Now lodown I am not a government apologist but if I were a new Defence Minister and I was told there were not the resources to send a detachment of fighters to Afganistan nor provide medevac to our troops with our own helicopters I would be very displeased.
Scratch the surface and Defence seems to be a basket case. So much so it should be classified for national security reasons.
An initiative to get more pilot numbers per aircraft on RAAF types sensible if you are in the business of going to war. Of course it would be sensible too to look at managing current resources.