‘I want less of the dreary stuff on the futility of war and more to celebrate our fabulous fascination with the thing,’ says Grand Field Marshall of the Australian War Glamorial JIM ‘BOMBER’ BOMBSLEY. 

War is fantastic, isn’t it? The tanks, the planes, the Boy’s Own stories of Aussie diggers fighting Johnny Foreigner. 

When I was minister for defence, there was nothing I would love more than to don a helmet and jump in a tank or maybe bang off a few bullets from a new assault rifle. It was like I was out there fighting with the boys rather than sitting at a desk in Canberra.

Well, that’s the same sense of fun I want to bring to the Australian War Glamorial. Less of the dreary stuff on the futility of war and more to celebrate our fabulous fascination with the thing. 

But as usual, there are the wet-blankets who want to rain on our parade. They drone on and on about how the Glamorial should be sticking to Charles Bean’s original principles to avoid the glorification of war. Honestly, if they had their way, the place would be known as the Australian Bore Memorial. 

In their latest whinge, the fun-police are angry about our displays on Ben Roberts-Smith and how we nixed a book that was critical of the great man from our literary prize. 

Seriously? Ben Roberts-Smith is the closest thing we have to a real-life Action Man doll. That square jaw, those rippling guns of steel, the chiselled abs, the manly growth of… 

Suffice it to say, every old man on the War Glamorial Council has a bit of a man-crush on our Ben. 

But it’s not just Ben. These woke warriors also want us to include displays on the “frontier wars,” where Aborigines defended their country against the English. Guys, the Aboriginal artillery back then was just spears! I mean, seen one spear, seen ’em all. They’re hardly going to be as impressive as, say, a DesertTech MDR 308 battle rifle in a display case. 

Sad-sacks say the Glamorial doesn’t focus enough on prevention of war

Then the war killjoys say we shouldn’t have displays funded by military equipment manufacturers. Well, as someone who is an adviser to Lockheed Martin and Luerssen, I strongly disagree. They supply all the rad military gear that people love to take selfies in front of. Why would we stop that?

And if that’s not enough, the war sad-sacks then bellyache that the Glamorial doesn’t focus enough on the prevention of war. That people leave the place thinking war is swell rather than hell. What a load of bunkum. 

A lot of war aficionados who come to the Glamorial are deeply upset that we lost so many battles – Gallipoli, Singapore, Vietnam and well… most of them, really. As such, they like to take on the role of armchair general and hypothesise how they would have won these battles if they were in charge. 

It was only the other day that I overheard Tony Abbott and Brendan Nelson standing in front of a World War I display and arguing over whether the 9.2-inch howitzer rather than 4.5-inch howitzer would have made a difference at the Battle of Fromelles. That sort of attention to military detail, shows how much they, and others like them, think deeply about war. 

It’s frustrating that a place like ours must constantly defend itself. But, because Albo is the PM and a lot of these attackers are Labor lefties, I’ve just got to dutifully wave the white flag and say: “Righto”. It’s okay though. They eventually forget about their current beef and move on to other issues, like the war in Gaza. Now there’s a war; how cool were those exploding pagers?

Anyway, I’ve got to go and sort out our new gift shop, here. The guys from Nerf have some great ideas for gun replicas the kids can play war with. 

When I was a kid, we used to play war with potato guns. Actually, I might talk to the Nerf people about that. With their advanced Nerf Warfare technology, how cool would a potato assault rifle or a potato rocket launcher be? The kids these days don’t know how lucky they are to be alive! 

‘Bomber’, out.