Episode 146

The US has celebrated Independence Day with President Trump giving a hugely bombastic and historically inaccurate speech saying that he leads the greatest country ever and the American military will kick sand in the face of anyone it wants. What an ally. Then we look at an important speech given by Defence Industry Minister Pat Conroy on 2 July. It was meant to be about Defence reform but he included a reference to Prime Minister Robert Menzies being a Nazi appeaser.

This received a predictable reaction and it's unclear what the Minister hopes to gain by trying to turn Defence into a party political contest. At least he appears sincere about wanting to improve Defence - but for that to work the attitudes of people in the system have to change, along with some structural reform. He says that Defence has cumulatively wasted $29 billion - which is an extraordinary amount for which no one has been held to account.

On AUKUS the government has wheeled out Senator Raff Ciccone to defend the acquisition of nuclear-powered submarines saying they are necessary because Australia is surrounded by water. This ridiculous argument gets repeated over and over. Of course Australia is surrounded by water - any idiot knows that. No one is saying we don't need a Navy - what we question are the security benefits from this vastly expensive, risky undertaking and the government has no answers.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Denne episoden er hentet fra en åpen RSS-feed og er ikke publisert av Podme. Den kan derfor inneholde annonser.

Episoder(160)

Episode 155

A lot has been happening on the international scene with Australia's PM Anthony Albanese at the United Nations in New York partly to lobby for one of the rotating seats on the Security Council. It's n...

29 Sep 20min

Episode 154

We begin with another Defence procurement farce. Two years ago Defence abandoned a project called JP 9102 for geostationary military communications satellites with Minister Richard Marles explaining t...

22 Sep 20min

Episode 153

In a breaking story, there is very credible reporting that the UK has deferred placing an order for future attack submarines - SSN AUKUS - until 2028. This is directly contrary to what we are being to...

15 Sep 20min

Episode 152

As the United States continues to isolate itself, the rest of the world is starting a process of realignment - with the exception of Australia, of course. More information is becoming available about ...

7 Sep 19min

Episode 151

The U.S. is continuing to demonstrate its unreliability as a security partner on an almost daily basis - something our politicians and Defence officials refuse to acknowledge is happening. Latest piec...

1 Sep 19min

Episode 150

We have a lot of foreign policy material to cover, starting with the Strait of Hormuz and President Donald Trump's idiotic war with Iran. Of all the Middle East countries that hate Iran, on the top of...

25 Aug 20min

Episode 149

Some reflections on vital infrastructure prompted by a journey on a high speed train from Luang Prabang in Laos to Kunming in Southern China.The part of the railway in Laos took a mere 5 years to buil...

18 Aug 20min

Episode 148

We start where we left off with some words about conventionally powered submarines. Here we have been told that only nuclear powered submarines can survive in a modern war - yet Canada, Germany and No...

21 Jul 20min