Defence Minister Richard Marles says the new Surface Fleet Strategy will be “fully funded” at a cost of $11.1 billion over a decade, and the money “will be” in the May Budget.
It increases the number of surface combatants from 11 to 26, but the six optionally crewed vessels are yet to be developed.
“It is enough – this fully funds the surface fleet over the course of the next decade and beyond, and it really does stand in contrast to the sort of announcements that we saw being made by the former government,” Mr Marles said at a press conference in Sydney on Tuesday.
“We saw the former government announce a $35 billion guided weapons enterprise for which they allocated $1 billion; today, we are announcing the money that will ensure the full funding of this.
“This money will be in the Budget we deliver in May, and I do want to take this opportunity to thank the Treasurer, the Finance Minister and, of course, the Prime Minister for their support of the surface fleet and of defence funding.”
source
Successful ALP governing 🦾
No offence intended towards the former deputy LNP PM Barnaby Joyce…😉
😆😆😆
Maybe australians would prefer Xi over the current so called government?
war Mungers!
Buying stuff that hasn't even been built, yet again.
And who's going to man them?
There's already ships sitting idle with no crews
Money for something that doesn't exist lol. Sounds like Climate Change
Marles plans to rearm Australia after the coming conflicts
What’s the point. You think young people should be ashamed to be Australian yet you want them to join the forces. The country is going down the tubes thanks to this weak leftist government.
Did he say mid 2030s? Automatic Fail. Today I'm announcing the skynet funding bill going to have Ai thinking terminator robots fighting for us in the year 2080… yeah that will scare China
All this mob do is slam the opposition to try and deter from their utter incompetence. Take responsibility Rimar 😂
Plenty of.money for this crap but not the important stuff
So we can't even build a frigate on budget, so how are we going to build nuclear subs on budget. There is a chance they will bankrupt Australia if defense and the ship building companies are true to form.
Taxes are going up. Guaranteed. They'll still find money for gazan terrorists and aboriginal separatists though.
These Clowns are Great at Announcements ! They won't be There in 16 Months ?
Another crock of crap from labor, they have no f'ing clue, China will have collapsed under it's own demographics before we get a viable fleet
🤣🤢🐂💩
Great job ALP once again fixing the problems left by the Coalition Government.
😂 🤡 wasting time and money on useless projects… St.Thomas
Marles is like the rest of the labor party, totally incompetent. This will be an excuse for this rorter to start racking up his frequent flyer points that we all pay for again.
gonna need to do better than that. the whole West needs to be building and stacking.
They going to take the funding for this away from the Army with the reasoning that with these ships, no one will get close enough for the Army to fight?