I feel like we could do with a good dose of strong, principles based leadership, accompanied by good politics. We have come to accept a politics-first approach, accompanied by principles only when they feel safe or expedient. I feel like Mark Carney gives us a good sense of what that could look like. More of that from Albanese would go down a treat.
Australia's defence policy should be about defending itself from invasion. The best way to do that at present is to develop a domestic missile and drone industry, build up an inventory, and let everyone know that if they try to invade we'll rain hell on them. We don't need nuclear subs to help the US defend Taiwan -- the expense of that project robs Australia of its ability to pay for other important projects, both defence and non-defence ones.
If the US gave even a fragment of a damn about Australia they would have apologised for the cowardly assault on Lauren Tomasi and arrested and charged the officer responsible, who was clearly visible and could have been identified easily. But they don't - they just continue to read us with contempt.
The only time the ANZUS treaty has ever been invoked was when we extended support to the US after 9/11, then followed them like lapdogs into the insane disaster of Iraq.
The so-called "alliance" simply annoys our neighbours and, if anything, makes us a target. The US would probably defend its Australian bases, but not the rest of the country. So, if we shut down the bases all that would really happen would be that we would be less of a target.
I know much of our defence infrastructure is highly US-dependent but, if we simply walked away from all of it now and progressively built an appropriately-scaled and actually relevant national defence system we'd actually be better off. As is, having so much of our equipment utterly dependent on US support - and maybe even "approval" to use - makes it largely useless.
I feel like we could do with a good dose of strong, principles based leadership, accompanied by good politics. We have come to accept a politics-first approach, accompanied by principles only when they feel safe or expedient. I feel like Mark Carney gives us a good sense of what that could look like. More of that from Albanese would go down a treat.
We could have had French nuclear subs, but Morrison bound us to put the US ahead of our own national interest.
We don't need subs to spy on China. Our national interest is to patrol our shipping lanes to deter potential invaders.
We could abandon the US submarinebprogram and focus on the UK Astute subs to be built in Adelaide.
We also need domestic missiles and drones to swarm any invaders.
It's not in Australia's national interest to go to war with China. Economically, we need China more than America.
Australia's national interests are not the same as America's.
We could just accuse the Americans of failing to fulfill their submarine obligations and walk away.
Australia's defence policy should be about defending itself from invasion. The best way to do that at present is to develop a domestic missile and drone industry, build up an inventory, and let everyone know that if they try to invade we'll rain hell on them. We don't need nuclear subs to help the US defend Taiwan -- the expense of that project robs Australia of its ability to pay for other important projects, both defence and non-defence ones.
If the US gave even a fragment of a damn about Australia they would have apologised for the cowardly assault on Lauren Tomasi and arrested and charged the officer responsible, who was clearly visible and could have been identified easily. But they don't - they just continue to read us with contempt.
The only time the ANZUS treaty has ever been invoked was when we extended support to the US after 9/11, then followed them like lapdogs into the insane disaster of Iraq.
The so-called "alliance" simply annoys our neighbours and, if anything, makes us a target. The US would probably defend its Australian bases, but not the rest of the country. So, if we shut down the bases all that would really happen would be that we would be less of a target.
I know much of our defence infrastructure is highly US-dependent but, if we simply walked away from all of it now and progressively built an appropriately-scaled and actually relevant national defence system we'd actually be better off. As is, having so much of our equipment utterly dependent on US support - and maybe even "approval" to use - makes it largely useless.