Serious messages based on hard reality

US marines conduct live-fire training at the Mount Bundey Training Area, one of four bases in the Northern Territory to be upgraded. Picture: Sarah Marshall

The Morrison government is right to beef up defence facilities in northern Australia.

They will give Australia a better Defence Force.

Yet that is their secondary purpose — the primary strategic purpose of the defence upgrades is to help the US disperse and decentralise its military forces in the Indo-Pacific.

This means that they are harder to hit and more survivable in the event of any massive, pre-emptive strike by Beijing.

 

This is all part of a long-run US ­effort to move away from an over-dependence on forces concen­trated in Okinawa and Guam.

Canberra has delivered a series of co-ordinated, grave messages.

Defence Minister Peter Dutton said military conflict between the US and China over Taiwan could not be discounted.

Home Affairs Department head Mike Pezzullo, who is widely tipped to become secretary of the Defence Department, said “the drums of war are beating” and Australians might again have to contemplate military ­sacrifice.

Now we have these important defence facility upgrades.

These are serious messages, based in hard reality.

Australians would be foolish to think this is just politics.

US Marines and Australian Army members during Exercise Koolendong at Mount Bundey Training Area in the Northern Territory last September. Picture: US Marine Corps/Lydia Gordon

The Australian government’s dialogue with its own people ­reflects parallel dialogues in ­comparable nations, and is barely audible compared with the ultra-nationalist rhetoric emerging every day from Beijing.

The purpose of all this is to alert the Australian nation to the need to take ­actions that make military conflict less likely by making the cost of such conflict too great.

That is sober and sensible.

There’s only one criticism but it’s serious: for all these ­messages, the government is still moving far too slowly.