Three Chinese warships operating with impunity in the Tasman Sea between Australia and New Zealand this week has certainly lifted the lid on Labor’s failure to adequately equip and prepare our defence forces.

How did we find out about them and the live fire exercise they conducted? Because we had a submarine monitoring them? Because we had a long-range maritime surveillance aircraft observing them? Because China issued a live fire notice so aircraft and vessels could safely avoid the area?

It was none of the above. It was the pilot of a commercial aircraft who let us know, long after the exercise began. There’s a suspicion the government may have known about it much earlier—it’s a big ocean, but it’s not easy for surface warships to escape the notice of US satellites, and we will probably never know if the US had other assets in the area.

China loves to do this sort of thing: using their military might to send strong messages. It’s no secret the Chinese communist regime doesn’t care to observe diplomatic niceties and norms. Their military has engaged in aggressive acts against Australian assets, even endangering the lives of our personnel in uniform.

They’re sending a simple message: China can attack our largest cities at will, and it has no respect for Australia. Why should it? Our current Labor government has shown it will bend over backwards to accommodate China, and the minute anyone criticises this weak moral cowardice, Labor accuses them of politicising the issue.

Labor has always been profoundly weak on defence. Our capabilities have literally gone backward under Labor: we can barely put one submarine to sea; our ageing surface fleet is significantly underarmed; and we can’t recruit nearly enough people to meet our immediate needs—let alone future needs.

Both major parties are guilty of letting American taxpayers foot the bill for our defence. Make no mistake: our alliance with the United States is vital. However, we need to pull our weight. We need missiles—lots of them—to better deter aggression such as we witnessed in the Tasman Sea, and we need platforms (ships, subs, aircraft, and mobile land-based launchers) that can carry and shoot a lot of them.

Perhaps the most important responsibility of a government is to ensure the defence of the country it governs. Labor has not lived up to this responsibility, and neither has the Coalition. The AUKUS deal is all very well—One Nation supports it in principle—but it won’t deliver its promised capabilities for many years to come. However, there are ways we can make the ADF substantially more lethal in a relatively short time (with more missiles). It’s time for the government to pull its finger out and get serious about defending Australia.