Australia allocates extra funds for Ukraine - Hundreds of millions worth of arms and other military aid were included in the new budget
The Australian government has earmarked AU$213.3 million (US$136mn) in additional spending for aid to Ukraine over the next five years. The funding is part of the new federal budget revealed on Tuesday.
Most of the money is to be spent on military assistance, including Bushmaster armored vehicles and other weapon systems that Canberra wants to provide to Kiev over two years. The Labor government of Prime Minister Anthony Albanese allocated AU$185.6 million (US$118mn) for this purpose.
The rest of the money will go to providing services such as healthcare to the 6,500 Ukrainian nationals who were granted temporary shelter in Australia, supporting Ukraine’s border guards with cybersecurity, and helping Ukrainians living in the Pacific country to integrate into society.
Australia’s defense spending will receive an 8% boost this year, largely due to a continuation of the policies of Albanese’s predecessor, Liberal PM Scott Morrison.
The Morrison government announced plans to ship 20 Bushmaster Protected Mobility Vehicles in early April, citing a request from Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky to the national parliament.
Albanese pledged to continue arming Ukraine during his visit to Kiev in July. The government of Australia once called itself “the largest non-NATO contributor” of military aid to Ukraine, but later changed the phrasing to “one of the largest,” citing difficulties with tracking and measuring support by different parties.
An aid tracker run by the Kiev Institute for the World Economy ranks Australia 10th in terms of total aid, if EU institutions are excluded, or 12th if only arms and money meant for military spending are taken into account. source
As someone commented online:
" Good grief. Countries are all hurting because of the mess governments created shutting down the economy over SARS-CoV-2.
Now we are not only supposed to believe that this recession, that many economists started warning about years before SARS-CoV-2, is because of something Russia did recently but we also need to just sit back as our governments toss billions of dollars into a conflict that will never be resolved via weapons?
This conflict ends when they sit and talk... no sooner. Ukraine IS NOT without serious blood on its "hands" and anyone that has been following this for longer then when Russia finally stepped in knows this, which includes our governments.
Not only that but Russia has been trying to bring what Ukraine is doing to the world's attention for years and years with zero luck.
I guess it might have been better had Russia followed the US method... just spew out lies about weapons of mass destruction and incubator babies then use the media to hype up the lies then bomb them then back to the stone age. Then, when the lies all come to light ignore any outrage or make weak excuses for murdering so many.
Easy for the US/West but much much harder for those with a heart, conscience and an understanding of how Humanity NEEDS to behave in order to survive.
The US ideology seems to have always been "might is right" with the number of conflicts they've started destroying millions of lives. Humanity will not move forward with such ideologies at the lead and we are at a time that the whole planet needs to start actually working together before our idiot leaders do something really stupid. "
For myself, no one asked me if I wanted Australian tax payers money spent on weapons for Ukraine. Fix our roads, build some dams, get our hospitals back to functioning again and build some coal fired power stations.
