hanrahan@piefed.social 6 days ago
Against who ? The only country with the ability to attack us are the US and China, nothing we can do will stop either of them. Our defence force is mostly dick waving theatre.
We have zero strategic petroleum reserves and no electrified rail transport system to speak of for logistics. They don’t need to attack us, just starve us of petroleum products for a couple weeks and we’re fucked. We have a total of two muntions factories. We are closing or jabe closed the WW2 dry dock near Brisbane which seems stupid.
Joining the EU and then trying for NATO membership might be one possible way foward. Starting from scratch with some sort of mutual defence Asian pact might work, Japan, Canada etc but then if Canada is invaded by the US what then ?
The US is probably our greatest threat, China not so much.
Gorgritch_umie_killa@aussie.zone 5 days ago
Couldn’t agree more with you’re assessment. I’m more hopeful Australia can pull its finger out its arse with military manufacturing.
Yes we’ve shut down an insane amount of primarily manufacturing based industries, (eg cars, thanks Liberals, ya dumb cunts!), the mining and construction industries have a large amount of incidental manufacturing for repairs and unique materials, while our knowledge base from universities and the small military-industrial machine puts us in a okay position to ramp up onshore production of many items, not too mention our wealth and borrowing capacity.
But we will need to relinquish the neoliberal monetary policy only choke-hold on our economy, and allow fiscal spending to direct a greater proportion of our economy than we’ve seen in most of our lifetimes.
I also think while NATO and Europe should always be kept on friendly terms, we need to invest in our neighbours. We may recieve support from far off allies, but those commitments may only go so far. See the British decision to desert the region after Singapore in WW2 for an example of the limitations of far off allies.
So strong allies in our region including Indonesia, New Zealand, Papua New Guinea, Pacific Islands countries et al, that are bound to us through geography, and we to them can bring a deeper/different form of mutual defence commitment. Its time for Oceania as a region to become a more serious idea.