The first world war saw a significant tactical blunder by Commonwealth countries in regard to Gallipoli, where 480,000 Allied forces were dispatched and more than half of them became casualties.

In the second world war, with the wonderful benefit of hindsight, who could believe that Allied forces tacticians in Singapore would have even remotely considered that the enemy would come from the north? Another huge blunder. The Japanese trundled successfully down the Malaysian Peninsula, knowing full well that the Singapore shore guns were all pointing seaward through a nice sector from east through south to the west, nothing to the north or the causeway. The fall of Singapore, like Gallipoli, was a tactical disgrace.

In my previous life, meandering as a marine consultant for 49 years, I have been optimising ships and shore infrastructures. Many of these projects were in the South Pacific

Around 35 years ago, I was engaged by Norfolk Island. After a full feasibility, I recommended sea walls around Ball Bay and Cascade to allow for large and small vessels to finally have a port of refuge in this 560,000 square miles huge expanse of the South Pacific, and for a regular container roro service to use these harbours. At the time, the cargo arrived in older geared cargo ships discharging small amounts of cargo via union purchase derricks into small lighters that could only carry five tonnes at a time. This would happen on the lee side of the island either at Kingston or Cascade wherever the wind was not blowing

Six years ago, I was tasked with the same exercise, particularly now that there are no geared ships and attempts to handle containers via lighters or barges have resulted in injuries, groundings and ongoing inefficiencies, and, yes, I came up with the same recommendations. Build a big seawall and make a good harbour in Ball Bay, Cascade, or both.

Alas Norfolk is governed by an over-regulated socialist Labor government in Australia that already have run out of taxpayer money. For such a seawall to be approved, yes just approved, it would take eight years to get through the obstructive EPA and EPBC (Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation) Acts that are already obstructing sensible infrastructure progress right across Australia. Oh, how Australia needs a Donald Trump to rollback most of this nonsense!

The Norfolk lighterage system continues and containers cost around $30,000 to get to Norfolk, and airfreight is around $8,000 per tonne for groceries, about 20 times of your local small supermarket. It is cheaper to airfreight a car than send it by sea freight.

So my recommendations to Norfolk Island are as follows:

Watch the 1959 satirical comedy film, The Mouse that Roared to absorb Politics 1.0.1. for a small territory

Then get on the phone to China’s foreign affairs Minister Wang Yi, and Russia’s foreign affairs minister Sergey Lavrov.

Invite both of them to bid for a lease of Ball Bay and Cascade for 10 years on the proviso that they build the seawall and some berths. You could have the proposals before Easter and the harbours built before Christmas.

The Chinese are ahead of the game here having a fleet of ‘fishing vessels’ sitting in the 40-mile gap between the Norfolk and Lord Howe territorial waters for most of this year. Certainly not for fishing, but try and find someone in Canberra who cares.

In the last decade, China did a very quick and splendid infrastructure job on the Philippine Spratley Islands without any permits, and Russia wandered into Crimea and Ukraine without an invite, so they both have some experience and project credibility here.

The water depths in Ball Bay and Cascade are deep enough for the Chinese or Russian nuclear subs and big enough to accommodate an aircraft carrier or two. Another plus is that Norfolk is just a short two-day Cruise to Auckland or Sydney for a bit of R&R for their warship sailors!

The nearest military opposition to Norfolk could be the Lord Howe Island game fishing club, a bigger deterrent than the Australian defence forces, who have never shown any interest in Norfolk, or else there would be a harbour there and possibly a defence vessel or two.

The overstaffed Australian Infrastructure and Defence departments are too busy on never-ending ‘reviews’, possibly babbling about protecting Lake Burley Griffin from midget NZ submarines, (particularly diesel propelled versions that won’t meet zero emissions targets), or the new Chinese eight-lane motorway proposal from Daru through the Torres Strait islands to Bamaga.

Elsewhere in the Southwest Pacific, Australia has saddled regional nations with poorly designed Pacific Patrol boats. In 2002 former Prime Minister of Fiji, Brigadier Sitiveni Rabuka, a man with considerable military experience, stated publicly in Queensland, ‘Do not treat us like beggars, and give us expensive boats that carry 14 people and a gun. When I have 3,000 people on a beach as a result of a cyclone or tsunami, I need something more practical that can beach-land emergency equipment and mobile first aid units.’

Canberra reacted by replacing these aluminium patrol boats changing the hull to steel and renaming them with a grander title of ‘Guardian Class’. These poor designs with exposed propellers and rudders are unsuitable for shallow reef areas, as seen recently with the Samoan Police vessel clipping the reef, destroying one rudder and prop and almost sinking her. As there are no slipways in Samoa, she had to be lifted on to a submersible barge and brought to Cairns for repair, a $2 million exercise that some innocent taxpayer, somewhere, has to pay for. Then she was declared a total loss which could have been done in Samoa saving $2 million. Her engines could have been used for power generation, and the hull used for a dive site.

I was there decades ago when the Western Australian-built ‘Queen Salamasina’, an Australian foreign aid donated ferry arrived in Samoa. She was too deep to berth at the ferry terminal in Mulifanua and became an economic millstone for the 200,000 residents of Samoa, an event that they have never apologised for.

So Norfolk, don’t hold your breath waiting for the Australian government to do anything sensible in the Pacific. Departmental Heads of Infrastructure and Defence bureaucracies will continue the endless reviews and filibustering, as they have no money, but even worse than that, no interest.

Norfolk is just another tactical disgrace.

In the successful model of the Duchy of Grand Fenwick, be bold and get on the phone to the Chinese and Russians.