 Frederick Shedden wrote a paper putting the case for the Singapore strategy as a means of defending Australia . He argued that since Australia was also an island nation , it followed that it would also be vulnerable to a naval blockade . If Australia could be defeated without an invasion , the defence of Australia had to be a naval one . Colonel John Lavarack , who had attended the Imperial Defence College class of 1928 with Shedden , disagreed . Lavarack responded that the vast coastline of Australia would make a naval blockade very difficult , and its considerable internal resources meant that it could resist economic pressure . When Richmond attacked the Labor Party 's position in an article in British Army Quarterly in 1933 , Lavarack wrote a rebuttal . In 1936 , the leader of the opposition John Curtin read an article by Wynter in the House of Representatives . Wynter 's outspoken criticism of the Singapore strategy led to his transfer to a junior post . Soon after the outbreak of war with Germany on 3 September 1939 , Prime Minister Robert Menzies appointed a British officer , Lieutenant General Ernest Squires , to replace Lavarack as Chief of the General Staff . Within months , the Chief of the Air Staff was replaced with a British officer as well . 
