The Chinese navy’s live-fire exercises off our east coast have highlighted some major deficiencies in Australia’s defence capabilities. And we don’t have time for AUKUS to solve them.

The fact that it was a Virgin Australia pilot who had to advise the ADF that the Chinese were conducting the exercises 640km east of Eden on the NSW south coast should have alarm bells ringing in Canberra, both at Russell and in Parliament House.

It focusses attention on our current defensive capacity. While AUKUS may deliver our first Virginia Class nuclear submarine in ten years, the $368 billion we’re spending on the deal is robbing urgently-needed current programs.

Although the ADF has a budget of $58 billion this year, many experts are convinced that we don’t have the assets to defend ourselves and, under current arrangements, our navy doesn’t expect any new ships until 2029 at the earliest.

Maybe it’s time we looked to some of the wonderful ingenuity we displayed in World War Two when we created the famous Coastwatchers.

Protecting our enormous coastline has always been daunting. It runs about 19,000 km – roughly the distance from Sydney to London via the Cape of Good Hope.

So, in the lead up to the war, the navy cobbled together a remarkable rag-tag group of ‘old hands’ around our coast and in the islands surrounding us: planters, traders, miners, teachers, government officials, missionaries and locals.

Using cumbersome teleradios (needing up to 10 people to transport them), they provided an invaluable early-warning system against Japanese attacks.

It cost them dearly. Many were captured, tortured and executed. But the intelligence they provided prompted the great American Admiral William ‘Bull’ Halsey to tell one Coastwatcher hero, Paul Mason:

“Guadalcanal saved the Pacific and the Coastwatchers saved Guadalcanal.”

The Coastwatchers’ communications would be a lot easier and more efficient in today’s digital world. Maybe it’s worth putting the old band back together?