How can Australia pay $368 billion for new submarines? Some of the money will be created from thin air
- Written by Peter Martin, Visiting Fellow, Crawford School of Public Policy, Australian National University
Australia’s decision to buy three nuclear-powered submarines and build another eight is so expensive that, for the A$268 billion to $368 billion price tag, we could give a million dollars to every resident of Geelong, or Hobart, or Wollongong.
Those are the sort of examples used by former NSW treasury secretary Percy Allan on the Pearls and...