Australia has had a week to remember.

Say whatever you want about war and conflict, but Australia entering the submarine club is major.

Very few countries have them and those that do are large, with correspondingly sized economies.

Australia is the smallest by a mile and yet there they are, now in a partnership with the United States and Britain in a deal that is specifically designed to manage our part of the world against China.

And where are we in this? The answer is nowhere.

And our reaction to the Australian news was that we are still nuclear free, and apparently proud of it, and the subs aren't coming here.

In that comment is everything that is wrong with us.

Since we made the nuclear stance the world has changed, and dramatically. No one cares whether we are nuclear free and it's entirely possible they never did.

We now look introspective and hopelessly naive.

Here is the thing with Australia - this has come about under a Labour Government, proving that you don’t have be run by war-loving conservatives to make decisions like this.

In fact, Anthony Albanese is a socialist. He is a hard lefty, but realism is realism and he sees what we are choosing to ignore.

Which is not to say we want submarines. But what we do need is a sense of realism and what we do need is a reputation that might involve us looking just a bit more interested than we are.

We need America and we need Australia and we need to be seen to be doing our bit, which we aren't.

Then we come to coal and more realism from a Labour party leader.

While we ban mining and exploration for anything that remotely looks fossil, Australia continues to make a fortune.

So, we've got a Labour leader but an economic reality resulting in $24 billion worth of coal being sent to India. India was where Albanese was before he went to the U.S this week to buy subs.

How is it a left leaning Prime Minister, in a very left leaning Government, can support his economy and economic future by understanding the cold hard truths of the world in which we currently live?

And yet the Labour Government on this side of the Tasman is wedded to thought-bubble theory that achieves nothing tangible. And certainly nothing to the bottom line.

They're cut from the same ideological cloth. And yet one gets it and the others are in fairyland.