Best of 2025 - Chasing a chimera: The political dream of AUKUS that consumes reality
For the sake of taxpayers, let's hope that the Audit Office is inspecting the AUKUS books closely.
Recent articles in Defence
22 December 2025
2025 in Review: The fading West, a cautious Labor win and an uncertain world
From the erosion of Western authority to Australia’s election result, 2025 exposed deep shifts in global power, alliance politics and the limits of domestic reform.
17 December 2025
AUKUS meets reality – UK ‘all in’ a mess (Part 2)
Australia is betting on a British program plagued by delays, underinvestment and workforce shortages – a gamble that risks leaving the country without any sovereign submarine capability.
16 December 2025
AUKUS meets reality – what's not in the AUSMIN Media Release (Part 1)
Despite official assurances, the US submarine program is falling well short of its own targets, raising serious doubts about whether Australia will ever receive the Virginia class submarines promised under AUKUS.
5 December 2025
A Boyer Lecture that misunderstands Australia’s defence history
The latest Boyer Lecture portrays Australia as trapped by anxiety about the United States. In fact, for decades the country pursued a deliberate, bipartisan strategy of defence self-reliance – abandoned only in recent years.
21 November 2025
US alliance holding us back
Australia's US alliance is preventing the country from signing and ratifying the Treaty for Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, despite overwhelming public support for the government to do so.
20 November 2025
Australians are markedly more worried about the US, but still wary about China
Australians' concerns and mistrust of China are easing, while doubts about the US are increasing.
18 November 2025
Nuclear testing threatens global stability
Gareth Evans, Robert Hill, and Larissa Waters are among the Australian signatories of a statement calling on Trump to clarify that the US will not resume nuclear explosive testing.
14 November 2025
In Ukraine’s Pokrovsk, narratives have collided with brutal realities
Up to 5000 Ukrainian soldiers are in danger of encirclement in the key town of Pokrovsk by a powerful Russian war machine that has ground ever so slowly forward over the past 18 months.
13 November 2025
Another RSL dope wants to draw us into a major war
It beggars belief that the outgoing head of the RSL, Greg Melick, has abused the quiet solemnity of Remembrance Day to lecture and berate the Albanese government on its defence policy.
10 November 2025
The defence myth
When opponents of the military build-up and critics of the genocide in Palestine went to protest outside the Indo-Pacific Maritime Exposition in Sydney, they were confronted by a huge force of New South Wales police.
10 November 2025
Arms industry infiltrates National Press Club
More than a quarter of the National Press Club’s sponsors are part of the global arms industry or working on its behalf.
8 November 2025
Revealed: Secret plans to introduce media censorship in Australia
Moves to restrict just what journalists can report on defence and intelligence matters are underway – and journalists need to get up to speed fast.
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More from Defence
30 September 2025
Scarborough collision triggers Beijing’s strategic hardening
16 September 2025
As Europe diversifies its defence, Canberra still clings to AUKUS
