THE extended ADF community has never been so divided against itself as it is right now. The ADF’s current “leadership” — a severely overstated assessment — may have finally met an equally formidable opponent in tyro Defence Minister Peter Dutton. The mere mention of...
Assistant Defence Minister Andrew Hastie has told military personnel their “core business” will always be the “application of lethal violence” and warned “mission clarity” is vital to their work. Key points: Senior government figures said Mr Hastie’s message closely...
The ADF does not have a monopoly on suicide in Australia. It is a national scourge that respects neither age, status, profession, rank, race nor social circumstances. No singular interest group has ownership of its causes, its consequences and, possibly more...
BARRING further acts of political cowardice, Australians will commemorate Anzac Day 2021 as they have done for almost 106 years. Almost, because last year’s commemorations were curtailed by an overwhelming government fear of spreading an exotic disease. READ...
“I have been following the public debate on the allegations that our soldiers have committed criminal acts whilst deployed on operations in Afghanistan. I feel compelled to take a moment to comment on the Brereton report and its allegations the SAS committed war...
The People’s Republic of China has tested Australia’s resolve over the last few weeks. Tariffs, toxic tweets and tough talk from so-called wolf warrior diplomats are designed to make us blink. We haven’t. Our Prime Minister has resisted economic coercion and...
Threats to Australia are increasingly complex. As the Prime Minister warned us on 1 July at the launch of the Defence Strategic Update: “Coercive activities are rife. Disinformation and foreign interference have been enabled and accelerated by new and...
‘Grieved’ and ‘shamed’ by the Brereton report, soldier turned federal MP Andrew Hastie says ‘we ignored the true nature of war and sanitised it’. Read this extract from his article printed in The Australian 24th November 2020 “I served in the SAS for the next five...
Disturbing images from Paris this week show French riot police firing on anarchic protesters, the so-called “yellow vests” protesting against their government’s economic policies. Such confronting scenes would not be replicated here – or could they? Australians tend...
IT RAINED at Villers Bretonneux on November 11 as if the leaden skies were weeping, remembering unimaginable horrors 100 years before. The long rows of headstones at Australia’s World War I National Memorial are a stark reminder of those horrors and the huge price...