British private defence contractor BAE Systems of Al Yamamah notoriety has emerged as potentially the biggest winner from the Rudd Government’s Defence White Paper boost to military spending.

BAE has boasted it is the biggest contender to win the contract to build the eight new naval frigates, and twelve new submarines, itemised in the $60 billion spending increase.

BAE Systems was exposed by Lyndon LaRouche’s EIR news service as being centrally involved in the 9/11 attack on the United States. (Click here for background information).

Its $160 billion Al Yamamah arms deal with Saudi Arabia’s Prince Bandar bin Sultan generated, from the mid-1980s onwards, an enormous slush fund, which Bandar bragged financed Mujahideen terrorist networks, including Osama bin Laden’s Al-Qaeda.

In December 2006 British Prime Minister Tony Blair shut down a British Serious Fraud Office investigation into the BAE-Saudi deal, citing Britain’s “strategic interest” in its relationship with Saudi Arabia. At the time, current Australian Finance Minister Lindsay Tanner posted this comment on YouTube.

Citizens Electoral Council leader Craig Isherwood slammed the geopolitical mindset behind the White Paper:

“Rudd is pushing a geopolitical ‘balance-of-power’ defence policy, which is a continuation of Howard’s ‘deputy sheriff’ policy,” he said.

“It has less to do with actually defending Australia, and more to do with serving British geopolitical strategic aims, and paying enormous sums of money to private defence contractors.

“Rudd is a chickenhawk—whilst Labor officially opposed the Iraq war fiasco in 2003, Rudd and other leading lights like Beazley and Danby strongly supported it in caucus; now he’s PM, it’s business-as-usual for the military-industrial complex.”

Mr Isherwood called for Australia to return to a Curtin Labor-style defence policy, which assesses threats to our nation, not imperial-style strategic interests; he also said any necessary defence procurements should be made through existing government-owned defence contractors like ASC, and the sinister BAE Systems should be excluded.

Finally, Mr Isherwood questioned whether the recent assault on Defence Minister Joel Fitzgibbon by figures inside the Defence Department and the media, over his links to China (the target of the White Paper), in any way influenced him to renege on his undertaking to ASC that it would handle future naval shipbuilding, and instead opt for the current “competitive” tender process that benefits BAE Systems.