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In his first budget, Kevin Rudd cut spending on everything except the military, which he increased and will keep increasing at three percent annually until 2018 (Morton 2008). Now it emerges that he will spend up to $35 billion on new naval submarines (Jennett 2009). $35 billion! Our Centre for Peace Studies couldn't even afford a few hundred dollars to get some Victorian students here for our summer school. $35 billion and that figure may well double - the Collins submarines' total cost snowballed to over $6 billion as of 2000, compared to the $3.9 billion stated in 1987 by Bob Hawke, and this was for a submarine that had leaks, inadequate propellers and an incorrect sound signature (Jennette 2009). The new ones will use American technology and European hulls - jobs exported. Some employment will be created, though for a similar cost many more jobs could be created in rural dental health, tree planting or the solar industry. The submarines are for a navy already chronically understaffed (Stewart 2008), because personnel are leaving in droves and Generation Y has the sense not to join up. At least three of the current submarines are unused because of staff shortages (Dodd and Franklin 2008). How does Mr Rudd reconcile all this militarism - state-sanctioned violence at core, despite the good work soldiers also do - with the trumpeting of his Christianity, whose most basic premise is surely 'Thou Shalt Not Kill'? How is spending more on militarism than education 'helping the marginalised, the vulnerable and the oppressed' (Rudd 2006)? Where is 'the Christian concern for the sanctity of all human life'? How does increased militarism address his professed concerns for global poverty, or Indigenous advantage? Are there any suggestions that anyone is even remotely considering attacking us, let alone sustaining an invasion? Is not the cold war and its MAD doctrine that terrified my youth over? |
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