Frank
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Australia was hopelessly ill-prepared for war in the late 1930s. Have we arrived at the same point in history again? Simon Benson
Australia has been complacent for decades.
Anthony Albanese likes to remind us that the world is facing the most precarious time since the 1930s.
This is obvious to anyone. And it is accelerating.
But what this means for Australia’s national security, and indeed the US-Australia alliance, has been made far from clear.
And it isn’t the first time a contemporary Australian leader has made comparisons to a pre-war period of instability at all, or the threat of China as Marles suggests.
Scott Morrison made this first reference to the 2030s in a speech early in his prime ministership. Yet here we are, still locked in tortured debate over funding for capability and uncertainty over delivery and the precise nature of the threat.
What is clear is the obvious historical parallel: Australia was equally ill-equipped and equally ill-prepared for war back then as it is now.
As historian Geoffrey Blainey reminds us, when Hitler invaded Poland in September 1939, igniting a global war, “Australia was not ready”.
“It was less prepared than it was in 1914 when its navy was remarkably strong for such a small nation,” Blainey wrote in his short history of Australia.
The problem was and remains an apparent institutionalised complacency.
“For years the public disliked heavier spending on defence because that would mean higher taxes and fewer social services,” Blainey wrote.
Joseph Lyons, prime minister in the years leading up to World War II, came late to the sense that war was coming and Labor’s John Curtin, prime minister during the war years after being sworn in in 1941, was surrounded by isolationists.
At least Curtin acknowledged the need for air power and eventually did something about it.
We once again have the warning signs flashing red – in the Middle East, in Europe and in the Pacific with China’s military spending which can only be interpreted as preparation for potential war. The question is whether Australia once again has come too late to the realisation.
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