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[Australia and it’s 25 million people are going to fight who?]

The next group of ambitious Asiatics that comes sallying forth.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombing_of_Darwin

China is probably spending 4%, and Australia’s still undersized military budget is being way oversold. However, as in WW2, it just needs to hold on until Uncle Sam shows up over the horizon.

Closer to home, Australia’s swarthy neighbors have never made a secret of their goal of unifying the Austronesian lands which, in Sukarno’s eyes, included not just the lands immediately south and southeast of China, but Australia and New Zealand. Given Indonesia’s demographic heft, increasingly Islamist bent and economic strides, a day of reckoning may be coming, far closer to home than the Aussies would like.

And the sad thing is Australia’s Reds (i.e. its labor movement) played a part in ensuring an end to the Dutch East Indies.

https://dutchaustralianculturalcentre.com.au/archive/dutch-australian-history/military-political-history/the-role-of-australia-in-indonesias-independence/
[With the initial diplomatic attempt failed, the Dutch Government decided to employ military force to regain control over those parts of the archipelago still under the control of the Republic. The Dutch euphemistically referred to this as ‘police actions.’ Believing the resistance to be minimal, the Royal Netherlands East Indies Army (KNIL) estimated that within a period of 3 to 6 months, they could quell the guerrilla activities of ‘the enemy.’ The first military operation, known as ‘Operation Product,’ occurred from July 21 to August 5, 1947, capturing rebel-held areas in Java and Sumatra. While largely successful, it resulted in a further radicalisation of the Indonesians.

International condemnation was swift, and on July 30, Australia brought the conflict to the attention of the United Nations Security Council (UNSC), identifying the Netherlands as the violators of peace. Subsequently, Australia raised the broader matter of Indonesia’s decolonisation in the United Nations. Two days later, the UNSC ordered a cease-fire and established a committee to facilitate a truce and a resumption of negotiations.]

What they failed to understand is that people everywhere, not just Europeans, are imperialists, and the Javanese were no slouches in that regard. Like it or not, the Dutch weren’t just a friendly power, they were a quiescent one. The same cannot be said of the Javanese ruling Indonesia today. Only relative weakness keeps their ambitions in check.

Australia and it’s 25 million people are going to fight who?

Are you serious? You think God-less Communism is benign, versus being driven by a lust for power, as its master is (as well as the Western Left)? The Chicom's are more patient however.

China Has Two Paths To Global Domination..the signs that China is gearing up to contest America’s global leadership are unmistakable, and they are ubiquitous. There is the naval shipbuilding program, which put more vessels to sea between 2014 and 2018 than the total number of ships in the German, Indian, Spanish, and British navies combined. There is Beijing’s bid to dominate high-tech industries that will determine the future distribution of economic and military power. There is the campaign to control the crucial waterways off China’s coast, as well as reported plans to create a chain of bases and logistical facilities farther afield. There are the systematic efforts to refine methods of converting economic influence into economic coercion throughout the Asia-Pacific and beyond...

Not least, there is the fact that a country that formerly disguised its ambitions now asserts them openly. China has entered a “new era,” Xi announced in 2017, and must “take center stage in the world.” Two years later, Xi used the idea of a “new Long March” to describe China’s worsening relationship with Washington. ...Beijing has invested heavily in advanced air defenses, quiet submarines, anti-ship missiles, and other anti-access/area -denial capabilities necessary to keep U.S. ships and planes away from its shores so that it can have a freer hand in dealing with its neighbors.- https://carnegieendowment.org/2020/05/22/china-has-two-paths-to-global-domination-pub-81908

Likewise, https://www.lowyinstitute.org/publications/australia-growing-reach-china-s-military

China is the threat that a lot of people don’t want to talk about.

Can Australia with a population of just over 25 million defeat China in an all out war?

Almost certainly not.

Can Australia, by taking its defence more seriously, increase the cost to China of a war with Australia, and thus make it less likely such a war would happen?

Yes.

And that is before we start talking about our allies.

The aim is to make it expensive enough that they see less benefit in doing it.

The classic example, in many ways, is the Falklands. That war wouldn’t have happened in the UK hadn’t drawn down its forces in the South Atlantic so much that the Argentines decided it would be easy to take the Falklands.

(And they were right - they took the Falklands very easily. They couldn’t hold them, that was a different matter).