A former Olympic hero claims Australian sprinters now possess the talent to achieve 'the greatest thing sport in this country has ever done'.

Karlie Rutherford in today's Sunday Tele reckons Olympic athlete and Commonwealth Games gold medallist Jane Flemming was always going to be a track and field star, if for no other reason than she doesn't like the beach.

It’s very un-Australian isn't it? she admits, smiling. Having done the long jump, I've had enough sand up my pants. Plus, I don't like the water, the sea, or the seaweed. The whole thing.

Running, on the other hand, was something she fell in love with at her first athletics carnival and, as we sit at lunch at Neil Perry’s Gran Torino, Double Bay, she says she believes it’s a universal sport because every able-bodied person can either run, jump, throw or walk.

Our athletes are certainly proving that at the moment.

Post-Sydney Olympics, Aussie swimmers dominated the Olympic medal tally but now our track and field stars are dominating.

The weekend before our lunch, Gout Gout, 18, made global headlines running the 200m in 19.6 seconds — faster than Usain Bolt at the same age.

At the same meet, sprint star Lachlan Kennedy won his first 100m national title and became the first Australian to break the 10 second barrier on home soil.

It follows on from athletics success at the Paris Olympics in 2024, where with seven medals, Australian athletes had their best Olympics since 1956. Which Fleming argues is no mean feat considering athletics is the most competitive sport and making even a final in an athletics event is the equivalent of winning a medal in swimming … there are three people per country that compete in athletics and only two in swimming.

The conduit is sulfur, a by-product of the Gulf’s oil and gas industry that has been effectively trapped since the Strait of Hormuz closed on February 28. The region accounts for around a quarter of global production, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.

Sulfuric acid is a key input for copper miners using solvent-extraction technology on oxide ores and for nickel production from high-pressure-acid-leach (HPAL) plants.

Unfortunately for metals producers, sulfur is also used for fertilizers, a sector that accounts for around two-thirds of global demand and one which governments will prioritise over everything else.

That is why China, the world’s largest sulfuric acid producer, will ban exports from next month. Turkey has already done so, according to Argus Media, and India is considering doing the same.

The result is an intensifying sulfur squeeze with prices rallying to record highs.

Around a fifth of global primary refined copper production comes from solvent extraction and electrowinning (SX-EW) operations, which use sulfuric acid as a leaching reagent, according to the International Copper Study Group.

The Democratic Republic of Congo is particularly exposed. SX-EW technology accounts for around half of copper production in the world’s second-largest producer, and the country relies on the Gulf for the majority of its sulfur imports.

Miners are already cutting consumption to eke out chemical stocks as import prices surge, and some shipments are cancelled altogether.

China’s export ban threatens similar problems for Chilean producers. Chile generates around 1.125 million metric tons of copper through the SX-EW process and relies on China for around 20% of its sulfuric acid requirements, according to Morgan Stanley.

The leaching process is slow, which means there will be a time-lag before any tangible hit to production rates. Chile also generates its own sulfuric acid as a by-product of copper smelting, providing some cushion against import disruptions.

That cushion, though, may be a problem for China itself.

The country’s copper smelters have become increasingly reliant on sulfuric acid as a revenue generator. Treatment charges for converting concentrate to refined metal are at historic lows and trading at negative numbers, turning conventional smelter economics on their head.

The export ban is likely to stall or even reverse the rally in domestic sulfur pricing.

That’s good news for the country’s agricultural sector but spells trouble for its copper smelters, some of which are expected to trim output or take maintenance downtime in the weeks and months ahead.

Indonesia, the world’s largest nickel producer, is also a major importer of sulfur, sourcing around 75% of its requirements from the Middle East. It also imports sulfuric acid from China.

The HPAL production process needs 25 to 30 tons of acid, equivalent to around 10 tons of sulfur, to generate one ton of mixed hydroxide precipitate (MHP), an intermediate product containing both nickel and cobalt, Morgan Stanley estimates.

MHP production was around 450,000 tons last year and was expected to rise by another 100,000 tons this year as new projects ramp up, according to Macquarie.

The flow-through from the sulfur squeeze to nickel production will play out faster than in the copper market. With stocks already low, some Indonesian producers have started to reduce run-rates, opens new tab.

It remains to be seen just how big an impact the unfolding sulfur squeeze has on global output of either nickel or copper. But the effect on production costs is more certain.

Macquarie estimates that the rise in sulfur prices since the start of the year has added $4000 per ton to Indonesian HPAL nickel production costs, lifting the cost curve to $14,500 to $18,000 a ton.

That helps explain this week’s sharp jump in the London Metal Exchange nickel price to an 11-week high of $18,655 per ton.

Natixis, meanwhile, calculates that sulfur accounts for 20% of cash production costs for Congo’s SX-EW copper producers. The bank estimates that every $100-per-ton rise in the sulfur price translates into a 4% rise in cash operating costs.

Those numbers are now feeding into copper’s bull narrative, helping lift the LME three-month price back above the $13,000-per-ton level for the first time in a month.

Clearly much now depends on whether the just-announced 10-day ceasefire leads to a lasting peace deal and the full reopening of the Strait of Hormuz.

Even then, copper and nickel producers will be competing with agriculture for sulfur supplies. There’s always only going to be one winner in that particular race.

Drilling for oil in Australian territory is the equivalent of dropping every last dollar into the dusty arcade claw machine while the entire Labor cabinet cheers go for it!, knowing the whole game is rigged.

When Climate Change Minister Chris Bowen this week said that decisions about whether to drill should be based on the economics and the engineering and if it meets the environmental approvals, then it can happen and should happen, it was as if he had had nothing to do with the economics or the environmental approvals.

Look at the first budget of the Albanese government, which cancelled a swag of grants announced for diesel storage and petroleum drilling and instead decided to fund the Environmental Defenders Office, which then took Beetaloo drilling projects approved by former Resources Minister Keith Pitt to the NT Supreme Court.

A new anti drilling bureaucracy

Last year, they brought in reforms so that businesses need to deliver a net gain for biodiversity, a new bureaucracy in a federal Environmental Protection Agency with the power to issue stop-work orders, and forced abatement of carbon emissions under the guise of a carbon tax masquerading as the Safeguard Mechanism.

Bowen and the rest of the Albanese government, who went on to spend the next four years talking about reducing emissions, know the system has been gamed so much, with everything stacked against any new proponent, only a fool would try.

Bowen blames engineering as the issue. Any drilling must pass those economics and engineering tests, he says. But it wasn't too hard for them to drill in the 1970s in the Bass Strait, one of the world’s most dangerous stretches of water, home to the roaring forties and shipwrecks galore, and its oil production softened Australia’s exposure to the last global petroleum crisis.

Just too difficult in Oz

But, now in 2026, Mr Bowen wants us to believe that drilling is just too difficult in Australia.

Australia’s oceans are apparently scarier than they were 50 years ago. More terrifying than Russian icy seas or the deep swell off the Gulf of Mexico, where some of the deepest oil rigs produce millions of barrels of oil.

In the 1970s, we produced 70% of our own petroleum from local oil and refineries.

Now we rely on imports and there’s no guarantee we'll have fuel past mid-May.

The government measures fuel security by counting empty service stations, even though these aren't the main suppliers for big buyers like farmers or miners.

Zelots making sure we don't drill

It has everything to do with the government, which forced existing wells to be capped, who armed those who oppose petroleum on ideological grounds with taxpayer-funded court cases and who provide minimal transparency in relation to activist groups masquerading as charities.

Zealots staff environmental departments, industry super funds are forced to buy politically correct investments, and geologists find themselves busier with paperwork than getting dirty, forced to deal with both state and federal departments to handle what is a state resource.

Australia’s oil is both attainable and comparable to the best reserves in the world. The biggest impediment is not sub-arctic temperatures or deep oceans, but the government itself. No investor is going to sink billions into the Albanese claw machine for drilling, knowing that they will never win.

One-eyed passion

Bowen insists projects need to stack up environmentally, while disregarding foreign companies dynamiting pristine forests for wind turbines or NSW’s EnergyCo, in its one-eyed passion for building transmission towers spanning thousands of kilometres, no matter how much biodiversity goes under the bulldozer.

The game works for them — they get the prize. If we eased environmental approvals, as we do for transmission lines, sped up payments and granted landowners underground rights, we could produce Australian oil within six months.

Mr Bowen says any development needs to stack up economically but one must ask the question: with crude oil prices surging toward $144 a barrel and domestic fuel security evaporating, how exactly does refusing to develop our own resources make good economic sense?

The game was never meant to be won. It has been rigged to ensure the only people walking away with any plush toy from behind the glass are the ones Mr Bowen has already decided should win.

We have skills, technology and the guts to claim the prize for oil. The only thing we don't have is a government that’s prepared to let us play a fair game.

It’s easier to see the bite in the small towns, on the quieter streets, because when the shop shuts, it doesn't reopen; darkened windows sit as an empty reminder of what used to bring people together between the post office and the IGA.

Another day older and deeper in debt!

Over the coffee machine in one cafe, the owner confides that he thinks his business is done because he can't sell enough lattes and eggs to pay the four-figure power bill; even with the crowd out front, and the line at the till, with good staff and good food, every month he goes deeper into debt.

You see it in statistics from the Australian Securities & Investments Commission which show that 14,722 businesses entered insolvency in the 2025 financial year.

Statistics from the Australian Energy Regulator released this week show that more than 6200 electricity customers were disconnected in the last quarter, with the average account holder owing $2600 at the time of disconnection.

Thousands of businesses are going insolvent, and thousands of people are being disconnected from power.

And they tell us it's betting cheaper

Yet the same bureaucrats tell us power is getting cheaper and assure us renewables will send bills down. Just not before we go out of business.

The smart ones try to get out quickly, listening to their heads rather than their entrepreneurial hearts. They watch their plans fall apart — how they turned a shabby old house into a lively spot for coffee and tea, a place where the lonely or elderly could meet and talk, a bit of sophistication in a town where the only other choice is the pub.

Today’s world, which Defence Minister Richard Marles aptly described in his National Press Club speech as defined by disorder, offers no such consolation.

There is chaos enough, but no sign of the order it is meant to produce. As the crises deepen and the prospects for order recede, prudence has a single meaning: to build the strength required to meet threats whose contours we can dimly discern but whose timing and precise nature remain inherently uncertain.

That imperative goes to the heart of Australia’s defence posture and will frame the debate about the 2026 National Defence Strategy. But a central insight, articulated by Arthur Tange, secretary of the Department of Defence from 1970 to 1979, retains all its force: Until you're talking dollars, you're not talking strategy.

Translating spendings into capability

The issue, however, is not simply how much is spent but whether that spending translates into capability. And on both counts there are grounds for concern.

Defence spending has certainly risen under Labor, though a significant share of the increase results from the AUKUS program the Coalition initiated. But the government’s decision to inflate the headline defence-to-GDP ratio by including pension and veterans' expenditures - items previously excluded - falls well short of clarity and candour.

The effect is far from trivial: the change alone lifts the ratio from just over 2% of GDP to the 2.8% Marles highlighted in his address.

No less important, once the definition is expanded in this way, the additional spending required to reach the government’s 3% target is dramatically reduced to just a further 0.2% of GDP.

No contribution to capability

The issue is not merely one of accounting. Those items were left out for good reasons: however justified they may be on other grounds, they do not directly contribute to military capability.

Including them obscures the fundamental question — whether Australia is allocating sufficient resources to build the forces our strategic circumstances demand.

As for the spending increase Marles announced - of $53bln over the next decade - it largely reflects amounts the government promised some time ago, and whose value has, since then, been significantly eroded by higher than expected inflation.

Nor is there any certainty the increases will actually eventuate.

The forward estimates, which cover the next four years, will include only a quarter of the projected uplift; that implies that the average increase in annual outlays in the subsequent six years must be roughly double that in the forthcoming budget — by which time any greater spending will be worth even less. Long experience suggests that such steeply backloaded promises are more easily made than honoured.

Not closing the freeriding gap

But even if those increases are delivered, they will still do little to narrow the gap between Australia’s defence effort and that of the US — a gap that, rightly or wrongly, fuels American concerns about free-riding.

On a standard, core-defence basis, Australian per capita spending over the forward estimates averages about $2430 a year, up only modestly from $2340. The US already spends around $4290 per person — close to twice as much.

And if the Trump administration’s 2027 defence budget is enacted, US per capita spending would exceed $5710, making the disparity starker still on even the most expansive assumptions about Australia’s own outlays.

Concerns about the efficiency of our spending are, if anything, just as pressing. Some few years ago, Mark Thomson and I surveyed the major reviews of how the Australian Defence Force acquires and maintains its weapons systems.

Regurgitating the malaise

One finding stood out: every review raised concerns remarkably similar, if not identical, to those identified by its predecessors.

As Paul Rizzo put it in his review of naval sustainment, the failures were longstanding, well known to Defence, and the subject of many prior reports.

There have, to be sure, been numerous remedial efforts. But it is difficult ∼ usually impossible ∼ to determine whether they have been effective.

Rarely have reforms been followed by systematic retrospective assessment: the kind of post-mortem that would establish whether the changes worked and, if not, why they failed.

The contrast with the US is instructive. Between 1989 and 2000, the American defence system underwent unprecedented change; in 1995 alone there were 23 major initiatives targeting defence procurement.

Shuffling the bureaucratic placemats

Recognising that the effects would take time to emerge, US policymakers commissioned a comprehensive, bottom-up appraisal in 2009. The results informed, and continue to drive, further rounds of reform.

There have, however, been no appraisals of comparable scale, rigour and transparency in Australia. Instead, having repeatedly shuffled the bureaucratic placemats without genuinely changing the menu, we stagger from acquisition mishap to capability fiasco and back again.

What makes this all the more striking is that our defence establishment has no shortage of senior personnel who might undertake analyses of that kind — indeed, it is remarkably top-heavy.

Here, too, the comparison with the US is telling. Australia has 248 star-ranked officers across a force of roughly 90,000 — one senior officer for every 363 personnel.

Four times the numbwer of officers

The US has around 848 star-ranked officers across 1.3 million active-duty troops — around one for every 1530. On that basis, Australia has roughly 4.2 times as many senior officers per service member as the US.

The contrast extends beyond structure to experience. Almost all serving US generals came up as majors and lieutenant colonels during the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, most often accumulating four to six combat tours.

A significant number also commanded brigades or divisions in those theatres, gaining hard-won understanding of operational command.

By contrast, Australian general officers have typically had one or two deployments, measured in months rather than years.

Only those from the special forces approach anything like the combat exposure of their American colleagues. Despite that, Australia’s military senior officers are, by international standards, extraordinarily well paid.

World's highest paid

The Chief of the Defence Force, to take but one example, earns about $1m a year — making the position almost certainly the highest- compensated military chief in the democratic world, with nearly three times the official salary of the US chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

The disparity is even more striking when set against force size: Australia’s CDF earns the equivalent of around $10,340 for every thousand uniformed members of the ADF, compared with $3600 for Canada’s Chief of Defence staff and a mere $320-$380 for the US Chairman — whose salary is spread across a force 15 times larger.

That combination - an outsized upper layer and generous individual remuneration - raises legitimate questions about whether the ADF’s command structure reflects strategic necessity or institutional inertia. And the same questions arise even more acutely about the civilian establishment.

No one could reasonably expect Defence to be a paragon of efficiency: the complexity of its tasks makes it inevitable that there will be a great deal of muddling through.

Just turning up the volume

Yet it is also clear that we could do better. And it is clear too that spending increases, such as those Marles touted, may end up being no more sensible than turning up the volume on a faulty amplifier.

There is a compelling case for greater outlays but they must be accompanied by reforms that go beyond changing administrative labels — something given only token attention in Marles’s address.

It could, of course, be that voters are happy with what they are being given: Pharaonic commitments, made to be forgotten; creative accounting, which dresses a drab reality in gilt and glitter; and a defence establishment, both uniformed and civilian, that marches to its own drum.

But that will do us little good should the evil day dawn. As the curtain of illusion is ripped away, and lives are lost that could have been saved, we may learn, too late, that what we called strength was just expensive stagecraft.