When justifying vast increases in defence expenditure, subsidies for so-called critical industries, and foreign aid as an increasingly important element in the securitisation of foreign policy, governments and conservative think tanks never tire of telling the public that they live in the most dangerous times.

It is arguable that the times are not any more dangerous than when the world lived under the shadow of thermal nuclear war when the Cuban missile crisis was once the most combustible flash point between the superpowers, or when Australian troops were dying and being wounded daily in Vietnam in a futile and immoral attempt to defend the US empire in Asia.