Timelines? I don’t think the government itself understands the timelines. Australian defence and security is taking place in slow motion. The enemy is already geared up.

The biggest joke of the government’s electioneering is the one about Labor not being trustworthy on defence. Sheesh! The government has been in for nearly a decade, and their defence policy has been talk and imagination. No. We cannot trust Labor on defence based on their past performance, but neither can we trust the government based on its present performance, in actual control. What a powerless opposition would or would not do if they won is no excuse. We have seen what the government has not done in power. If China does decide to move against Australia, they won't wait for imaginary submarines, still undecided on, let alone built, crewed, and on patrol. Tanks? Well if we have enough of them and they go into action, the Chinese will already be on our soil.

Factually, any navel rating with above average intelligence would likely require on three months specialized training to safely operate a SM nuclear reactor that powers a nuclear submarine. And a base that services visiting UK or US submarines, will include UK and US expert tech heads.

I'm not sure that the government promises are the usual pre-election spruik this time around? Given the war raging in the Ukraine and China's increasing hostility and military posture?

I believe, there needs to be an increased level of secret/for your eyes only documentation and negotiations pertaining to military purchases/future planning. And if loose lipped Labor pollies are out of the loop? So be it!

All this talk about increased manufacture is worthless if the cost of energy makes most of it entirely impractical! Unless you include slave labour, e.g., former apprentiship schemes/wage theft etc?

We need nuclear power as MSR thorium to bring the cost of energy down and make practical/affordable alternative fuel production from seawater. Doable inside 12 months!

And only practical if the paper shuffling middlemen/energy barons are excluded from any future energy policy. And that means we need cooperative capitalism as the future template to enable this nation to be as fully prepared as is possible going forward, given our comparitively insignificant size! And a isolating moat that now works against us!

We also need real tax reform so no single section of society carries a tax dodging privileged elite! If we're all in this together? Then make it real rather than yet more BS election sloganeering! Or applicable if only applied to all going down the gurgler together!
Alan B.

If we are to have a rational conversation about future energy needs and defense spending then we have to exclude the fearmongering greens who know SFA about todays nuclear options and comparative safety record. Which by the way, includes a lower death toll per gigawatt than their much vaunted and intermittent renewables!

Moreover, if we are to restart a real manufacturing sector, then we cannot cherry pick what we will make! And we need to eliminate designed obselesence from manufacture!

If there is a local market, then ensure we can fill it with local options. And if that requires the jettisoning of brainless idealogical imperatives, replacing that moronic mindset with more practical cooperative capitalism, then that is what we need do!
Alan B.

Rather than start building a nuclear sub base, the first thing the government needs to do is shore up our fuel supplies.

The mad rush to find alternate & reliable fuel supplies in Europe should be a major warning to us. Our fuel supplies are at least as vulnerable as Europes.

We have huge reserves of shale oil & gas. The Arundel oil project, near Gladstone proved the reserves & the viable economic harvesting of this resource decades ago when oil was cheep. The southern refineries refused to buy the oil as they obviously even then planned to stop refining in Oz in favor of Singapore.

It is time to restart that, & a lot of other similar resources, then make mandatory that only Oz refined fuels could be sold in Oz. Until that time no subs will be of any use, when the country is ground to a stand still due to lack of fuel.

With out fuel for road transport our city centric population starve, while walking out into the country areas, looking for food. I wonder if they would recognise it when not already vacuum packed?