In Australian election polls, the Coalition has built a 52 percent to 48 percent lead over Labour, its biggest since the last election.

The margin significantly increases Opposition Leader Peter Dutton's chance of creating a minority government.

Australian Correspondent Steve Price says the Sydney Morning Herald has now said the election will now be sooner rather than later.

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I am sad to report that Winston Peters is wrong.

His thinking that the Pacific favours friendship has been proven naive.

As I have always said, chequebooks win and we don’t have a chequebook and even his goodwill gesture in 2017, when he lined up along side Labour and handed out a billion dollars, has proven woefully short.

The Chinese have shown over the weekend that the world is changing, and in a dramatic way, and we haven't even mentioned the word Trump yet.

The Cooks deal is about mining the seabed. It's about things at great depth in the ocean that are worth a fortune.

In the meantime the Chinese navy has arrived locally and we are busy diverting planes while having no idea why they have done what they have done.

The best reasoning I have seen so far is from Mick Ryan, who appears on this show periodically. He is ex-military and a great thinker and is deeply worried. If he is, we all should be.

His theory is the Chinese are reminding Australia that you might want to stay local instead of wandering off and doing your exercises in places like, oh, I don’t know, Taiwan?

If you don’t know what's coming and when, staying local makes sense. They are sending a message.

Is it legal? Yes. It's international waters so it's international law and nothing has been broken, apart from the fact they are rude by not letting anyone know.

But then that's the point.

There is also a sense that some sort of picking of sides is coming i.e AUKUS or no AUKUS.

We might like to think about that as well. We might also like to look at our defence forces and wonder, yet again, if we have tried our luck just a little too long and what's left of what we have, might need a bit more dough spent on it.

But, as for the Pacific, Mark Brown will say nice things. But money talks and it has talked.

The Pacific generally are being, or have been, bought off by Chinese money, whether its security like the Solomons or mining like the Cooks.

Friendship doesn’t solve any of it.

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