SMH · Peter Hartcher · Tuesday 7 April 2026
Peter Hartcher argues bipartisan complacency across Liberal and Labor governments has left Australia dangerously exposed to global crises, with leaders now scrambling to address vulnerabilities they spent decades ignoring.
Hartcher's discovered what the rest of us worked out around the time the submarine contract changed nationality for the third time: nobody in Canberra plans past the next Newspoll. Howard coasted on the American alliance like a man sleeping in the back of an Uber — comfortable, moving forward, no idea where the driver's actually going. Labor inherited the nap and kept snoring. Thirty years of bipartisan somnambulism and now they want credit for waking up.