Interesting point about the size and carrying-capability of HMAS Canberra and her sister ships. Future planners will be left with a bit of a dilemma - load 'em up and (as has been said before), put an awful lot of eggs [and we don't have a awful lot of eggs in the first place] into one basket, or send them out half empty with a lot less on board than they can fit so as to spread the risk of losing too much capability (forget enemy action; even to one single major unservicemability).
What are the chances that one or more of them will be mothballed or significantly delayed (a delayed project in the Australian defence system; now there's a novel concept) to an effort to balance the budget?
I must say that anyone who thinks we're immune from the kind of cutbacks we're currenty seeing in the UK isn't a student of history. Even if any such cutbacks are (hopefully) unlikely to be quite so deep, I really don't see how we're to avoid them with the huge and unexpected expenses acssociated with the recent rash of natural disasters to be paid for, and Defence has always been the first place the pollies look to to save a buck. The two areas that appear to be sacrosanct and don't get the knife - or at least not much of the knife - are always the same - welfare and foreign aid.