If I haven’t made it plain before, I have certainly left enough clues in the past as to what ought to be discussed about #AUKUS and what ought best be left for those with the appropriate expertise to deliberate and inform.
Clearly, the main public gripe about #ScottyFromMarketing ‘s big dirty deal concerns costs. Any discussion of our reliance on the #US #Alliance (a secondary gripe) needs not be conducted solely from the AUKUS perspective because it is not the wherewithal of that alliance.
But to be more specific, AUKUS must be evaluated from the perspective of stated core requirements addressing the latest Strategic Review and the military tasks/missions which fall out of it.
If the public needs/wishes to debate our defence spending and access to classified documents on the matter is not possible, it must fall back to critique the strategic review itself, the steering document for every Defence acquisition. Everything about defence emanates from that document.
Ergo, IMO, the current community enquiry is wasting its time if it reviews anything else but the source of all defence requirements as it lacks expertise (and time) to deal with the work that eventually lead to submarine warfare scenarios and the evalluation of platform Vs requirements before any discussion can focus on the AUKUS deal. Focusing on AUKUS is like talking about the water coming out of the tap as the source of all its contaminents.
And this is why, having tuned to the enquiry just now, I quickly stopped watching it. What is it really trying to achieve? I found it a useless waste of time…and a political stunt at best. It will not inform the public. It will sow confusion as petty interests are platformed. It will generalise a mountain of processes and deduce nothing useful from it. It will further divide public opinion on AUKUS, claim success on the back of emotive reactions to biased platforming and stoke further clueless Column inches.
I sincerely hope that I am wrong about this, truly, I am. But the odds are stacked up against it.
Think about it… #Marles is fully briefed on AUKUS, but what we publically hear from the Minister is spin, platitudes, obfuscation and misdirection when he tells us anything about the SSN deal. He is not a complete idiot. He does this for a reason. Ask yourself then, what is the reason(s) which compel a sitting Minister to gamble his political career on remaing tight lipped about that particular defence acquisition?
#AusPol #AUKUS #SSN #PublicInquiry #Defence #StrategicReview #USAlliance #DefenceProcurement #UK #US #ProjectRequirements #DefenceTenders #PublicOpinion








