The real truth is economics. With the state of the financial world today [ and in the future, grin ] it's simply uneconomical to invade Australia. Small ECONOMIES like our northern neighbors [ forget man power and machinery ]would go broke just holding on to the place. Our other advantage is our sheer land mass size and small population. Australian troops could conduct guerrilla warfare for decades hiding on our large land mass. This would make invading us economic suicide. Disrupt and cut off logistics to the place [ isolate us ] and invaders would just wither and die like a bloody virus with no food, no water, no supplies, no co-operation etc etc. Our resource pool is stupendous but it's worth nothing to an invader if you can't use it economically by the points just mentioned. Staying nuclear free is actually a great advantage. Why would a neighbor nuke us and destroy the small working machinery that processes our vast resources ??.

I understand war, feel proud and sorry on Anzac day, am proud of our service men and women.
But would rather we never had to fight one.
Putting flowers in our guns however is not anti war.
Putting them down is not anti war.
Being politically correct and say nuclear kills there for we will not have it, is making war more likely.
Truly .
Who cares what China would think?
Well just maybe we should not let such fears blind us.
China may in a war fight on our side, may be the enemy.
Rubbish about our troops being able to fight in the outback are a dream, remember my quote about unarmed migration if we did not defend our borders?
you can bet we would need no army to over run us.
The whole worlds is going to use Nuclear power, our uranium may its self be a reason to invade us, our economy runs on the understanding others must have our resources, they may want them for nothing.
We would be dreadful people if we sent our troops armed with pop guns to die.
Consider this, our enemy's , well those I think are bound to be , have no regard for us or human rights.

According research undertaken by University lecturer and author Wayne Reynolds in his book "Australia’s Bid for the Atomic Bomb", Australia made a futile attempt to develop nuclear weapons many years ago.

The network of tunnels associated with the Snowy Mountains scheme was intended as research facilities into nuclear energy and weapons and despite our appeals for assistance from the British and Americans, none was forthcoming so the plans were abandoned.

The site was chosen in relation the Lucas Heights, Jervis Bay and the ANU.

We've already got one. Why do you think the yanks have various personnel and base/s here?. If it gets to the point where someone's threatening us with nukes then the yank subs constantly patrolling will come in to play.

No one needs to invade. Anna Bligh will probably end up renting the top half of Qld to someone anyway.

There is almost no scenario where the use of nuclear weapons would result in a better result than not using them. It would also require the development of a ballistic missile system and counter missile system.

The cost is prohibitive (trillions of dollars) and will lower the standard of living in the country significantly.

I think the question is a good one, and can be addressed on a number of levels.

Off the bat, it would appear that we don't actually need to build, own and maintain our own nuclear defence capability. Should the threat level rise, we could quite easily buy what we need from an allied power with the necessary weaponry.

Right now, it is logical to assume this would be the USA.

This actually makes us a "nuclear power by proxy", and therefore part of the world-wide MAD standoff.

But that still leaves us without a fully independent nuclear deterrent of our own, which - I would imagine - is behind the original post.

In my view it would set a very poor precedent, and encourage other countries to escalate their own programmes. Which would do little, except increase the scale of the standoff.

Then we'd once more forever be looking over our shoulders for Dr Strangelove, just as we all were back in the fifties and much of the sixties.