Skip to main content

Australia plans to enter top ten defence export countries

Australia’s Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull attends a press conference at Parliament House in Canberra. (AP)
The Australian government announced on Monday a new strategy to boost Australia into the ranks of the top 10 defense industry exporting countries within a decade.
The government will create a 3.8 billion Australian dollar (USD 3.1 billion) fund to lend to exporters that banks are reluctant to finance, Defence Industry Minister Christopher Pyne said. Australia is the 20th largest defense exporter with most of its exports including the Bushmaster armored vehicle and the Nulka missile decoy sold to the United States, Britain, Canada and New Zealand.
The aim of boosting Australia into the top 10 defence exporters was “very realistic,” Pyne said “Australia has a very sophisticated defence industry, but we’ve never had a government until this one that’s been determined to drive that into exports in order to grow jobs and the economy,” Pyne told Australian Broadcasting Corp.
Trade Minister Steve Ciobo said his government was not concerned that exported arms could be turned against Australia. “This isn’t about providing weapons or arms to rogue regimes or anything like that,” Ciobo told Nine Network television. “We’ve got strict controls and those controls make sure we only supply defense assets in the future to like-minded countries that have a strong human rights record and have protections in place.”
“We know that when countries are strong and others know that they’re strong, then the likelihood of there being conflict is, of course, reduced,” Ciobo added.



Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

North Korea exported coal to South and Japan via Russia-intelligence: Sources

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un (File/AP Photo) North Korea shipped coal to Russia last year which was then delivered to South Korea and Japan in a likely violation of UN sanctions, three Western European intelligence sources said. The UN Security Council banned North Korean exports of coal last August 5 under sanctions intended to cut off an important source of the foreign currency Pyongyang needs to fund its nuclear weapon and long-range missile programmes. But the secretive Communist state has at least three times since then shipped coal to the Russian ports of Nakhodka and Kholmsk, where it was unloaded at docks and reloaded onto ships that took it to South Korea or Japan, the sources said. A Western shipping source said separately that some of the cargoes reached Japan and South Korea in October last year. A US security source also confirmed the coal trade via Russia and said it was continuing. “Russia’s port of Nakhodka is becoming a transhipping hub for North Kor...
Post a Comment
Read more

Beijing’s struggle against pollution will be tough, take time: Mayor

Beijing’s battle against air pollution will take time and be very tough to win despite recent improvements, the acting mayor of China’s capital said on Wednesday. The city has been fighting to clean its notoriously smoggy air through steps such as pushing households and factories to switch away from coal to cleaner fuels like natural gas. “Further improvement in air quality (will be) extremely difficult,” acting mayor of Beijing, Chen Jining, said in a statement released during the city’s congress meeting. The central government’s intense focus on air quality means many local officials’ careers are linked to the success of efforts to tackle smog, making it unusual to speak candidly about the challenges of meeting tough targets. Beijing has chalked up a short-term success by cutting the annual average level of breathable particulate matter (PM 2.5) to 58 micrograms per cubic metre in 2017, beating a target set by the State Council in 2012. However, the city is still some way f...
Post a Comment
Read more

North Korea to send athletes, cheer squad to Winter Olympics: S Korea

People watch a TV screen showing South and North Korea, left, meeting, at Seoul Railway Station in Seoul, South Korea, Tuesday, Jan. 9, 2018. (AP Photo/Ahn Young-joon) North Korea said during rare talks with the South on Tuesday it will send a delegation of high-ranking officials, athletes and a cheering squad to the Pyeongchang Winter Olympics in South Korea next month, according to a senior South Korean official. Seoul proposed inter-Korean military talks to reduce tensions on the Korean peninsula and a reunion of family members in time for February’s Lunar New Year holiday, said South Korea’s vice unification minister Chun Hae-sung. South Korea also proposed that athletes from the two Koreas march together at the Games’ opening ceremony and other joint activities between the two nations during the Winter Olympics, Chun told reporters outside the first formal talks between North and South Korea in more than two years. The talks are being closely watched by world lea...
Post a Comment
Read more