Just a couple of points Fabio
A letter to the The Australian’s editor
….There is no military threat to Australia, and as a fiscal conservative, I think it obscene to spend $12 billion on unnecessary fighter jets when the nation is broke.Fabio Scalia, Windsor, Vic Just a couple of points Fabio; the country isn’t broke, we just have to recover from the ALP spendathon, and there is no military threat to Australia because we do things like spend billions on high level defence equipment.
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Wrong. If the country isnt broke, explain the commission of audit recommendations and the proposed debt levy. And if you think Indonesia or China are going to invade us any time soon you’re a special kind of stupid.
The country isn’t broke now but if we don’t take remedial action to readdress the ALP’s spendathon we will be looking at decades of deficits with all it’s associated problems.
No, I don’t think Indonesia or China are going to attack anytime soon but one of the reasons for that is that we maintain a deterrent. As an ex Army officer and qualified Indon linguist I have had to study both countries extensively. Your ‘special kind of stupid’ comment is ill advised considering you know absolutley nothing about me.
Fabio, on the subject of special kind of stupid – when you are short on cash do you dump your home insurance? the ADF is the Australian insurace policy.
The problem with winding down defence capabilities to save cash is that it takes a lot of money to regain those capabilities and more importantly, a lot of time (see early WW2 or the RAAF in Korea for two quick examples).
You seem unable to understand a simple concept, weakness is provocation (you might want to ask the Ukrainians how well winding down their defence capabilities is working out for them right now?), the role of the ADF is to raise the bar as to what would constitute an effective offensive force (against Australia, our allies or our interests)to a level that nobody is prepared to pay.
and that brings me to another example of the “special kind of stupid”, you seem to think the only way to threaten this country is by invasion, one relatively cheap and simple way would be by air attacks on our shipping or gas platforms, in such a scenario having long ranged, stealthy, high cruising speed fighter a/c might be nice, and those sorts of things come with a long lead time – the next war will be largely fought with the inventory on hand on day 1 – which we will have to have purchased well in advance of that day.
As a person who has carried a gun most of my working life, it is my experience that it is much better to have a weapon and never use it, than find that you need a weapon and don’t have one that could have been available.
Fabio, you might want to ask the Ukrainians how well letting defence capabilities slip, when there is no obvious and immediate threat, is working out for them…