The $368 billion AUKUS deal raises many more questions than we have had answered to date. The Labor Government has followed the Morrison Government as if the plan unveiled by Mr Morrison was a fait accompli. On September 15th 2021, following a two hour briefing from the then-government in which no documentation was presented, key Continue reading »
Economy
The nexus between war and capitalism has been extensively explored by historians, particularly those on the political left such as Gabriel Kolko. It is one of the reasons why the term state capitalism, rather than market capitalism, is a more accurate description of the economic structures of advanced industrial societies. War, or more often the Continue reading »
Defence Minister Richard Marles has now told us why we need nuclear submarines – not to defend Taiwan or attack China, but to defend our merchant shipping. Sounds credible until one does the maths. There are 26,000 ship port calls involving over 3,000 different ships at 70 Australian ports each year to exchange 580 million Continue reading »
Comment by Hon. Melissa Parke on AUKUS 22 March 2023. I welcome the speech given by Josh Wilson MP, my successor in the federal seat of Fremantle, in the Australian parliament on 20 March in which he raised concerns regarding the AUKUS agreement. I also welcome the contributions from former Prime Minister Paul Keating last Continue reading »
By Dean Baker / Beat the Press (CEPR) An item in Ezra Klein’s NYT column yesterday really grabbed by attention. Ezra cited a Wall Street Journal column that claimed that the Federal Reserve Board’s stress tests would not have detected Silicon Valley Bank’s (SVB) problems, because its stress tests did not consider interest rate risk. This struck me as […]
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ATTENTION JOURNALISTS: It is never, ever acceptable, under any circumstances, to cite think tanks funded by governments and the military industrial complex as sources of information or expertise on matters of national security or foreign affairs. If you do cite them (and, again, don’t), then at the very least you need to disclose the conflict Continue reading »
As the Government seeks to respond to an increasing number of questions about what it extolls as the game-changing decision to purchase nuclear powered submarines (SSN’s) it has been tweaking the spin about the reasons it has taken for this budget shaking decision. Our two AUKUS partners – the US (and even the British) – Continue reading »
Our Defence Minister said that Australia has not given any guarantees to the USA about what we would do with our submarines in the case of war but would take our own decisions at the time. This is welcome but what are the implications? Does it only apply to the submarines? As always, the devil Continue reading »
There is a simple, relatively costless government move that should give about half a million Australians confidence in homeland security. While not exactly the same sort of security, and not to be too flippant about the peril that the AUKUS deal puts us in, this move would cost 0.000000272 of the $368 billion subs’ contract Continue reading »
We just need to look at the facts to see how foolish the assertion is that SSNs have the capacity to prevent disruption to our trade in the event of a war. Forty percent of our exports are to, and 20% of our imports are from, China. Throwing money at submarines weakens the national economy. Continue reading »