PM ALBANESE SAYS AUSTRALIA NEEDS TO BE ABLE TO DEFEND ITSELF –Australia’s national election is set for May 3
Australia needs to be able to defend itself, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said on Wednesday when asked whether Donald Trump’s return to power in the United States meant Australia should review its defence strategy.
Australia deepened its long-standing military alliance with the United States under President Joe Biden, including through the AUKUS agreement, a four-decade defence project to buy and build nuclear powered submarines. Asked after delivering a speech at the National Press Club in Canberra if change was needed, Albanese said Australia was building its independent defence capability, including through the establishment of domestic missile production.
“We need to defend ourselves,” he said, referring to a previous Labor prime minister, John Curtin, who Albanese said during the Second World War understood that “kowtowing to the U.K., as it was then, wasn’t going to defend Australia”. Curtin rejected a British strategy to deploy Australian troops in southeast Asia and demanded that they defend New Guinea and Australia.
“People (at the time) thought they needed the national interest defended,” Albanese said. “It was Labor who did it then and it is Labor that will do it now.”
Australia holds a national election on May 3 that polls predict will give Albanese’s Labor party a majority or near majority.
