OK, seriously defense against what?
From 1900 on the Yellow Peril shit kept changing the supposedly imposing threat.
All which seems more anglo-australian racist BS than any credible threat.
Well, actually the fear of the "Yellow Peril" in Australia predates 1900, Jon. It goes back to the 1850s during the Victorian Gold Rush when there was a large influx of Chinese who worked the gold mines. It carried on from there and saw fresh impetus when Japan started to modernise and expand in the late 19th and early 20th century. A lot of was "Anglo-Australian racist BS" but as we saw in WWII, Australia perceived it had experienced an existential threat from the Japanese. After WWII, conservative governments played on the Red threat, first from within and then as China became Communist from there. I can well remember the DLP (Democratic Labor Party - which despite it's name was an extremely conservative political party, dedicated to fighting Communism and in particular keep the ALP out of power because of fears that it had been subverted by Communists), running TV adverts in the late 1960s which played on this fear of a Communist, Asian threat from our north with big red arrows advancing across the map of Asia to Australia. When Sukarno courted the local Indonesian Communists and the fUSSR and PRC, this seemed to mean that there was a Communist, Asian threat on our doorstep, just 200 miles from our northern coast. So, just because it was "Anglo-Australian racist BS" does not mean the perceived fear did not exist in our society.
So seriously, why would Australi a need a nuclear deterrent? Of course from
the emotional BS of the prriod it seems some oarties wanted the ability to carrout a nuclear
offense rather than a defense.
Well, actually the reason why we wanted nuclear weapons was because they were the biggest, brightest, shiniest and most bad-arse weapons available, Jon. We had no idea what we were going to do with them and even after tests showed that using nukes in SE Asian rainforest wasn't going to be particular effective at stopping all those nasty Communist guerrillas the emphasis switched to them being useful as ASW weapons, which is why Ikara was designed to carry a Nuclear depth charge. When we finally decided to get stop trying to get nukes, in 1968, it was the RAN and the RAAF who wanted them. The RAAF to go and blow cities up, the RAN to sink Soviet and Chinese submarines.
As to Indonesia, fucking get over it, they aint', and never were going to 'invade'. Christ some of you
are as bad as the US Southerners. The Brown Men aren't coming for yor White Wimmen.
While I agree the actual threat was substantially less than the perceived threat, what you should understand is that we had seen Indonesia take over West New Guinea. It was attempting to take over the whole of Borneo and the Malay peninsular and was talking about uniting both halfs of New Guinea and remember, at the time, we controlled the Eastern half of the island, under our League and later United Nations mandate. This was a direct threat to not only our interests in the region but to an ally which we had signed a defence treaty with (Malaysia) and our own territory.
When deep seated prejudices are being played on by politicians who see it as a means to ensure their hold on government, then when something that comes along which smells even remotely of fulfilling those deep seated prejudices it cannot just be written of as "BS". Many Australians, remembering the events of 1942, were muttering that it "was all happening again". Many other nations have sort reassurance in such times of perceived threat. Some have reached for the Nuclear safety blanket. We can see it today with Iran and Israel. We've seen it with Pakistan and India. We've seen it with the fUSSR and the PRC, the UK, France, etc.
Hindsight shows us that the threat from Indonesia ended with the overthrow of Sukarno. Even then though, the perceived threat continued long after, well into the 1990s. It wasn't until Suharto in turn was overthrown that it has receded. It still lurks though, in the backs of the minds of many Australians. It is "BS" but it's hard to dispel.