A risky decision !

We live in a dangerous world, but it seems that this Labor government  puts a surplus budget a long way ahead in it's priorities - over defence.   Crucial decisions to chop two billion dollars from defence spending have been made and these will quickly feed into Australia's defence readiness.

Socialist governments have long histories of downgrading defence needs to fund social experiments.  There is no discernible threat to this country at present - and so the thinking goes - we need not spend money buying toys for the people in uniform.   Such decisions have a habit of coming back to haunt us.   Our defence situation can change very quickly, and there is a long lead time between drawing up plans for advanced weaponry - and delivering it on the battle field.

The plans for equipping the army with self propelled artillery have been scrapped.   Acquiring the first two Joint Strike fighter jets have been pushed back two years and a host of lesser decisions have been quietly dropped from the defence budget.    The only positive decision seems to have been approval to replace our ageing fleet of six submarines with twelve new vessels - but even that is a long term measure.    Even the decision on which type of design to build will not be made until 2017.  It will be a very long time before we see the first launched from the slipway.

Australia has always had the most advanced military forces in our area of the Pacific ocean.  We are not an aggressive nation, but our defence readiness has ensured that neighbouring countries choose not to mess with us.  That equilibrium is fast changing as economic clout passes from the west to the east, and new alliances form between power groups in our region.

This is not the time to walk away from our defence needs on the basis that there is no immediate threat.  A lot of Kiwi's have moved to Australia since that nation renounced it's defence policy and took the stance that New Zealand had too small a population to be able to finance a credible defence force - and would throw itself on the world's mercy - and be defenceless.     It scrapped it's air force,  dropped plans for new naval ships and depleted it's army to that needed to maintain United Nations obligations.

Those decision were made under a socialist government.   It is not a mode of thinking we would like to see applied to Australia !