Military spending still growing

The Australian Government is showing no signs of reigning-in its spending on military hardware. It clearly believes that spending on military assets is exempt from any form of real scrutiny. Over the next decade it has earmarked $5 billion for maritime Anti-Ship Missiles,$4 billion for Offshore Patrol Vessels and another $4 billion on weapons for the future frigate program.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Sand Strategy protects environment and allows resource extraction

  Comments by Ken Henry, Chair of the Australian Climate and Biodiversity Foundation, about Australia's environmental protection laws failing to stop the degradation of our natural environment really hit home. Speaking at the National Press Club in Canberra, he argued that the failure held back economic growth. The need for a better approach to planning and environmental issues has been apparent for some time. The community in Bass Coast Shire recognised this in the early 1990’s when plans were revealed for major sand extraction operations in the district. The community was adamant that a landscape-scale approach to planning should be introduced to limit cumulative impacts rather than the existing policy which only allowed each planning application to be considered in isolation. Residents formed the Grantville Action Group and gathered data to demonstrate the need for a massive change in planning and enviromental regulations. The Minister for Planning agreed and a working group was...
Read more

Trump sounds like a Providentialist

  Is US President, Donald Trump a providentialist? He sees himself as a modern day Oliver Cromwell who seized power in England and killed the King Charles 1. Cromwell firm ly belie ved in providentialism -that God was actively directing the affairs of the world, through the actions of "chosen people" God had provided for such purposes.
Read more

Australia needs to dump preferential voting

 The stupidity of our political system has been highlighted again by the latest Federal election. For years successive Governments have been enmeshed in internal party politics. Politicians owe more allegiance to their parties than to voters in their electorates. The people do not elect Prime Ministers – they elect local members to Parliament who appoint the PM. The best way forward is to dump preferential voting and go back to a ‘first past the post’ system for elections. That would eliminate the absurdity of candidates winning a seat (particularly in the Senate when they only receive a handful of votes. The only point of voting is to to provide an effective and stable form of Government – but that is not what happens in Australia. In recent years, our ridiculous preferential voting system has seen a host of dubious individuals elected even though they garnered just a sprinkling of votes. Not only that, political parties select leaders on a whim – which has seen the farce of...
Read more