Not since the fall of Singapore has there been such apprehension  about  the future of Australia.

Given the precarious state of our defence and the roll-over by Labor and the left to communist billionaires over climate catastrophism, alongside their gross mismanagement of our economy, Australia’s centenary of independence is in danger of being seriously compromised.

As this column has long warned, Australia is in danger of becoming the Argentina of the South Seas. It seems we could also become a client state of dictator Xi’s Middle Kingdom.

Most commentators predict the election will deliver the worst possible result – a Labor minority government captured by the Greens and Teals, all obsessed with net zero, notwithstanding the contempt the major emitters have for it.

Problem-solving for them means imposing a single Canberra-based solution invariably doomed to fail but pouring billions of taxpayers’ dollars down the drain.

Under them living standards will decline even more than they have this term.

Truly evil policies will see the light of day, like two which have been delayed until after the election.

One is a wealth tax on inflationary gains.  Like all new taxes they will claim it is limited to the rich,  but it will soon apply to increases in the value of your house. Labor tried this once in New South Wales.

The other is a grotesque ban on patients receiving assistance, not from the taxpayer, but from their own private health funds for most sight-saving needle injections for macular degeneration.

What this country is desperate for are men and women capable of offering truly great leadership.

The qualities of  leadership, as constantly and closely examined by the West’s great military academies, include loyalty and  mutual trust, courage, the ability to inspire confidence in others, preparedness to accept responsibility, devotion to a cause outside oneself and selflessness.

We see these exemplified in great leaders such as Winston Churchill.

Whatever the preparation of a political leader, it is difficult not to conclude that the skulduggery necessarily engaged in by the career politician, the politician who has hardly had much of a real job in his or her life, is unlikely to be able to provide great leadership.

However much so many in the mainstream press may hide it, of the two prime ministerial contenders today,  it is clear that  only one has the potential to lead Australia forward. He is Peter Dutton.

We in the English-speaking world have never depended upon a sole leader but rather a veritable assembly of great and selfless leaders dedicated to traditional principles and supported by common sense.

Fortunately, there are already in the Senate those with these qualities, above all, Pauline Hanson, who even suffered wrongful imprisonment in the service of the nation, and Malcolm Roberts, one of the few in the Senate and the parliament who has actually worked with his hands (and that in coal mining) unlike, curiously, almost all Labor MPs.

There are others standing including one for the Senate in NSW, Warwick Stacey, a polished speaker and a contributor to The Spectator Australia. Long prominent in the defence of our constitutional monarchy, he was trained by the British Army to defend the West and trained by Campion College Australia to defend Western civilisation.

He is a uniquely fit soldier, a courageous and erudite man with qualifications ranging from literature to finance and with the rare honour of being awarded a university medal.

Because of an interest in languages he  went to Europe at the age of 21, becoming  a fluent French speaker.

He later qualified as an interpreter and translator in German and, as he modestly says, speaks conversational Spanish, reasonably good conversational Japanese, and has some facility with other languages.

After his sojourn in France he decided to join the British Army.

After graduating from the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst, he was commissioned into the Parachute Regiment, later serving as a troop commander with the 22nd Special Air Service Regiment .

He served in Northern Ireland, Berlin, the Middle East, Central America and Asia.

He later served in the Australian Army Reserve in the Commando Regiment presenting papers on kidnap extortion, and insurgency.

On leaving the British Army he worked for a number of years as a military consultant in the Middle East and on the Indian sub-continent.

Following this, he gained good and useful business experience, based in Frankfurt and Paris, working as the European sales manager for an international logistics company.

His military experience and his expertise in languages led to work as a security, risk and crisis management consultant.

He worked with major risk and crisis response consultancies throughout the world for more than 20 years, including Control Risk Group, Pinkerton Inc. and Aegis, a private military company with extensive operations in Iraq, Afghanistan and Africa.

As a risk management consultant he identified threats to personnel and business operations in high-risk environments, assessed the level of risk of each threat, and then devised and implemented mitigating and protective measures.

In crisis management, he specialised in kidnap for ransom and extortion (K&R/E) response.

This comprised advising clients on how to manage to a successful conclusion, incidents of kidnap for ransom, extortion, maritime piracy, product extortion and contamination, and related life-threatening crises.

He also planned and implemented ransom delivery to Somali pirates, and emergency evacuation from countries facing political instability, natural disasters, civil war, or war.

As well as responding to crisis incidents, he acted as case manager, overseeing the advice to clients of a team of crisis management consultants.

He also trained crisis management consultants and developed the most comprehensive consultant training for kidnap and extortion response consultants in the world.

Warwick Stacey, the type of politician we sorely need, was recently interviewed by the young and very capable Joel Jammal. (This can be found on YouTube as ‘Australia’s leadership crisis – A raw chat with Warwick Stacey’).