It is worth considering when exactly deploying our military assets in Australia’s interests becomes a test of fealty to the US, and an act of “mateship”.

The Australian government is being pounded by the federal opposition, pro-US think tanks, and some media for not sending a single ship to help out the international naval coalition in the Red Sea facing down the rising Houthi attacks on commercial shipping with the connivance, perhaps even the encouragement, of Iran.