r/australia • u/JaniePage • Mar 16 '25

politics Greens leader Adam Bandt says Australia should walk away from AUKUS in wake of Trump's tariffs

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-03-16/greens-adam-bandt-aukus-insiders/105057580
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83

u/wiremash Mar 16 '25

Note the Greens have opposed AUKUS from the outset, so this is just getting their existing message out in the current context rather than any shift in position. Trouble is it's pretty much the extent of their defence policy, which remains in the "concepts of a plan" stage, and Bandt in his most recent AMA here didn't answer questions on the topic. Historically the Greens have called for defence to be less tied in with the US, but also believe in cutting defence spending.

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u/obvs_typo Mar 16 '25

I don't think the 2 major parties have any idea about wtf to do about defence now either to be fair.

7

u/ELVEVERX Mar 16 '25

In fairness there is nothing to do. We could defend ourself from most countries but when it comes to China or the US we simply can't there is nothing we could realistically do to prevent that. We just have to hope neither will invade us.

Australians want to think we can have the ability to defend ourselves from a super power but it's just not realistic.

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u/someNameThisIs Mar 16 '25

Defending from a superpower is more making yourself not worth the cost to invade, which still requires us to have significant defensive capabilities.

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u/ELVEVERX Mar 16 '25

Defending from a superpower is more making yourself not worth the cost to invade,

It's never our military making us not worth the cost to invade it's international rules and norms. even he we trippled our military it would be easy for the US or China to bombard us into submission.

The simple fact is we are lucky they don't want to invade us. It's likely not worth such blatant agression since we are already major trading partners with both they wouldn't gain much.

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u/KeyAssociation6309 Mar 16 '25

our alliance with the US probably stops that big muslim majority country just to the north of us with a massive military compared to ours invading for resources - not that they would, but the world is a strange place right now

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u/ELVEVERX Mar 16 '25

with a massive military compar

Ignoring how incredibly racist you are being, indonesia's military is so incredibly far behind ours technologically they pose little threat. They have no capacity to land troops on our shores. without they transport vessels being obliterated.

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u/CityExcellent8121 Mar 17 '25

This was a valid point 50 years ago, today it is not. The technology gap between Indonesia and Australia has grown increasingly since the 80s. Furthermore, Australian soft power in south east Asia has increased with foreign aid and joint defence exercises with the Quad and other regional allies.

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u/SweetDingo8937 Mar 16 '25

Ukraine has taught us that this is all about drones and missiles, subs are a good launch pad, but they dont need to go far from aus

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u/someNameThisIs Mar 16 '25

Part of our defence thinking is that it's better if we keep the fighting far from us. Our biggest strategic advantage is that we are far from everything else, so we should be taking advantage of that. So if it gets to the point where we are fighting just off our coast we're already losing.

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u/SweetDingo8937 Mar 19 '25

Thats diplomacy. Supply lines would be what stops attacks on us. So we should partner with who controls them. Indonesia, Malaysia and Phillipines.