‘Get ready to fight for our liberty,’ Home Affairs secretary ­Michael Pezzullo

One of the nation’s most powerful security leaders warns Australia must be prepared to send ‘our warriors to fight’.

Home Affairs secretary ­Michael Pezzullo said in his Anzac Day message to staff that Australia must strive for peace, ‘but not at the cost of our precious liberty’. Picture: Gary Ramage

One of the nation’s most powerful national security leaders has ­declared the “drums of war” are beating and Australia must be prepared “to send off, yet again, our warriors to fight”.

Home Affairs secretary ­Michael Pezzullo, who is tipped to take the top job at Defence, said in his Anzac Day message to staff that Australia must strive for peace, “but not at the cost of our precious liberty”.

Amid growing tensions between the West and China, with Taiwan a potential flashpoint, Mr Pezzullo said free nations continued to face the “sorrowful challenge” of being “armed, strong and ready for war”.

“In a world of perpetual tension and dread, the drums of war beat – sometimes faintly and distantly, and at other times more loudly and ever closer,” he said.

“Today, as free nations again hear the beating drums and watch worryingly the militarisation of ­issues that we had, until recent years, thought unlikely to be ­catalysts for war, let us continue to search unceasingly for the chance for peace while bracing again, yet again, for the curse of war.”  The message, sent to all Home Affairs staff, came as Defence Minister Peter Dutton warned on Sunday that a war with China over Taiwan could not be discounted.  Mr Pezzullo also echoed Scott Morrison — who revealed last year he was haunted by a 1930s-style “existential threat” — saying pre-World Warr II Europe had failed to “heed the drums of war” until it was too late.

Noting this year’s Anzac Day fell in the 70th year of the ANZUS alliance, Mr Pezzullo cited two of the US’s most revered military figures — General Douglas MacArthur and president Dwight Eisenhower — for whom war was a last resort.

“On this Anzac Day … let us ­remember the warnings of two American generals who had known war waged totally, and brutally: we must search always for the chance for peace amidst the curse of war, until we are faced with the only prudent, if sorrowful, course — to send off, yet again, our warriors to fight the nation’s wars,” he said.

“The least that we can do for the host of the dead whom we remember today is to be prepared to face equivalent challenges with the same resolve and sense of duty that they displayed in years past.”

Mr Pezzullo has issued Anzac Day messages in previous years, but none have been so pessimistic on the risk of conflict.

It followed a blast from Beijing last week, after the federal government moved to scrap its Belt and Road Initiative agreement with Victoria, with the nation’s ­official spokesman declaring “China ­reserves the right to make further reactions over this matter”.

Australian Strategic Policy ­Institute defence program director Michael Shoebridge said Mr Pezzullo’s warning was in line with the government’s 2020 Defence Strategic Update, which said the ­nation could no longer rely on a previously assumed 10-year warning time before a major conflict.

“While surveys like the Pew ­research organisation’s show populations see China under Xi in historically unfavourable ways, the hard work of deterrence ­requires greater public understanding of the risks in our ­strategic environment.,” he said. “Those risks are best communicated calmly, and as the context for all the steps Australia and others need to take to raise the costs for any potential adversary — including China under Xi — of military adventurism.

“The focus needs to be on credible deterrence, because success is not about winning some kind of inevitable war, it’s about deterring such tragedy.”

Another top defence strategist, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said Mr Pezzullo’s comments appeared to be “a job application” to become Defence secretary.

“It’s excessive in language and strikes the wrong note — 2021 is not the 1930s. He needs to chill,” the strategist said.

Opposition defence spokesman Brendan O’Connor said national security officials should be more cautious in their language about potential conflicts.

“Words matter. It is always important when we talk about national security matters and our relationships with other countries to be mindful of how our comments will be received,” he told The Australian.

A Taiwan-China clash is looming as the top security threat for the Biden administration and US allies as Beijing ramps up preparations for a conflict with the nation of 24 million that it claims to be an “inviolable” part of China.

Chinese President Xi Jinping last week launched three new warships that the country’s analysts said could be used in a conflict with Taiwan. They included a hi-tech amphibious helicopter carrier, a guided-missile cruiser with stealth technology, and an upgraded nuclear submarine.

Chinese military aircraft have also been making regular incursions into Taiwan’s airspace.

Mr Dutton told the ABC on Sunday that Australians needed to be realistic about China’s increasing militarisation across the region. However, he warned that “nobody wants to see conflict between China and Taiwan or anywhere else”.

“I don’t think it should be discounted,” he said.

“I think China has been very clear about the reunification and that’s been a long-held objective of theirs and if you look at any of the rhetoric that is coming out of China … particularly in recent weeks and months … they have been very clear about that goal.”