Follow the day’s news live.
Get our breaking news email, free app or daily news podcast
One of the markers of the success of the Aukus nuclear submarine deal is how much it is opposed by potential adversaries, Britain’s Aukus chief has told a Washington DC thinktank.
Sir Stephen Lovegrove, the UK prime minister’s special representative on Aukus, told an event at the Center for Strategic and International Studies: “our adversaries hate Aukus”.
They really hate it. And in a sense, the way in which you can judge whether or not it is doing the things that you want it to do is how much people who don’t necessarily share our value systems and our objectives are objecting to it.
It believes that – or it’s said as much, I’m not sure if it believes it – that it’s destabilising the region. I think when you look at the way in which China is putting additional nuclear-powered submarines, additional nuclear armed submarines, it’s building its submarine capability and its nuclear missile capability at such a pace, these Australian boats are not destabilising the region. We are seeking to balance in the region and… the growth of PLA nuclear powered submarine capabilities is very profound.
Every part of the economy is affected by immigration these days for Australia, and so … dealing with the challenges we’ve got with housing supply, which is not immigration’s fault, but immigration needs to be part of the answer, to do that in a way that has the softest landing for the economy is something you’ve got to get right.
The numbers are too high and what we’ve seen from the government today is no cut to the numbers ... We are a great immigrant nation. Make no mistake about it. But immigration needs to be capped based on the housing supply, the infrastructure, the services we have, and that has not been the case in recent years.
Continue reading...
