Purchase of Joint Strike Fighters

Why on earth are we spending $12 billion dollars on 54 planes when we are supposed to be in such a budget emergency that even pensioners face cuts to their support, and increased health care costs?

Our trade and foreign ownership policy, and our defence policy, are based on utterly contradictory arguments. Our trade and foreign ownership policies are based on the view that everyone is our friend and we have nothing to fear from anybody.  But our defence policy is based on the view that the world is a dangerous place and that one of our trading partners might turn around and attack us. They can't both be right. In reality both policies are being driven by large corporations and they're both wrong – our foreign ownership policy is too naive and our defence policy is too suspicious.

Instead of ramping up defence spending by billions of dollars the government should be pocketing the money and using it to balance the books. It should not be subjecting pensioners and retired Australians to financial hardship by either reducing their levels of support or increasing their health care costs.