More Bushmasters is the bare minimum we can do

Anthony Albanese meets with Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky in Vilnius, Lithuania. Picture: PMO

Anthony Albanese is right to give 30 more Bushmaster vehicles to Ukraine. It is the absolute bare minimum he could get away with. Indeed it’s hard to imagine he could have secured a one-on-one meeting with the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelensky, without it.

And it’s still a tiny offering compared with that given by our allies.

It’s hard to believe the government takes the Ukraine conflict as seriously as it claims, given the utterly paltry nature of our support for Ukraine.

The last military aid package, notionally valued at $110 million (a valuation almost laughably implausible), was striking because it contained absolutely nothing the Ukrainians had asked for or that was much use to them, or that we would ever have used ourselves.

There is no reason we could not give substantially more Bushmasters to the Ukrainians and simply build more of them in Australia to replace those we donate.

But the crazy budgetary restrictions the government has imposed on defence mean that’s unlikely.

Unlike many of our allies, the government will not replenish equipment it takes out of the Australian defence budget for Ukraine.

Therefore we’re inclined only to give them junk.

The Bushmasters are the exception. They are assuredly not junk. Then Ukrainians love them.

The government’s global figure for its alleged support for Ukraine, of nearly $900m, is completely ropey.

Presumably it includes the cost of deploying a single Wedgetail surveillance and battle control aircraft to Germany for six months. How on earth this can require 100 personnel to support it is anyone’s guess.

But in any event Germany, the fourth biggest economy in the world, does not need to be defended by Australian aircraft.

We’d be much better served, and so would Ukraine, if we just gave Kyiv $100m from our aid budget.

There’s nothing inherently wrong with the Wedgetail deployment. It constitutes a tiny bit of burden sharing. But it’s really immaterial to Ukraine’s war and serves only to allow Australia to pretend it’s doing much more than it really is.

But then, that’s really the secret grammar of all our Defence efforts, under both sides of politics, these last several decades.