An ear-piercing alarm should ring the moment a politician pretends national security is too important for party politicking. You know they’re lying. That’s because within seconds they’ll set about violating their own injunction. Thin, grasping, …
Tag Archive for: "budget"
In case you missed it, yesterday was the launch of Mark Thomson’s magnus opus for the year, The Cost of Defence: ASPI Defence Budget Brief 2013–2014. And the cost of Defence? It’s AUD$69,081,980.82 a day. …
What a difference a year can make. Twelve months ago, it looked like the government had all but abandoned the ambitious plans set out for the ADF in the 2009 Defence White Paper. More than …
Every year I get to watch Mark Thomson pull off a remarkable feat of ‘extreme analysis’, as he cranks out 260 pages of the annual Cost of Defence report in the couple of weeks after …
I’m in New Zealand at the moment, attending a public symposium on future security issues. It’s an interesting model for this sort of discussion. We have a room full—and I mean full as the forum …