The Policy Post

  We’re getting submarines. So what will we lose? The navy wins. Losers will be the army, the air force, Medicare, hospitals, schools, the unemployed – and the nation’s safety.

As America prepares for war with China, we’re in the crossfire. Strategic ambiguity is all but dead. The United States has left China and the world in no doubt that if Taiwan is attacked, America will go to war.

‘It would be the end of Xi’: Andrew Wilkie on war over Taiwan, America’s decline and a new era in Canberra. It was an unruly conscience that first made Andrew Wilkie famous.

In denial: Defence’s giant carbon footprint.   In almost every country, armed forces are responsible for massive greenhouse gas pollution. But governments – including Australia’s – do not disclose that, and do not accurately include defence emissions in their carbon-reduction targets.

A new arms race and nuclear Armageddon: UN chief’s grim warning. “Humanity,” said António Guterres in Hiroshima, “is playing with a loaded gun.”

Nuclear submarines. A Labor government. Cherbourg, here we come! When Scott Morrison and Peter Dutton tore up the contract to buy conventional submarines from France, Emmanuel Macron’s wasn’t the only disapproving voice.