Hee hee. Reuters is claiming that the implementation of climate trading in Australia is going to be pushed out to 2011.
Which leaves Labor promising to do it without having to explain the economic dislocation that will ensue to the electorate.
Smart politics, but perhaps a little too slick?
So we have a shiny new defence white paper.
There’s also a very large number of media releases outlining bits they want to draw attention to.
Of striking interest seems to be a lack of interest in unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) mentioned just seven times in the whole paper and almost entirely for a surveilance role. One has to wonder if this has something to do with the Air Chief Marshall currently running the ADF, and it’s a great concern. We seem to be planning to use manned helicopters, so very slow, expensive, and vulnerable for weapons delivery at sea when UAVs could do the job better, cheaper and more safely for no reason other than the pilot’s club needing to justify their ongoing ability to get a job with Qantas and marry an air hostess. There is one very hazy media release which might suggest some hope in future.
The biggest shift from the current force structure is a huge expansion of the navy.
The “20 new Offshore Combatant Vessels” could end up being anything, but with the capacity to embark a helicopter sound suspiciously like a frigate.
12 new submarines is a serious strategic force, bear in mind that submarines aren’t just useful for sinking enemy shipping, they’re also a very important tool for the sinking of other people’s submarines.
That will go nicely with a force of 8 larger frigates, a fourth air warfare destroyer with enhancements to the weaponry of that class will give us a very interesting force.
But what are we going to spend these billions on?
From the white paper here’s the second priority to good old “Defence of Australia”:
“Our next most important strategic interest is the security,stability and cohesion of our immediate neighbourhood, which we share with Indonesia, Papua New Guinea, East Timor, New Zealand and the South Pacific island states. While we have a wide range of diplomatic, economic, cultural and other links with those countries, from a strategic point of view, what matters most is that they are not a source of threat to Australia, and that no major military power, that could challenge our control of the air and sea approaches to Australia, has access to bases in our neighbourhood from which to project force against us.”
And here’s what the proposed force will be good for: Stopping a major power to our north (China) deploying troops into these countries in our region, preventing the re-supply of any that do make it across, and allowing for our own troops to be landed to intervene decisively.
It appears to be predicated on a collapse of American power in the Eastern Pacific, which is why we’ll need to be able to do these things for ourselves.
The China lobby will be upset, but our Chinese friends are more likely to negotiate in good faith on a range of issues when faced by a deterrent to adventurism like this.
The hard part will be paying for it all, and convincing the public that they want to.