This is what separates the men from the women and the boys from the men – if you care about your country, you don’t have a choice but to understand and discuss these issues when politics fails to function. 

AUKUS is a military alliance between Australia, the United Kingdom and the United States – for various reasons it excludes both Canada and New Zealand.

This military pact is part of a global realignment and some considerable international aggrevation.

The simple explanation is tension between Europe and China and one might say, a relationship too cosy for some others.

Within this pact is an agreement for US assistance in establishing a nuclear powered submarine fleet based in South Australia.

The French, although they have protested loudly at the loss of their contract to supply conventional submarines to Australia, will now supply submarines to India.

This supports another alliance called the QUAD Force. India, Australia, Japan and the US.

At the centre of this is an expanding China, or at least one that wishes to expand to support its communist economy and goals.

Between China, and the Democratic Republic of China (Taiwan and all its associated territories) sits HMS QE11 a British battleship with joint UK and US squadrons on board and is accompanied by a flotilla of other naval vessels.

No body wants to push the nuclear button of course but the simple equation exists, this time as it did in the previous conflict.

One side relies on endless debt, the other on military investment.

Only one side can win this game.

In the meantime behind our seemingly innocent position of neutrality we have a similar choice.

We are the next most likely country in the international community to become a communist country.

We will in essence be the new Cuba off the coast of Australia.

In the collapse of the former Soviet Union, that older readers will remember, all their vassal states collapsed along with that communist collapse, except for Cuba.

The reason that Cuba has maintained its marginal survival is through the support of Venezuela.

By the same reasoning New Zealand cannot be a communist country in isolation. While this country does have the option of a closer relationship with China, that will also jeopardise its relationship with the Commonwealth and its longstanding relationship with Australia.

Both the remnants of the Commonwealth and the French lead NATO community could not exist in a global communist world. We see the French announcement now that they will increase their military investment.

At home here we have one person who is both our foreign minister and our local body minister waging war on councils and for political control of the country.

You may recall the BBC article last year saying democracy is at risk in NZ – yes it is and so is the risk of us being a global spectacle of civil disruption if not civil war, if our politicians continue to fail.