Late on Wednesday night, our time, we were given a shocking and tragic reminder of the fragility of global politics. I had prepared a different opinion piece for this week but after the unprovoked and belligerent attack by North Korea on South Korea, my initial piece read as rather irrelevant.

I learned of the attacks whilst talking to a journalist who was having a cigarette in the courtyards of Parliament House. Stories run like that and there is always an eerie feeling when you first hear of an event. The first thought that went through my head was, this is a game changer.

As I stared at the concrete path my concerns grew. Like most people I solemnly hoped that the flames of this incendiary incident can be smothered without further loss of life.

It would be naive to think that that will happen without a clear, unified response from all the major international powers. You cannot tolerate a rogue state which launches an unprovoked full-scale artillery assault, after previously torpedoing a naval ship, and after the recent discovery that it is hiding processing facilities with the aim of producing fissile material for nuclear weapons.

There is a reasonable demand by the Australian people that in a time of crisis, on crucial foreign affairs issues, we do our very best to speak as one. It is an admirable trait of the Australian people that we will bind together as an article of strength. We will put our nation's position ahead of our individual ambitions. This is not about egos it is about our nation.

It is in times like these that any nation will find out who their real allies are, and that is for the associations on both sides of this dispute. An ally is denoted not just by the fact that we rely on them but also by the reciprocal that they can rely on us. We must do our very best to act with a unity of purpose with our crucial allied countries if there is any hope of attaining an outcome.

As Australians we are incredibly lucky to be experiencing a time of relative peace and prosperity. Our bills are underwritten by the biggest commodity boom since the Korean War. So far we have reaped the benefits of higher export prices without the same level of global uncertainty and instability as the Cold War.

Australians have to ask very serious questions which will not pass the utopian, market theory test that if the world was run by benevolent spirits, then investment and jobs would be distributed to where they are valued highest and produce the most. In short, everybody would look after everybody and play by the rules because we are all jolly good fellows.

Australia has to ask the more pointed question, have we got our strategic, natural bases covered, or are we unnecessarily exposed in certain areas? Can we feed, clothe and defend ourselves? Are we in certain areas of our economy exposed to the good favour of other nations? Would we have access to the strategic assets of our country if they were owned by a foreign, sovereign government? What happens if major trading channels are closed down not because of a dispute that we are in but because of a dispute that others are in?

We have to ask the question how much do we owe to people around the world and how much do we rely on them for our week-on-week financing requirements. Last week we borrowed an extra $2.8 billion, predominantly from overseas.

Isn't it amazing that, in one week, we borrowed a greater amount than the size of the lauded surplus that will apparently magically arrive in 2013.

In fact sometimes one would be forgiven for the mistaken belief that we have already achieved the surplus when all we have achieved so far are the biggest deficits in our history, resulting in record debt.

The problem with this naivety is that it is blind to the risk that the game might change at any time. Wars, terrorist acts, a breakdown of global cooperation or another economic crisis could all bring our best laid plans crashing down.

That's just one more reason why now, more than ever, is not the time to be having a frolic on an unproven $43 billion new telephone company. Like our current spending, we will be borrowing the vast majority of the money to setup this company and we will be doing so without an open and transparent display of the facts to determine the real benefits of this to the Australian people.

We have had a stark reminder in the last three years of the capacity of government to manage multi-billion dollar programs. We can't continue down this path and expect that there will always be a pot of gold to pay things back at the end of it.

Events such as the North Korean attack shows that you better have the capacity to get your hands on a large sum of money for a crisis, that was generally not perceived, but whose demands for funds to deal with it could be immense.

Starting from a position of the largest debt in our nation's history is not the ideal kick-off point.

Peace is the paramount objective but it will never be achieved from a position of weakness or from a position that lacks the resolve or the capacity to deliver it.