"Why do we bother with Europe at all?"

I overheard this while waiting in the medical clinic yesterday. It was a routine appointment - nothing more wrong than usual - but obviously not for the man in the business suit. He was on his mobile phone and apparently oblivious to everyone around him.

I could not hear the responses to his conversation. One side was enough. He was (apparently) firmly of the view that trade with our nearer neighbours was enough. There was no need for his business, whatever it was, to branch out. They could "grow" inside Asia.

It is a common enough belief here. "We are part of the Asian region" is a common mantra.  We do business with Indonesia, Thailand, China, Korea, Japan and (more recently) India - the big players. Apparently it is considered to be all we can cope with except for miniscule amounts elsewhere. We look to the other side of the Pacific of course - but America is there to protect us as long as we let them use our land bases.

All this has just become much more interesting and relevant because we have, in a very minor way, involved ourselves in the war in Ukraine. (We sent them some old Bushmaster vehicles.) We have, in a sort of way, taken sides in the war in Gaza. We are arguing with the European Union about what we are allowed to call some foods like wine and cheese. 

Our defence force is small and, if we had not already been invaded in other ways, it could not physically defend the country.  It is too small. It would always be too small. The biggest island on earth simply cannot be defended by that sort of force.

It is my belief though that we should bother with Europe. Several Prime Ministers ago there was actually a serious suggestion as to whether we should be negotiating to join the European Union. It came to nothing of course but would it have been such a silly idea? The general public never had a chance to debate it and any thought of doing it would have gone out the window with Brexit even if there had been any thought of doing it before.

All this was back in my thoughts as I read a column by Alexander Downer in this morning's paper. He was pointing out that we do need a defence force. We cannot rely on America to defend us. China has a massive defence force - and it is not just a defence force. It has the capacity to invade militarily. They may never need to do it though because they also have the economic power to do it. The Chinese already own vast swathes of Downunder. They control many of our business interests. If they just chose to blockade our ports (and Downer points this out) then we would be very quickly brought to our knees. America would be very unlikely to come to our defence - except in their own interests.

In all this do we really not want to bother with Europe at all? Do we really go on spending just a miniscule amount on "defence"? I think we should be "bothering" with it even more than before. 

The business man was still there talking on his phone when I came out of my doctor's room. I wonder what the people around him thought of his views on Europe. I think it is worth "bothering" about - even more now than before.