Our shrinking defences.(Letter to the Editor)

SIR: Tony Abbott's contribution (September 2005) to the national security debate is almost unique in that a senior minister who is not a member of the National Security Committee of cabinet has made a useful contribution to a topic beyond his portfolio. One hopes to see not only more but more contemporary contributions.

Mr Abbott makes the important point that the government of which he is a member has changed the essence of Australia's strategic policy back to something more traditional, a concern for Australia's security interests which lie beyond the national territory.

What he does not say is that his government's performance is long on rhetoric but short on substance. Our force commitments to Iraq, Afghanistan, the Solomon Islands and so on are tiny. Even our commitment to East Timor, loudly boosted as the biggest since Vietnam, was small and, worse, unsustainable. The Vietnam commitment, conscripts and all, was not much more than token.

The troops of all three services are of exceptional quality, at least the equal of their allied counterparts. But their numbers are so small and the intensity of the commitments so sustained that we put that quality at risk through exhaustion, wastage and recruiting shortfalls.

Some months ago, the Prime Minister admitted that our commitments were small because we could do no more--this after nine years in government. In the first five years of the Coalition government, regular defence force numbers fell by almost 6000, or 10 per cent. Similar or ...