I have been wondering about that for a long time. Is it the case of mistrusting everyone whose first language isn’t English? A feeling of inferiority towards people who speak a languages you don’t understand and who often speak (albeit often badly) and understand languages other than their mother tongue, including yours?

The journos mainly exist in stasis until one of them finds an escape and then they crowd around the windows to see what happens.

Yeah, I’m pretty sure quantum computers need a bit more development before encryption is broken, and it’ll probably be some while after that, when enough quantum computing power has been rolled out for pent-up demand for their abilities has abated enough for more mundane duties to get a look-in.

*to the contrary

It’s straight out of the US Playbook. Tell everyone it’s the greatest country in the world despite overwhelming evidence to the country.
Or maybe they mean “Greatest Country in the World (For Billionaires)”

As someone who worked in the sphere: there is no privacy. Anything that is encrypted can be decrypted.

This is simply not true. Or, in as much as it might be true, the kinds of organisations that could decrypt anything would not be advertising that fact.

Sometimes I wonder if Australians realise that the world is wider, and contains more alternatives, than the pre-WW2 dominance of the UK and the post-WW2 dominance of the US. Whenever Australia looks to see what other countries are doing, we never seem to look past the UK and US. Not even the other “Five Eyes” partners, the Canadians and Kiwis, get a look in.
Do the French, Germans, Scandinavians never do things better than the UK, US and Australia? Why do we never cast our nets wider than the AUKUS group when looking for new ideas or solutions? Are we forever to be afflicted with the “we’re just an colonial outpost and need to have a metropolitan power to look up to” mentality?

“Australia is not ready for anything really.”

Tis. And it seems that it never will be. Those in power at any given moment seem to think that it’s enough to say that this is a ‘great country’ and ‘world leading’ rather than trying to make it so.
The best that can be said about the politicians from the parties that are most likely to be in a position to be in power (ie the two majors) is that they’re lazy and incompetent.
People keep saying that the Greens can say what they want because they’ll never be in the position to govern. I wished we’d get the opportunity to test that. Either these people are right or not. But it can’t be much worse than what we’ve experienced so far.
(Btw – a green failure wouldn’t necessarily prove that they’re unsuited for government. We shouldn’t ignore the likelihood of the majors doing all in their power to derail a government with the Greens at the helm.)