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Saturday, July 11, 2009

Rearmament - Defence White Paper

The government’s defence White Paper has advocated rearmament, of the navy - doubling of our submarines from eight to twelve, more and bigger warships with missile capacity; and our air force with more powerful planes. Previously we reequipped our army with the latest battle tanks, ‘to deal with terror’! Will this ‘waving of the fist’ make us safer in today’s realities? Surely an aggressive attitude breeds aggression.

We might be an ever-ready partner for America, as these policies strongly suggest, but of the reverse we can not be so certain. The world’s relationships have changed.

We cannot stand tall as a military power, nor should we ever want to, but we can stand tall as a peace-loving nation advancing the cause of democracy, by reforming our own. For example, our constitution could require an eighty to ninety percent free vote in parliament before deploying any military force beyond our shores! Australians could very well vote that in—if we were asked!

Militant attitudes are very easy for government to sell to the public, fear being an easy public button to push, as seen in the ‘communist threat’, and our involvement in Vietnam (and now North Korea), and the ‘weapons of mass destruction’ with our encouragement of America’s pre-emptive strike in Iraq. How easy it is to blunder on, with hawks in our back room and fear haunting our counsels of state. Fear makes intelligent, restrained policies difficult, requiring faith in the virtue of a people-centred stance of helpful, peaceful intention.

It is encouraging that two ex prime ministers have been moved by concern at the aggressive implications of the defence white paper. Both Malcolm Fraser and Paul Keating have embraced these issues from a non-partisan point of view, highlighting the importance of peaceful intention and goodwill respectively. We surely echo their concern.

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