Piers Akerman: For courage and leadership, a pity Albo and Co don’t follow the lead of those D-Day heroes
Eighty years since D-Day and the dwindling band of veterans reminded us of the courage of those who led the charge for freedom in stark contrast to those who profess to be leaders today, writes Piers Akerman.
Opinion
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Eighty years since D-Day and the dwindling band of veterans in France reminded us of the courage and leadership of those who led the charge for freedom in stark contrast to those who profess to be leaders today.
World War II produced characters of such extraordinary strength that we still look back in awe. Today, we avert our gaze from prime ministers and presidents rather than view their shame.
It took prolonged pro-Palestinian protests and attacks on Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s own Western Sydney electorate office to coax a belated acknowledgment of the role of the Greens in the anti-Semitic campaigns that have been a disgusting feature of Australian life since October 7’s massacres, rapes and kidnaps of Israeli civilians.
For nearly nine months, he turned a blind eye to this suppurating cancer in our nation with its roots in the riotous Opera House Islamist celebrations that erupted even before Israel launched its first retaliatory attack on the forces of the Gaza-based terrorist organisation Hamas.
Cowed by the possible repercussions from Muslims in Labor-held electorates, Albanese and most Labor MPs said nothing or, worse, lent their tacit support to the mob.
The Greens, now subjected to a bipartisan examination by Albanese and Opposition Leader Peter Dutton, openly supported and encouraged the pro-Palestinian mobs as they rampaged through the streets and set up threatening camps at universities.
The vice-chancellors have been just as weak, capitulating to the demands of the demented activists.
The taxpayer-funded ABC and SBS provide platforms for the unsupported opinions of an incestuous political academic journalistic elite.
As Winston Churchill said while US President Franklin D. Roosevelt was slowly swinging public opinion toward supporting Britain in its darkest hour, “the decisions of our democracy may be slowly arrived at” but when they were made, they were acted upon.
FDR didn’t draw red lines or issue hollow threats after Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbour drew the US into the conflict. He stated resolutely that “an attack against liberty in one part of the world is a threat against liberty in another part of the world. If liberty is destroyed in Britain, this constitutes a real and immediate threat to liberty in the United States”.
Albanese, stuck in his Tory-hating undergraduate mindset, fails to understand that FDR’s statement is as true today as it was in 1941, even if the threat comes from different quarters.
In our region, China is pushing for control of the South China Sea and the Western Pacific. In reply, Australia is committed to funding a rugby league team in Papua New Guinea and campaigning for the rights of LGBTQ+ and other alphabetical formulations.
With an under-resourced army, navy and air force, the issue of personal pronouns takes precedence.
The most pressing issue for most Australians is the cost of living, exacerbated by the horrendous subsidies being doled out to unreliable wind and solar infrastructure that lacks the capacity of our reliable coal-fired power plants.
Treasurer Jim Chalmers’ economic blueprint, which owes more to the former Soviet Union’s disastrous gosplans than reality, has been written off by most credentialed economists, just as the NDIS under minister Bill Shorten has been shown to be a multibillion-dollar failure.
The farcical excuses of Immigration Minister Andrew Giles for his disastrous release from detention of murderers, rapists and assorted other criminals, coupled with the rantings of Energy and Climate Change Minister Chris Bowen against lifting the ban on discussion of reliable nuclear energy, show there is nothing to recommend this rabble.
Any review of this government’s culpability and serial ineptitude raises the question of whether it is criminally incompetent.