@treleanor @feather1952 @maudenificent
Trish, I agree with the onerous costs (forward expenditure) of the AUKUS project, but cutting it out will not mean anything else but buying other Defence equipment. The money is in Defence’s budget and will stay there because that is how defence must be funded to pay for long-term contracts required for delivery of major acquisiton projects — there is no way around that. Asking for AUKUS to be axed simply means spending the same amount in other military hardware.

On the other hand if you wish to support an internationally recognised neutral Australia (like say, Switzerland) than that’s another kettle of fish. But even ‘neutral’ countries have a defence force that needs to be funded based on the risk of conflict. And these days… well how high are those risks?

#AUKUS. #DefenceAcquisition #DefenceBudget #DefenceProjects