DEFENCE CONTRACT A POSITIVE

THE announcement that a $1bn defence contract for military hardware has been signed with South Korea’s Hanwha, thereby creating 300 local jobs is a positive.

More so because of the messaging to the Chinese Communist Party that a growing number of countries in the Indo Pacific and further afield are prepared to band together against the CCP’s overreach and cyber coercion.

The latter now costing Australian business and governance $42bn per annum.

I’m still supportive of the Morrison Coalition and particularly Defence Minister Peter Dutton.

However, it’s fair to say that defence-wise: Things are crook in Tallarook.

During the year The Weekend Australian’s foreign editor Greg Sheridan has provided detailed commentary and analysis of President Xi Jinping and the

CCP’s unwarranted aggression, expansion into the South China Sea despite Permanent Court of Arbitration at The Hague rulings, suppression of democracy in Hong Kong, Taiwan airspace intimidation and internationally condemned forced labour and genocide of Uyghurs in Xinjiang Province.

Sheridan has also lamented Australia’s underwhelming defence capabilities.

While the US Alliance, AUKUS, The Quad and The Five Eyes partnerships provide some surety, our ADF personnel, for all their expertise and bravery, number around 60,000.

The CCP’s armed forces total more than two million.

As Peter Dutton has pointed out, Hobart is within range of CCP missiles.

As a deterrent as a fallback position we have no nuclear capability. Putting it crudely, you don’t take a knife to a gun fight.

Also not so long ago two of our limited frigate fleet were moored in Fremantle because there was nobody to crew them.

Delivery of the nuclearpowered but not nuclear-armed submarine fleet doesn’t commence until the late 2030s. Richard Worland, Manifold Heights