Markus said:
The fall of Singapore is known, rightly or wrongly, as the Great Betrayal in Australia. Personally I think it's wrongly, Singapore fell due to the incompetence of people much lower than the British govt, primarily Percival. But I digress.
I don't think it's the actual Japanese conquest of Malaya & Singapore that's thought of as a betrayal (if the word 'betrayal' is ever used by people other than ultra-nationalists here), rather the collapse of British power in the region.
Australia was more cogniscant of 1942 being the end of the British Empire (English hegemony, motherfuckers!

*) than any other society.
Anyway, Churchill's attempt to divert the AIF divisions to Burma is the thing the
really rankles. Ever since it was revealed postwar that's the event that has been considered an obvious betrayal.
It's also the thing that makes it unlikely that the British would ever have sent major landforces to Australia in the event of the invasion scare becoming more substantial. That, plus the presence of the US...
*
Just a little shout out to AH's resident Scottish-Anglophile-who-insists-he's-really-a-Unionist. Of course he probably has me on ignore.