I guess it stands to reason - from a militant's point of view, anyway - that if you are going to exacerbate regional tensions, fan the flames of terrorism and walk away from international treaties and alliances which have helped guard the peace for half a century, then you are going to have to increase the size of your army.
It's all about our own little region, of course:
I have believed for a long time that because of our additional commitments in our region and my strong belief that situations like that which arose in the Solomon Islands are likely to occur in our region and given that Australia has the prime responsibility to respond to these situations, I've believed for some time that we've needed a larger army... This will come as no surprise to the Australian public. We have ongoing responsibilities in our region. It's a fairly unsettled region. The rest of the world looks to Australia as the strongest and wealthiest country in the region to carry a lot of burden.But of course:
In addition to that, we will from time to time need to make niche contributions ... to the fight against terrorism and other operations in partnership with our coalition friends.Wouldn't it be nice if we actually had some "friends" in our own region? Maybe then we wouldn't need such a big army?
