Time to rethink ANZUS?

At the heart of so much political rhetoric about Australian security is the Australia-US relationship. There are repeated attempts to portray relations with the US during World War Two as a special friendship. Canberra surrendered many economic and strategic concessions to Washington in order to pay for U.S. protection, e.g. the Land Lease scheme. The scheme required Canberra to provide enormous reserves of equipment and food to underwrite the US Pacific war effort and offset the cost of direct American financial assistance.