Andrew Bolt: One major thing missing in battle to boost our defence

The Albanese government may build more navy ships but who’s going to crew them when this government can’t find enough Australians who think the country is worth fighting for?

There was one thing missing – the essential weapon – from the Albanese government’s plan this week to give us a navy that might save us in the war that seems looming.

Great, it’s building more ships. But who’s going to crew them, when this government can’t find enough Australians who think this country is worth fighting for?

Our already-tiny defence force is now horribly undermanned by 7 per cent, leaving the government suggesting it hire mercenaries from the Pacific to fight for us instead.

So what’s still missing is a Labor plan to stop bad-mouthing Australia and start preaching what a great country this really is.

Sure, maybe we don’t pay people enough to serve. Maybe we make them move too often from base to base.

But maybe we just don’t make this country seem worth defending, or make people feel it’s theirs to protect.

Our already-tiny defence force is horribly undermanned by 7 per cent, leaving the government suggesting it hire mercenaries from the Pacific to fight for us instead.

Look at the objective evidence. Mass immigration and multiculturalism has helped to turn us into a disunited nation of tribes, so that more Australian Muslims – about 230 – volunteered to fight for the Islamic State than for the Australian Army fighting it.

Are you surprised? In 1992, then prime minister Paul Keating abused Australia as the land where “we” – all whites – “took the traditional lands”, and “brought the diseases”.

Keating ranted on: “We committed the murders, we took the children from their mothers”. And since then no Labor leader has dared to preach their love for Australia, without quickly adding it’s got a racist history, or a culture redeemed only by the “diversity” brought by millions of strangers.

In Melbourne, the annual Australia Day parade has even been banned, clearing the streets for anti-Australia Day marches instead.

Last week I listened to members of the Melbourne University Student Council debate banning the Australian flag as the “despicable symbol” of a “racist land”.

“Australia is a racist country ,” shouted one student. It was guilty of “genocide”, raged another. Police and warders had “murdered” more than 500 Indigenous people in our jails in just 30 years, insisted a third, fabricating a slaughter.

Who’d fight for a country like that?

So I challenge our politicians. National unity and pride in our country must be restored. Building all these navy ships is useless if no one cares to crew them.

End this trashing of Australia. It’s a crime against the truth and now a threat to our nation that mere money can’t fix.