This article is useful in highlighting realities for all Australians, which include:

1. Being part of a large scale defence alliance system (call it "Empire" or whatever) is essential.

2. Australia alone cannot defend itself against such powers as Putin's Russia, China or in future perhaps India

3. Australia is geographically out on a hard to defend limb

4. Australia has too small a population and too small a defence budget to alone defend itself.

5. Australia does not enjoy fortuitous extended nuclear deterrence - unlike such defence free-rider countries as Sweden, Switzerland and Austria. These countries are protected by the geographical luck of being on the flanks of NATO's nuclear alliance

6. Australia has to proactively win extended nuclear deterrence thus being part of US military ventures overseas.

7. The alternative is Australia spending 15% of its GDP on its own nuclear deterrent, conventional and intelligence forces like Israel.

The author has done a great job leading the debate to an Australian nuclear deterrent conclusion.

Pete
http://gentleseas.blogspot.com.au/2015/02/australian-nuclear-sub-option-afr-feb.html

The real myth is that we need foreign capital or expertise, when most of both have been traditionally raised here; or we can import as and when needed!

And sometimes even on a substantially worthless letter of credit?

If you see someone advocating either of the above, look carefully if only to understand, that there could be a vested interest in play or manure for brains, or a moral compass patently no longer working?

Our super fund is already larger than our entire economy, and our current tax system just encourages it offshore to far less safe destinations!

We remain just about the only western style economy that has not used self terminating thirty year bonds to roll out income earning infrastructure.

Could it be that some of our political figures are just too indolent or have a personal vested interest in a less than desirable outcome for the nation?

Why, we could already be rolling out super funded rapid rail and indeed some very fast nuclear powered ferry links to connect them to Asia, without any extra handling required in between!

The problem is political intransigence and or ideological imperatives/straight jackets; and I believe, all that stands in the way of using what we already have and a little rarely used pragmatism to get any new project up and running or restore some old ones? If we are but smart enough to roll them out as government backed employee co-ops?

We need more than ever to be once again be an economy that makes things we can and should sell to the rest of the world!

Co-ops being the only free market private enterprise model that largely survived the Great depression intact, and has a history that rarely if ever, includes growing too big to fail!
Rhrosty.

Dear Rhrosty,

How many people in Australia do you think have woken up to the fact that Australia's politicians and business leaders have been selling them out to the Chinese since Bob Hawke came to power in the 1980s?

Our new subs should be nuclear powered and armed with nukes, job done.

Rhosty, you have some strange notions about our super:

>>Our super fund is already larger than our entire economy<<

Really? Only in the sense that its value roughly equates to one year's output. That's like suggesting that all we need in order to survive old age is a year's salary. I don't know about you, but I wouldn't get far on that.

And are you proposing that our super funds are not ours, but another source of government revenue?

>>Why, we could already be rolling out super funded rapid rail and indeed some very fast nuclear powered ferry links to connect them to Asia, without any extra handling required in between!<<

Super is not a tax. We haven't been setting aside a percentage of our income so that the government can fritter it away on harebrained schemes.

Or rather, on yet more harebrained schemes.

The day the government sees fit to dip its hand willy-nilly into my savings to pursue some agenda or other, is the day I pack what's left into a suitcase and get out of here.

Peter McMahon has read a book called "Australia and the Empire" and now thinks he knows how the world works.

Most lefties think that racism and imperialism are the cause of all wars, and Peter here is heavy on the latter. Whereas imperialism has resulted in many wars, what Peter here is totally ignorant of, is that the military expansion by advanced societies into the territories of barbarians was more often than not, very beneficial to the barbarian tribes themselves. The world today is made up of about 180 "countries", and there would be 180,000 "countries" in the world today if somebody, somewhere, had not indulged in a bit of imperialism. Every single civilisation in the world that has ever existed has indulged in imperialist expansion. To criticise imperialism and consider it absolutely immoral, is like criticising normal human behaviour and declaring it to be immoral.

Here is another theory for you to peruse, Peter. The reason why Australia looks to the USA, is because Australia today is the biggest, fattest, juiciest, country on planet Earth that is ripe for military invasion. An entire continent just full of resources with an insignificant population, a population that is becoming increasingly unstable, as all multicultural societies always are. Australians spend more on gambling and on their pets than they do on defence. Our defence policy at the moment is to fight to the last American. Our defences get worse and worse. Australia in 1970, 150 Mirage fighters and 200 Centurion Main battle tanks. 1990, 75 Hornets and 120 Leopards MBT's. 2020, 50 JSF's and 50 Abrahms MBT's. So you can see why we suck up to the yanks.

In the last war, The US military leaders urged President Roosevelt to let Australia fall to the Japs, because they did not have enough military assets to defend Hawaii or the mainland of the USA. But Roosevelt said "We can not in all conscience, let Australia fall." The anti US book you read "forgot" to mention that.