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Australia is defenceless against North Korean missiles
We are not target number one, but there's been no serious thinking about ballistic missile defence.
Peter Hartcher is the political editor and international editor of The Sydney Morning Herald. He is a Gold Walkley award winner, a former foreign correspondent in Tokyo and Washington, and a visiting fellow at the Lowy Institute for International Policy. His latest book is The Sweet Spot: How Australia Made its Own Luck and Could Now Throw it All Away. His 2005 book, Bubble Man: Alan Greenspan and the Missing Seven Trillion Dollars, foresaw the collapse of the US housing market and the economic slump that followed.
We are not target number one, but there's been no serious thinking about ballistic missile defence.
Only good luck has protected Australia to date.
The first question that onlookers ask, almost universally, is whether Tony Abbott is serious? Does he really think he can come back as prime minister?
The President has already left a trail of wreckage in alliance relationships.
Whenever school children visit her in Canberra's Parliament House, one Labor MP always gives them an apology. Not for anything that's happened but for what's about to happen.
Australia has 1000 troops in the Middle East and a squadron of jets fighting to crush the "caliphate" in Syria and Iraq. It's time for Australia to take extra precautions nearer home.
There will be plenty of blame, exactly what the parties love to hand around to each other, but not enough electricity for the Australian people.
The Corbyn experience will also be used by allies of the Left faction's Anthony Albanese to put him forward as the candidate of "authenticity" in contrast to the scripted Labor leader Bill Shorten.
Everything about terrorism is desperate, and the latest wave of attacks represents a new phase of great desperation.
We hear a great gush of affirmations of the "rules-based order" that keeps the peace in the Asia-Pacific region. But whose rules? They must be Tinkerbell's rules – clap if you believe.
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