain. Donald Trump or not, we must be prepared to stand alone if needed. That means building an Australia that can fight, survive, and win without waiting for help.
Australia is the world's oldest continuous democracy in the southern hemisphere. It is worth defending—not just from foreign powers, but from the internal rot of apathy and weakness.
If we don't act now, we will not be remembered as the heirs of ANZAC—but as the generation that handed over our future without a fight.
It's time to wake up.