Australia suffering under Labor, page-820

I'm sure China's taking notes.

While Albanese et al crap on about climate change and Palestine, we can't defend ourselves.

It's frightening.

Well said Cameron Stewart.

The collapse of Australia’s military contribution to the world’s largest maritime exercise has laid bare just how woefully unprepared our current Defence Force is for any serious conflict in the region.

This is a fundamental failure of national security that Australians will have to live with for the next decade. If a conflict should arise in that period, we don’t have enough warships or submarines that work or enough personnel to crew them.

Nothing could more starkly illustrate this new reality than the government’s inability to send more than a single ship, a plane and a handful of personnel to the most critical US-led maritime exercise in our region.

The biennial RIMPAC exercise, which runs for the next month, is by some distance the most important military exercise Australia participates in. Involving 29 nations, 40 surface ships, 150 aircraft and some 25,000 personnel, it is an exercise that China truly hates because it does more than any other to prepare countries across the region to repel any military adventurism from Beijing.

China’s state-run mouthpiece the Global Times fumes that this year’s RIMPAC will “sabotage, not safeguard, peace and stability in the region” because the exercise will practise drills aimed at sinking a Chinese aircraft carrier.

Yet at a time when the Albanese government claims the rise of China has delivered the most frightening strategic outlook in a generation, Australia cannot muster more than symbolic military support for this year’s RIMPAC.

At the last RIMPAC in 2022, we sent 1600 personnel, three warships, a Collins-class submarine, two P-8A Poseidon aircraft and an army amphibious combat group, together with mine warfare and clearance diving teams.

This year we are sending 320 personnel, a single warship, and a single air force P-8A Poseidon maritime reconnaissance aircraft.

In other words, Australia is providing one of the 40 surface ships involved in RIMPAC, just one of the 150 aircraft involved and just 1.29 per cent of the personnel.

It is a shamefully microscopic contribution for a supposed middle power that spends $55bn on defence a year and harbours ambitions to become an operator of nuclear-powered submarines.

When the government was criticised late last year for refusing a US Navy request to send a warship to help defend the Red Sea from attacks by Houthi rebels, it claimed the decision was made because it wanted to focus on security in our immediate region.

No military exercise focuses more specifically on regional security than RIMPAC and Australia is all but AWOL. This is the result of a decade of neglect on defence that has been blighted by inadequate funding, botched projects, delayed decisions on replacing warships and subs and a failure to recruit personnel.

Australia cannot send a sub to RIMPAC because corrosion problems have sidelined three of the navy’s six ageing Collins-class submarines for the rest of the year.

It cannot send an Anzac frigate because they are ageing quickly, forcing the government to mothball one and a second ship in 2026.

The situation will become worse before it becomes better because although the government has announced grand plans for its new AUKUS nuclear-powered submarines and a new fleet of general purpose frigates, none of these will arrive this decade.

Australia has to hold its breath and hope a conflict does not break out soon. Our token contribution to RIMPAC tells regional neighbours we are struggling to pull our weight in our own backyard.