It's long been a prophecy that the Eagle & the Bear will unite to fight the Dragon !

Dear LEGO and Alan B,

You make the future look so black! But begs the question why Australia's politicians, bureaucrats and business leaders have been selling us out to China over the past several decades when they themselves must have been aware of the consequences.

So what did Andrew Hastie actually say about (what a wide range of ill-informed pundits in Australia claim) was a comparison of China with Nazi Germany?

Hastie is more than the mere MP the appeasers label him. He is Chair of the Parliamentary Joint Committee for Intelligence and Security in Canberra.

In the SMH, August 8, 2019, Hastie wrote the Opinion piece Leftwing or Trade interested politicians are misrepresenting, see http://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/we-must-see-china-the-opportunities-and-the-threats-with-clear-eyes-20190807-p52eon.html

Part of what Hastie said:

"We must see China - the opportunities and the threats - with clear eyes...

...We must balance security and trade. But most importantly, we must remain true to our democratic convictions

...The West once believed that economic liberalisation would naturally lead to democratisation in China. This was our Maginot Line. It would keep us safe, just as the French believed their series of steel and concrete forts would guard them against the German advance in 1940.

But [French] thinking failed catastrophically. The French had failed to appreciate the evolution of mobile warfare. Like the French, Australia has failed to see how mobile our authoritarian neighbour has become.

Even worse, we ignore the role that ideology plays in China's actions across the Indo-Pacific region. We keep using our own categories to understand its actions, such as its motivations for building ports and roads, rather than those used by the Chinese Communist Party.

...Xi Jinping has made his vision of the future abundantly clear since becoming President in 2013. His speeches show that the tough choices ahead will be shaped, at least on the PRC side, by ideology – communist ideology, or in his words, by "Marxist-Leninism and Mao Zedong Thought".

...The next decade will test our democratic values, our economy, our alliances and our security like no other time in Australian history."

It's all just very convenient for the guilty party to feign indignation !

Mr opinion, Yes they have tried their best to sell everything not nailed down, haven't they? And their reasons? Unfathomable!

I mean we've gone from the third wealthiest nation on the planet and a creditor one at that. To one now mired in debt even after mineral booms one and two and mindless or political expediency writ large, pernicious privatisation!

Doing what you've always done while expecting a different result is insanity!

Our situation has evolved as we slid further and further to the right and away from the cooperating collective to the aspirational individual.

When we cooperating via various collectives and mutual interest we did so much better!

Only to see all the blood, sweat, tears and quite massive sacrifice squandered at the altar of idiotic ideology. Where anything slightly left or slightly right of the moderate middle is labelled leftie or commie! And allowed the imbeciles to guide us where we are today. A hopelessly divided nation at war with itself and low hanging fruit ripe for easy plucking.

Advise all who are interested to polish up your mandarin, it'll be your native tongue in less than two generations! Given nothing real changes and the same manure for brains stay on our present (massive and unsustainable,debt-led recovery) course!?
Alan B.

Low-interest debt is ok, always providing it is ploughed into income-earning infrastructure, or manufacture/self-sufficiency, not recurrent spending or propping up the crisis and corruption-riddled, middleman state governments. Which just to pay for their existence/presence, costs the taxpayer 70+ billion per!

Those 70+ billions would be better spent right now on self-reliant self-defence! And a very robust self-defence industry. We have no time to waste or debate! Just select a less than naive in the extreme path and stay on it!

[And that means we need a real leader not afraid to call a spade a spade! Hastie perhaps!?]

I mean if we cannot repair it here but need to send for parts, we may as well junk it for all the good it will be in any exchange of hostilities that endures! We are after all an island nation! And the moat can and will work two ways for and against our interests!
Alan B.