The saying ‘The only thing we learn from history is that men never learn from history’ may be dismissed as a sweeping generalisation. But as the formidable general Sir John Glubb – Glubb Pashah – remarked, it is one which the chaos of the world goes far to confirm. As does the chaos in Canberra.

The politicians should learn from history and recall Sir Henry Parkes’ 1891 observation that all colonial leaders were agreed that for the defence of Australia to be ‘equal to the emergency that may arise at any time,’ defence must be under federal command.

This was no doubt the dominant reason for most people agreeing to unite in our federal commonwealth under the Crown and the constitution.

Defence is still the politicians’ first and most important duty. This is implicit in General Molan’s important new book, Danger on Our Doorstep. (Senator Molan’s preselection was long blocked by the LINOs.)

The politicians’ first duty is certainly not to act on the fake climate emergency recently denounced, with the mainstream media hardly noticing, by over 1,100 of the world’s leading scientists.

Nor have the Canberra politicians been elected to destroy, through the dangerous 43 per cent emissions-by-2030 policy, what is left of manufacturing and impose impossible burdens on agriculture, mining and households by making electricity even more expensive and more unreliable.

Nor are they there to exercise powers clearly reserved to the states.

By seizing an extraordinarily greedy proportion of taxes, around 80 per cent – far higher than in the US, Canada, Germany, Switzerland or any other comparable federation – and aided by activist judges, Canberra pushes its nose into matters not constitutionally theirs and for which they are just not equipped. Almost always the result is a disaster, as bulk billing always would be, and education is, despite vast amounts of ‘Gonski’ money.

The environment is another. An example is the extraordinary number of federal and state approvals, licences and permits Gina Rinehart had to obtain just to start the massive Roy Hill iron ore mining operation, whose taxes now help fund politicians’ follies and lifestyles.

The number of approvals, etc, was more than 4,000. In the face of this madness, most entrepreneurs would have given up and gone elsewhere.

If that’s not enough, the 43 per cent emissions law will fulfil Greens leader Adam Bandt’s demand, a ban on all new mining projects. This demonstrates the real government of Australia is in fact, an Albanese-Bandt coalition.

The ban will be achieved under a federal statute which empowers environmental activists to bog down every such project in the courts. Tony Abbott tried to stop this, but after the coup, Malcolm Turnbull didn’t even bother to ensure it would be enacted after the 2016 double dissolution.

(All those mines will be opened if Beijing succeeds in its plan to convert Australia into a tributary state within its growing empire.)

Nor are politicians sent to Canberra to persuade Australians to vote Yes to a vague outline of some so-called indigenous ‘Voice’. As Malcolm Turnbull admitted, when announcing his headline-grabbing backflip to support this, the Voice is not just symbolic. It will confer ‘real power’. Indeed, the secret model apparently involves an international role. Ominously, it’s only the first stage of a trifecta for overwhelming change, the other being treaties and ‘truth-telling’ to change all history.

If these internal convulsions are not enough, it is not since the second world war that we have been in such external danger.

Never have we been so defenceless. Never have our ‘great and powerful friends’ been led so poorly. This is especially so with the United States under the presidency of a Manchurian candidate in serious cognitive decline.

With his disgraceful retreat from Afghanistan, the Beijing-Moscow-Tehran Axis had no doubt seen this as a signal to advance their worldwide interests. In particular, and despite the blindness of Western political and business leaders, Beijing’s communists are behaving consistently with what they have always been, dangerous, genocidal plutocrats. If our political class are to learn from history, they should reflect on the fact that over one hundred years ago, Australia was far better defended than we are today. The then government was more effective and more efficient, with young Australians eager to serve.

This is demonstrated by the events which immediately followed the Declaration of War on 4 August 1914.

A mere fourteen days later, on 18 August, and in the middle of an election, this young nation of five million was to farewell a hastily assembled all-volunteer Australian National Military Expeditionary Force of eight companies of infantry and six companies from the naval reserve, all to take on the superpower, Imperial Germany.

The aim was to deny the German naval squadron under Vice Admiral von Spee, operating from its base in the German enclave of Tsingtao in China, access to a key part of Germany’s formidable network of colonies stretching from the Caroline and Marshall Islands in the north, to New Britain and German New Guinea in the south. This network was planned to provide intelligence, communications, especially by radio to Berlin, as well as logistic support.

To take the force to New Guinea, a P&O liner, the Berrima, was turned into a troop ship at Cockatoo Island in a mere six days.  Could that be done today?

The expeditionary force was successful in taking Papua New Guinea, a territory which was to be even more important in the second world war. Sadly, one of our two new submarines, the AE1, was lost. It was located in December 2017 in 300 metres of water off the Duke of York Island group.

The politicians should learn from history and reflect on how this was achieved in 1914 with bipartisan support by a country with one-fifth of today’s population, and the same country ends up defenceless in 2022.

The lesson surely is the defence of Australia must always come first. ​