Your tummy is more acid-proof than mine. His coming on was my cue to close that tab.

Canberra is in denial. They just hope they can ignore the second Trump administration and that he goes away in four years' time.

They don't have the stomach, or the vision, to imagine any other possibility of Australia remaining a servile, vassal state.

i'm not sure the defence establishment is in denial as such, rather the new situation is so far outside their frame of reference that they simply can't process it. I'm also very reluctant to say anything to defend Marles, but trying to minimise the impact of the shitstorm of Trumpian chaos on the federal election by ducking and weaving for a few weeks is probably not a bad political strategy

ASD, ASIS, ASIO, ONA - they'd be completely paralysed. Whole SOP and frame of reference has been turned on its head.

Feel sorry for them. There'd be dedicated folk in there who want to do the right thing and standing on their left is a fucking agent of the evil empire. (Some of whom also want to do the right thing and are also now completely compromised.)

a possibly not hypothetical situation is what happens when Pine Gap starts being used to target Ukranian positions