Australia: Belated Shape-Up

“The risks in this corner of the world have increased,” said Australia’s Prime Minister Sir Robert Gordon Menzies. speaking of Southeast Asia and the South Pacific. He was putting it mildly. Moreover, in the entire “corner,” the country perhaps least prepared to defend itself is Australia, whose Digger-hatted fighting men distinguished themselves in two world wars. In the past decade, Australia has enjoyed so much peace and prosperity that it has become known as the land without a crisis, and its defense structure shows it.

Radar 9 to 5. The speediest operational craft in the Australian air force are ten-year-old, subsonic F-86s, which are only slightly faster than modern jet airliners. The air force is even short of grease monkeys, must farm out repairs to private mechanics. Australia’s combat fleet consists of 14 antiquated vessels—the aircraft carrier Melbourne, three destroyers (there were four until the Melbourne accidentally sliced one in half last February), and a handful of frigates and minesweepers. The northern port of Darwin is garrisoned by only 150 troops; its coastal guns have been dismantled and sold to Japan as scrap; Darwin has no antiaircraft batteries, and until last month the single radar station operated from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Mondays through Fridays only.

With the increasingly gloomy outlook in the South Viet Nam war, the Indonesian raids on Malaysia, not to mention the Red Chinese bomb, something obviously had to be done. The most immediate worry: Indonesia (pop. 100 million), with which Australia shares a jungled border on the island of New Guinea; since Australian troops are helping to fight Indonesian infiltrators in Malaysia, Sukarno could easily retaliate by sending infiltrators into Australian-controlled New Guinea.

Prime Minister Menzies’ government has tried to shape up defenses. Standing by its Commonwealth and SEATO commitments, Australia reinforced its expeditionary force in Malaysia, increased the number of Australian military advisers in South Viet Nam to 60. To bolster home defenses, the government ordered 100 supersonic Mirage jets from France and 24 TFX (now known as the F-111A) fighter-bombers from the U.S., plus three U.S.-made missile-firing destroyers and four British Oberon submarines. Last week Menzies carried the beef-up further, announced the reinstatement of the draft, which had been dropped in 1959.

Tier for Protection. Under the new draft, young men will register upon reaching age 20, serve two years of active duty. The first 4,200 are to be inducted during the latter half of 1965, after which inductions will continue at the rate of 6,900 men a year—which will increase army manpower from 22,750 at present to 37,500 by 1966.

There are to be more equipment refinements, and two new airbases will be constructed—one in New Guinea; several other strips will be renovated across Australia’s northern tier. The buildup will cost nearly $500 million over the most recent defense commitments for the next three years. But the new measures, which will take years to implement, are being criticized as too little too late. Said Arthur Calwell, leader of the Labor Opposition and longtime critic of the government’s military policies: “It’s taken the government 14 years to discover that Australia is defenseless.”