Thank you, Chair, and again, thank you, Ministers.
I want to go back to the F-35 issue, which has been batted around here a bit today. I welcome the change in tone, frankly, from “we're going ahead with this”, to kind of an “if and when”. Frankly, I see that as a welcome change in tone.
There's a financing reality that has happened right around the world that changes pretty well everything, and maybe the technological challenges were undersold at the beginning.
You said the likelihood was that no decision—no firm decision, I suppose—will be made until 2013. I'm looking at the mains, and this is a projected budget for 2012-13. My first question is this: is there any financial provision in any of these capital expenditures for that decision, or will that decision actually be then brought forward in a supplementary (C) or (B) or whatever over the course of next year?
The second question is that if in fact a decision is made that this will not meet our operational needs in a timely fashion, what are the alternatives and is there active planning going on with respect to either an alternative, or more binder twine and duct tape for the F-18s? Where are you at with planning? What is the state of planning? I'd be actually rather surprised if you said that no, we haven't actually been looking at an alternative program.
So those are my two questions. Is the financial provision here in the mains or will we see it in a supplementary estimate, and second of all, where is your state of planning with respect to the alternatives?
Thank you.