A review of Australia’s involvement in Afghanistan questions whether soldiers’ deaths helped strategic outcomes and calls for ongoing royal commission-like powers to prevent misconduct.
The Pine Gap base near Alice Springs is expanding, and so is its importance to the US military. It also means Australia is becoming a more obvious global target, whether we realise it or not.
By cutting public service jobs then outsourcing to contractors, the cost of defence staffing has doubled. With problems from planning through to delivery, the billions being spent are not giving taxpayers value for money.
According to a new book by Labor frontbencher Andrew Leigh, humanity has a one-in-six chance of ending in the next hundred years. The biggest threats are not the ones he expected.
Australia’s defence priorities have oscillated between protecting the country from invasion and joining foreign allies abroad in the hope of future support. Scott Morrison has opted for the latter, following a map drawn up by John Howard.
Australia will let emergency visas expire for those still in Afghanistan, as it emerges the US was consulted on evacuation a month before Kabul’s ‘unexpected’ fall.
Twenty years after it sank, there is still a terrible mystery about what happened to the asylum seekers aboard SIEV X and why they were not rescued by Australia.
Hours before cancelling a $90 billion contract for French submarines, Australia was still telling the company to proceed with design – but the plan to renege had been in the works since 2019.
