In place of reflection and reform, our leaders have committed to an ever-greater intermeshing of Australian and American forces: what is referred to in contemporary military double-speak as ‘interoperability’. The new AUKUS framework has largely extended the surrendering of our sovereignty and capacity for independent defence decision-making to the American Empire.

I was fanning myself with a textbook when the tradie told me about the gecko. It had, in search of reprieve from the burning meteorological irregularity, crawled inside our air conditioning unit, damaged the wiring, and gotten itself fried. Without climate control, we had suffered through December and January, red-faced and irritable.