Jeff Sparrow writes in The Guardian of 24 April 2014: ‘Ordinary Australians might not care about the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter acquisition, but the Very Important People do – and that’s what matters … A pledge of an additional $12bn to health or education or infrastructure would have been wildly popular, yet that didn’t happen. On the contrary, those areas are all slated for cuts in Joe Hockey’s coming austerity budget – and, rather than condemn the defense spending, Shorten’s Labor party has thrown itself behind the Joint Strike Fighter.’
