The Australian defence intelligence establishment has survived world wars, cold wars, and the peculiar indignity of being briefed by ministers who couldn’t locate Pine Gap with a compass and a black tracker. It has endured Labor’s factional psychodramas and Liberal hibernation. But nothing in its institutional memory prepared it for the Albanese government: a Cabinet of ideological tourists who despise the civilisation they are sworn to defend and expect the spooks and generals to salute anyway.

Picture the scene. A senior intelligence officer – Colonel Straight Face – sits in a secure briefing room in Russell Offices. Across from him: Marles, Wong, Albanese. The Colonel has just delivered a blunt assessment: PLA naval expansion across the Pacific, their cyber crews crawling through critical infrastructure like termites with keyboards, Iranian drones flowing into the hands of jihadis who would happily level half of Sydney. He pauses. The gravity is unmistakable.

Marles asks if the brief could be ‘more trauma-informed’. Wong tilts her head and wonders whether the tone reflects ‘the lived experience of regional partners with diverse historical narratives’. Albanese scrolls his phone to see if his net worth now exceeds Kevin 07. Colonel Straight Face – a man whose day job involves quietly preventing national catastrophe – gently explains that warheads do not adjust their trajectories to accommodate feelings.

Here is the truth nobody in Canberra will say aloud: Australia now runs two governments. One elected, one real. The elected government speaks; the real one acts. And only one understands what century we’re in.

In a healthy democracy, the security apparatus operates under civilian government – accountable, directed, subordinate. That is the contract. But what happens when that government’s worldview is so disconnected from reality that following it would endanger the nation? Defence doesn’t rebel – Jesus, this is Australia, and as Bazza said, we have ‘the biggest and best beaches, drive-in bottle shops, scenery, motels, marsupials, beer, table wines, high-rise developments, and sheilas’. They simply ‘work around’ the morons. The defence intelligence establishment continues to brief and nod, file the minister’s feedback, and plan for the world as it is rather than the world Cabinet wishes existed. Bifurcated sovereignty – a government on paper and a government in fact. Not a coup. Something more unsettling: a democracy in which elected leaders have made themselves structurally irrelevant to the nation’s defence, and nobody has the language to say so.

Put simply, if China invaded tomorrow, Defence would mobilise but Cabinet would acknowledge country, and then hide (or flee).

The ALP does not merely disagree with defence intelligence professionals on tactics. It does not believe in the intellectual universe in which these ‘imperial colonisers’ make sense. The modern Labor Party views Western Civilisation as a ledger of crimes requiring apology. Defence views it as an inheritance requiring protection. One side reads intelligence reports. The other reads feelings reports. These worldviews cannot both be true.

Then there is China – the razorblade Labor surfs with the confidence of a sleepwalker. If ASIO’s repeated public warnings are accurate, the architecture of CCP influence in Australia is not a handful of dodgy donors but a system operating at scale. The operational layer – assets, collaborators, cultivated contacts – one to two thousand. Beneath them: 50-100,000 citizens or permanent residents who amplify Beijing’s narratives without needing a handler. And beneath that, the largest circle: more than 200,000 Australians with family in places like Guangdong, Fujian, and Sichuan who know exactly what happens if they speak honestly about the situation their families face in a country that runs gulags and harvests organs. They are not CCP allies. They are hostages.

Labor’s response is not resistance but accommodation. Daniel Andrews signed Victoria up to Belt and Road. The Coalition vetoed it. Three years later, Andrews stood grinning in Tiananmen Square beside what Andrew Hastie called ‘a parade for dictators’. Michael McCormack called it treason. Beijing knew it was loyalty rewarded.

And Madame Wong? Asked about a former Labor premier posing with three dictators and a theocrat, she offered this: ‘I would so hope that we all should be mindful of the message that our presence and engagement sends.’ Wong reserves her real steel for allies. As far as the communist regime in China is concerned, it’s all just fine and dandy.

It’s in their DNA! Sam Dastyari warned a real-life Dr No, Huang Xiangmo, his phone was tapped – he stood beside him and contradicted Australia’s South China Sea policy on tape. ASIO warned Labor about Huang’s CCP ties in 2015. Labor kept taking the money. And when asked why he hadn’t condemned Andrews’ Tiananmen appearance, the Prime Minister dismissed the question by calling the Opposition ‘delulu’. The generals prepare for existential war; the Prime Minister speaks like a child on TikTok.

Defence must now protect the government from the consequences of the government’s own worldview. It must plan for wars Cabinet cannot imagine, deter adversaries Cabinet prefers to flatter, and defend a civilisation Cabinet is embarrassed to name. Defence prepares for war; the ALP prepares for a panel discussion.

This situation has only two possible endings. In the first, Defence demoralises and hollows out – because no institution can sustain itself while working around its political masters. The serious people leave. The careerists remain. When the crisis arrives, nobody competent answers the phone. In the second, a strategic emergency forces the rupture into the open – and Australia discovers its government and security apparatus have been operating on incompatible premises for years. That is not a policy disagreement. That is more than a constitutional crisis with missiles attached; it’s the end of the Federation.

There is only one way to prevent both futures: the Coalition must win government and realign civilian leadership with Defence’s civilisational commitments. This is not partisanship. It is structural necessity. A democracy cannot endure when its guardians and its government inhabit opposing moral universes. Only a government that believes in the West can defend the West.

Mr President, if you’re listening, once you’re done with Maduro’s regime, sail the Seventh Fleet into Sydney. Albanese isn’t running a drugs cartel, but he is ruining the country we love.