Having my usual combat nap last  Wednesday when I woke to hear the press club address, not my normal choice of program, to hear an address on Big Kev's White Paper on Defence given by Prof Hugh White and Prof Paul Dibb', both experts in the defence field .

The speaker made  a valid point "With a total ADF of 54000 and less than 2% GPD spent on ADF  who are we kidding if we think we could defend OX against an  Asian Super Power " .  To put it into perspective,  54000 is about half the crowd that they get to the AFL grand final.

We currently have 12 subs but can't find enough crew for  two to go to sea let alone the paper calls for  another 24. LOL or cry  

At the rate we lose ADF personnel especially seaweed suckers  we would be lucky to defend my local boat ramp.

I guess there are more important priorities,executive bonuses, jobs for the boys and free cars to politicians would I suspect be of more interest.
Lets just hope the Tasmainians don't mobilise or heaven forbid if the Kiwi's wanted a bigger piece of Bondi......
Still for all practical purposes the Asian superpowers don't have to attack us, we freely give them what they want so we don't really need to defend ourselves.

I think the Oz Government hopes that because of our strategic location in the Southern Hemisphere that if we come under attack the Yanks will come to our aid (again).

Some retiring Oz defence chief said a few years ago that if Indonesia ever attacked us it would only take them a week to overun our country (assuming nobody came to our aid)

I am sure it only because of fear of the Yanks getting involved and our defence pacts with the US & UK that nobody has had a go at us since WW2.

Vic

-- Edited by Vic41 on Friday 26th of June 2009 02:08:34 PM

Saw an interesting map of Oz on the back of a van here yesterday, Had a thick red line on the coasy from Cairns to Broome ,with the inscription over it, "No More we are full" Beginning to think that all 54000 are here, medal ribbons on vans ans cars everywhere, So Im safe ,