Is a place with 720,000 people worthy of the description 'country'? Surely it is not big enough to be a 'going concern'. SI can now only be considered as a Communist China platform, less than 2,000 kilometres from our East coast.

SI has to go on the bot to hold some damn games, for heaven's sake! Games they have no need of, and no business staging because they cannot afford to.

And, if SI can't even afford to hold an election, they need to go back to when they subsisted on fish and yams. Their population is simply not sufficient for modern independence. They can only survive in the 21st Century as a protectorate, and their protector looks like being China, Australia being too mamby pamby and frightened of being called 'racist' to do anything except throw a few coins in SI's begging bowl and hope for the best.

Russia invades a country to protect itself from a threat (NATO and the West). Australia sits back and allows the threat (China) to do as it pleases. We should have had a military presence in the Solomons years ago. That might sound odd now, with successive Australian governments leading us fools to believe that everything was going to be fine and dandy since the last time Australian troops fought there, my father being one of them, but that’s what should have happened. It's all a bit too late now, I think.

The author mentions Bougainville. Old Dad was there too; so was the enemy. They got that close. The current enemy intends to do the same.

I said all along that this PM and his activities is aimed at entrenching himself in power, indefinately! He can't lose if he never ever has to face another election! And his ultimate aim?
Alan B.

First and foremost, Australia needs to address the issue of “The Enemy”.

Government decisions based on a belief China is the enemy, are light on evidence.

Running a consistent Australian National foreign policy with a wish in latter times that the cuddling-up processes of the past are now regrettable, and the new reality dawns that China wishes more than ideal trade deals, simply highlights the immaturity of politicians with no street-wise sense of human nature, and a total disregard of history as their guide.

After all, the White Australia policy was entirely aimed at the threat from China. A threat that has been obvious and politically acknowledged over a hundred years ago!

Dan

First and foremost, Australia needs to address the issue of “The Enemy”.
diver dan,
Anyone who can out-think, out-smart, out-do, out-perform is a potential enemy !
Australia definitely will have a lot of enemies if it hesitates & keeps baulking at introducing a national Service scheme !

Will the Conflict Islands become 'enemy' territory ?

The Domino theory is alive and well. And the aim is obvious, we're in the crosshairs. And for decades have been sleepwalking toward our demise as a free and independent nation. And because we closed blind eyes to problem in pursuit of the dollar.

Ukraine is a case study in how not to trust a militant neighbour. And the war there will see energy prices double then double again. And flow on to everything else in extraordinary cost of living increases.

That'll put us further and further in debt and further behind the economic eight ball. As we are saddled by a government with an idiotic idealogical opposition to the one glaring solution, whose name cannot be mentioned, i.e., Nuclear energy, i.e., MSR thorium.

No, they will throw borrowed money at the problem but change nothing real except, buy choppers and nuclear subs. The choppers only as useful as the fuel reserves needed to keep them aloft!

Go figure!
Alan B.