There has been much whopping and hollering, back-slapping and chest-beating as the propaganda machine was wound up to full noise to convince Australians that our government was in full control of its faculties when it handed over $365 billion, that’s before the inevitable budget ‘blow-out’, for a handful of nuclear-powered submarines.
Much has been made of the fact that the purchase decision was bipartisan, meaning that those of us unhappy about what’s happening, that’s the capture of our decision makers’ psyche by the military/industrial complex ideology, have little chance of slowing, stopping or changing the direction of this juggernaut.
I weep.
The pragmatists, I know, will look at me, shake their heads, look knowingly to their friends and mutter something about this poor fellow has taken leave of his senses and so is unable to see that threats to our safety and security are afoot everywhere, sometimes in darkness, but often in plain view.
Upfront, I thoroughly dislike the idea of committing our nation to an idea of buying our way into a frightfully expensive club based on the premise that the world will be a better place if the members equip themselves with fantastically destructive weapons and so chose violence, or some sort of barbarity as their first response.
And so what do the people of Shepparton think of emptying the nation’s coffers to join this cadre of nations who see all the problems of the world as a nail and so the bigger the hammer, the better.
Obviously, I was unable check with everyone in Shepparton and Mooroopna, but I did manage to talk with about 30 people.
That task got off to slow start as my first candidate, a young man in his late teens, knew nothing of the AUKUS (Australia, United Kingdom and United States) deal.
As expected, the responses were mixed, ranging from enthusiastic support for the idea to an equal damning of the thought that Australians, for generations to come, were committed to funding a questionable addition to the nation’s military might.
By chance, I stumbled upon a piece from “Pearls and Irritations” in which a research fellow in Asian Studies from the School of Humanities and Social Sciences at La Trobe University, Greg Bailey, noted that the AUKUS submarine deal diverted our thinking from the real issue that is the climate crisis, biodiversity loss and economic inequality.
Mr Bailey suggested that years before the submarines were delivered climate change may have ravaged the world much more savagely than any putative war between China and America, and brought about massive refugee flows caused by climate wars.
And that would produce a confrontation with millions of people, way beyond the capacities of our expensive, and in this case, near useless nuclear-powered submarines.
Many in Greater Shepparton, I suspect, are unsure about the reasoning behind the AUKUS decision, just as the experts appear to be.
And emphasising why we should have spent those billions on combatting and adapting to the deteriorating weather system was discussed just recently in the Melbourne Age.
Penny Sackett and Chris Barrie said in an option piece and referring to the submarines and imagined war with China: “It distracts us from the real climate conflict, the unwinnable war that humans have waged (first in ignorance, but now knowingly) on the Earth. This is the climate war that threatens our lives and livelihoods, the one we must swiftly and unilaterally end. Nature will not negotiate.”
How about less whopping and hollering, back-slapping and chest-beating, about matters of little consequence, replacing them with a focus on issues, such as the climate crisis, that truly threaten Australians.
Robert McLean is a former editor at The News