Apart from economic decline, among the Albanese government’s many serious failures is leaving Australia virtually defenceless. Add to that, the government’s consistent weakness with and even appeasement of the Beijing-Tehran-Moscow axis. Unless patriotic Australians vote strategically, beginning with One Nation through to the LNP, the widespread prediction that they are about to vote for the further decline of the nation will be fulfilled.

This will be the return of Labor in a minority government in coalition, formal or informal, with elements that the patriotic believe hate Australia. They will reaffirm their commitment to net zero as the consequence of the increasingly discredited theory that  governments can do what only nature can do, change the climate. To give this discredited theory some veneer of respectability, it is camouflaged by Mr Albanese  as  ‘the science’. Tell that to Australia’s leading, internationally acclaimed geologist, Emeritus Professor Ian Plimer.

Indeed, now that the largest CO2 emitters, China, the US and India, all ignore net zero, electors can conclude that even if there were a soupçon of truth in that theory, only someone wanting to destroy Australia would apply, at unbelievable cost, net zero here.

As to Mr Albanese denying any deal with the Greens, recall that his flexibility with the truth is legendary, even for a career politician. The high point of this was undoubtedly his denial that he fell off a stage, notwithstanding that, by now, this has been viewed by hundreds of thousands. Meanwhile, preference deals across Australia have already been made with the Greens by Labor. These include one relating to a far-left Green in Mr Albanese’s own electorate.

Not only can we expect a minority government to be even more careless with the defence of Australia, more appeasing to hostile powers, but also more generous in funding Beijing with respect to the import and regular replacement of the polluting and native bird-endangering equipment for ‘renewables’ produced in China by slave labour. As has been shown in every country which has gone down the so-called renewables path, this will ensure that energy will be even more expensive than now, seriously damaging not only manufacturing but also mining and especially agriculture.

Yet the prediction is that Australians will actually elect such a government.

Last week, we noted Essential’s extraordinary finding that on a 2PP basis, 62 per cent of those aged 18 to 34 preferred Labor.

Newspoll says this is 64 per cent.

With education turned into indoctrination, and the greater part of the mainstream media favourable to the return of the government, the Murdoch media and Nine radio  alongside this journal excepted, the electorate and especially the young are not as well informed as their predecessors were.

Even then, victory is still possible.

The campaigning of the media for the Keating-Turnbull republic in 1999 was more biased and so widespread, it was close to unanimous, but ACM was still able to lead the No case to a landslide.

ACM’s  message was presented with clarity and summarised in a series of powerful, meaningful slogans. Two stood out. One, revealed by a prominent republican as a killer slogan, was ‘Vote No to the politicians’ republic’. The other, used by Alan Jones when the undecided called, was the powerful ‘If you don’t know, Vote No’.

Crucial to any campaign is a clear message based on a strong detailed position statement enjoying wide support.

Donald  Trump demonstrated this in last year’s campaign, something which could not be said of Joe Biden or Kamala Harris.

When Joe Biden gave an extraordinarily confusing answer to a question during the election debate, Donald Trump delivered the coup de grâce not only of the debate, but  probably of the campaign: ‘I don’t really know what he said at the end of that sentence. And I don’t think he knows what he said either.’

This demonstrated, beyond doubt, what many had suspected, that both the Democrats and, worse, the mainstream media, were hiding the truth concerning Biden’s mental capacity. In the current Australian election, the highlight of the recent Nine leaders’ debate was when moderator, Ally Langdon, questioned Peter Dutton: ‘The last time the Coalition won from opposition, Tony Abbott had a very clear, simple slogan: Stop the boats, End the waste, and Repeal the carbon tax. What does the Coalition stand for, other than being against Albanese?’

Peter Dutton began to reply at length and eventually ran out of time. Perhaps the answer should have been along these lines supported, of course, by clear policies: ‘Make electricity cheap and reliable again; Reduce grocery prices; Stop out-of-control immigration; Make the army strong; and Water Australia’.

The fact is that the LNP lacked both a winning programme and the distillation of short, sharp, winning slogans, led by a killer slogan. The LNP programme should have been obviously unrelated to the discredited theory that governments can change the climate, that men can play in women’s sports,  that women should join in hand-to-hand fighting in the army, or that children should be subjected to Marxist-led indoctrination posing as education.

Australians should have been especially reminded that the first duty of government is to defend the nation, and also to protect the citizens from criminal outbreaks the states cannot or will not control.

Australians should always be reminded that the driving force for federation to form their country, the very driver, was as those noble but forgotten recorders of that event, Sir John Quick and Sir Robert Garran observed,  ‘the recognised need of a national system of defence’. Indeed, in 1889, at the request of the colonial leaders, London chose renowned expert Lieutenant-General Sir James Bevan Edwards to inspect Australia’s defences. Because of the international situation, he recommended Australia’s defence forces be immediately placed on a proper footing, something he said was ‘quite impossible without… federation’.

Defence was indeed the trigger to the formation of this country .

It should be our first priority.

Gina Rinehart is right.

The defence budget, prudently managed, should rise from less than two to five per cent  of GDP.