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Kim Beazley recommends you attend our lunch...Dear , I couldn’t resist – when I saw the cover of yesterday’s Australian newspaper I knew I had to draw your attention to it as Kim Beazley makes the case more eloquently than I could for urgently reviewing our defence. Former Labor leader Kim Beazley says Australia’s military could not defend the nation from invasion without the US, in a backwards step from the time he was defence minister in the Hawke and Keating governments. It’s the best advertisement I could think of for our defence function “Australia's new National Defence Strategy - is it fit for purpose?” with Major General (Retired) Adam Findlay. (To book click here). Labor’s Defence Minister Richard Marles said defence policy had to be bipartisan. That’s probably true, and when we’re looking for someone to blame for the parlous state of our defence forces, both parties are equally culpable. He also said “We sit here tonight with the sense that escalation is possible. We face ... the most threatening strategic circumstance since the end of World War II.” Well that's stating the bloody obvious to the extent you have to wonder why he even thought it necessary. Perhaps he didn’t think his audience would have noticed that the Chinese Communist Party just ran a provocative military exercise around Taiwan, and then dropped a video on the island with a CGI version of what an invasion might look like? Australia’s been asleep at the wheel for far too long. This article by Julie Bishop from 13 years ago (published exclusively on our On Line Opinion) advises “Australia cannot afford to be complacent about China”. Even I noted the difficulties and the need for urgency in this newsletter almost 4 years ago, and addressed the Taiwan situation directly three years ago with the possibility that the Ukraine war was part of a coordinated campaign between Russia and China against the West. I don’t see myself as a foreign affairs or military expert, but I was pretty right in both cases, just missed that war in Israel might be part of the overall front. So if I can see that far ahead, surely people who are paid to be our lookouts would be seeing even further, and doing something about it. Is there time? Do we have the will and the means? I have a feeling I will be writing some more about those issues, and that we will be running many more functions like this one with Major General, now Professor, Adam Findlay. Details of the function are: Time: Tuesday June 18, 12:00pm for 12:30pm start. Bookings: Click here Regards, GRAHAM YOUNG 
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