Treasurer Jim Chalmers made a song and dance about Antarctic investment earlier in December, obscuring the deteriorating situation in Australia’s southern external territory.

‘We’re expanding Australia’s Antarctic Program to create jobs and boost investment in Tasmania,’ Chalmers wrote on X.

‘This investment means more support for our scientists, more polar ice breaking research voyages, and better aviation capability to keep workers safe. Labor is backing Tasmania with up to 30 new scientific jobs, more research capacity, and funding for world-class climate science.’

Those magic words, ‘climate science’.

Chalmers could throw the entire Treasury at Antarctica and it wouldn’t make the slightest difference to its preservation whilever Albanese remains too scared to chase Chinese krill ships and foreign whaling vessels out of the area.

While we are passively watching China abuse the rules regarding military bases half-heartedly hidden under ‘scientific’ excuses, other nations are moving in to threaten our territorial claims.

Australia views Antarctica as a wildlife reserve to be protected; our rivals want to re-purpose the frozen continent as a military outpost and raid it for its assumed abundance of fossil fuels.

It’s a real doozy for the Greens, who toe the line of fluffy penguin environmentalism while being reluctant to paint a fellow socialist regime as dangerous. The best they can do is grumble about a lack of funding. They are the kind of political party that wants America out of Pine Gap but won’t tell China to stop pouring concrete on coral reefs.

The full story from Chalmers is mostly inconsequential – $208 million is being offered over seven years which includes jobs for Tasmania, one of the only states occupied by a Liberal government. To be fair, the money will keep an icebreaker supply line in operation to our bases and substations, which is important.

Of course, we have to grit our teeth through the usual apocalyptic tone.

Every time Australia talks about conservation there is a thick crust of alarmist grovelling reminiscent of Galileo showering pleasantries on the Inquisition which held him under house arrest.

Science and political power are coming to a head beneath us.

While real research science is held tightly in the fist of political climate alarmism, ambitious military operations use climate goals in the same way a black marker redacts information.

Antarctica faces two futures: as a political stalemate or a mining operation and military platform.

The narrative of preserving Antarctica via treaty as an environmental paradise always had more to do with stopping a Cold War than protecting penguins.

An unclaimed land mass is a problem.

Idealists who think everyone wants to keep Antarctica as a frosty museum are woefully naive. We simply haven’t gotten around to fighting about flags and borders. Yet.

Australia is allowed to be a major territory claimant because no one thinks we have the balls to militarise or mine. We are caretakers for a future regime.

Beneath Antarctica sits a frozen landscape which hasn’t seen the sun for 34 million years.

Russia believes it has located more than 511 billion barrels of oil which are locked under bans enforced by the Antarctic Treaty System amended by the 1998 Protocol on Environmental Protection. While very little information is available about coal and gas reserves, it is widely held that its presence is significant, if not kept secret, by those occupying contested territories.

If mining is banned, why are nations scouting the continent?

The cynical answer is that these bans are temporary and eventually either a war or tilting of power will open the frozen continent up to exploration. A report released by the Pentagon several years ago raised a red flag against China for its presumed intention to mine although that fear has shifted to its evolving spy network.

In 2024, China added its fifth ‘scientific research’ base with year-round capacity. According to VOA News, ‘A Centre for Strategic and International Studies report published last April said its position could allow China to “collect signals intelligence from US-allied Australia and New Zealand” as well as gather “telemetry data on rockets launching from newly established space facilities in both countries”.’

It is the same report that points out many of China’s scientific research facilities are ‘dual-use’ with military-aligned capabilities.

This leaves Antarctica as a strategic frontier for nations that could turn hostile toward Australia in addition to their exploitation of wildlife and natural resources. These are the same nations which sit on the United Nations and pretend to care about the climate.

Australia was an environmental caretaker following the war years, but we are now too militarily weak to defend ourselves and Antarctica.

We have thrown small sums of money, here and there, almost always out of embarrassment following a report about the expansion of other nations into the region.

From news.com.au:

‘In February 2022, the Australian government announced a funding injection of $800 million over 10 years to allow scientists to continue a variety of research programs. Among the items financed were $136 million for transport and observable capacities, $35 million for long-range helicopters, $17 million for a krill aquarium, and $60 million for drones and autonomous vehicles.’

Buried under the news of this recent spend announced by the Treasurer is a strategic hiccup.

The US has withdrawn a research icebreaker operating in Antarctica, the Nathaniel B. Palmer. Donald Trump has been repositioning America’s military assets to handle Russia and South American nations. By doing so, there is a current 70 per cent funding cut to the region.

Instead of running laps around a collapsing glacier, the vessel is moored in Chile awaiting news about its fate.

‘None of us saw that coming!’ said one of the researchers.

Really?

America is looking at a world approaching conflict and is taking money away from green projects and re-directing them into the Department of War. Australia is sticking its head in the sand and taking money away from defence and pouring it into vanity green projects which it hopes can pad out the next election campaign and keep the youth vote away from the Greens.

Trump cares about civilisational survival. Labor cares about electoral survival.

No one seems to care about the environment.

China and Russia are investing in Antarctica because they have the economic luxury of foreign military expansion in addition to home defence. For China, that’s thanks to Western nations such as Australia pouring money into the green industry.

Our Treasury is funding foreign war machines under the guise of environmentalism.

But we should always remember, without America, there is no Antarctic Treaty.

For now, the Trump Administration has confirmed it will continue to inhabit its three existing bases, if only to preserve them as future assets against the elements.

This, if nothing else, confirms that China and Russia are playing the long game when it comes to militarising the great frozen south and America believes it has time to sort out the mess in Europe before heading down to strengthen fortifications.

For Australia, this is a dangerous game.

In a Pacific war, we risk being flanked by China with our own external territories used against us. A continent we promised to protect as an environmental paradise is in the process of being manipulated into a military asset.

If we lose, so does the environment.

And yet Albanese continues to move us closer to the aggressor, China, and further from America and its promise to uphold the Antarctic Treaty and environmental protection it brings.