February 23rd, 2026Kyle’s Rant

As we scratch up an existence, grinding away for each dollar, collecting tax for a government that doesn’t appear to be doing much about things, we are entitled to ask questions.
And the first question is WTF is going on with AUKUS? Embarrassingly and unresearched when it first hit the headlines, I thought it was spelt orcas, like the killer whale. In my mind it kind of stands to reason to name a war submarine designed after an amazing pack-hunting animal with the intelligence of two Australians, or four Kiwis. (Jokes.)
I am now up to speed with the understanding it’s not a type of submarine, it’s a pact with the USA, UK and of course Oz, and the first part of it is to help us get our hands on some nuclear subs as well as helping us to learn how to maintain them.
While the submarine initiative has dominated the headlines, the AUKUS partnership carries much wider significance in that it will see Oz, the UK and the USA expand their cooperation across a wide range of defence capability and critical technology areas. And that’s where all the money is being dropped like a piss-pot in a pub losing pineapples out of his pockets while reaching for his wallet.
The first couple of down-payments on our submarines, that we may not even get if the USA decides they haven’t got enough in their own fleet, was 1.6 billion. And in terms of tech, we are buying the HQ Holden of the submarines because the Virginia-class attack submarines cost around $4 billion per unit, and we are buying five with delivery expected sometime early in the 2030 decade.
Meanwhile, the new fandangled Columbia-class ballistic missile submarines are projected to cost about $9.15 billion each – but we can’t afford those. To draw an analogy, it is like when I was growing up and my dad fished my first bike out of the dump, gave it a fresh coat of paint and fitted it with chopper handlebars and a banana seat. Meanwhile my mates had brand new Raleigh choppers with the shifter on the bar for gears – Virginia class meet Columbia class.
We also recently dropped a further $30 billion into an Adelaide shipyard, or at least a promissory note, there goes that drunken bar fly again. And I know that this agreement will outlive the current dickhead dictator who works out of the White House but it doesn’t make it any easier to swallow the jagged little pill of shelling out so much of our hard earned to keep us safe. All while I can’t safely drive from Glenlyon to Woodend because the road is so rooted.
Speaking of jagged pills, it is important to keep your first aid training current as I found out recently with my poor crippled wife, Donna, who was running low on a drug that we both use to keep us alive. I take double the dose of Donna, so I offered to cut mine in half to keep her going. Donna swallowed the pill and after a couple of seconds she was letting out noises resembling a blocked drain in need of a fix. She was red in the face and clearly in need of some first aid. Now, most people have heard about the Heimlich Manoeuvre, a lifesaving first-aid technique used to clear a blocked airway by applying upward pressure under the diaphragm to expel foreign objects, but it is not used anymore.
Luckily, I have been doing first aid courses for the past 41 years (every year since I was 17) so I knew this had fallen out of favour. I applied one firm upward thrust between the shoulder blades and out popped the culprit, effectively saving my wife’s life. Keep your training up kids rant over…

Ed’s note. Hmmm, when Kyle says he cut the tablet in half, it was more of a break by hand into a very jagged pill. And I must say it took quite a long few seconds for him to even look up from his phone…