Defence Minister Richard Marles has explained the circumstances behind the Albanese Government’s shift in its defence procurement plans to place a heavier emphasis on the acquisition of long-range missiles.

Mr Marles yesterday revealed the government had decided against buying a fourth squadron of F35 fighter jets to add to the 72 aircraft already in service.

“This shift in priorities will free up funds and allow us to buy more long-range missiles,” he said.

“The decision was taken at the weekend when I was shopping at the Geelong Aldi store in my electorate and I found it had a sale on missiles in its centre aisle. So I grabbed a few. (main picture)

“When I got them back to the car I did have a bit of trouble fitting them in the boot and had to lay the back seats all the way down and some of their noses stuck out the back passenger windows.

“But while driving home I rang the Prime Minister and told him about the bargain I’d just picked up and together we made the call then and there to shift our defence priorities.

“I just need to nip back to Aldi to pick up a few more,” Mr Marles said. “Hopefully they haven’t sold out because they only appear in those bargain bins every so often.”

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UK Foreign Secretary and former prime minister Lord David Cameron says he is happy with the response by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to his call for any response by Israel to Iran’s recent attack should be “as limited and as targeted and as smart as possible”.

Following his meeting with Lord Cameron, Mr Netanyahu said Israel would decide on its own how to respond to Iran’s weekend attacks before adding: “I can assure him that our response, as we have done in Gaza, will be limited to all of Iran, it’ll be targeted at everyone living there including children, and we’ll use smart bombs to kill as many as possible.”

Lord Cameron said he was happy that Mr Netanyahu had committed to meet his criteria.

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Scientists at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) – the world’s largest and highest-energy particle collider – at Cerne in Switzerland say they have developed a new parameter for measuring the softest materials on earth.

“For hundreds of years scientists have applied measures such as Moh’s scale, the Rockwell scale, or the Shore A scale which all have a scale from the softest to hardest when assessing various materials,” said a spokesperson for the European Organisation for Nuclear Research which operates the almost 27km circular collider.

“But work here at the LHC means our scientists have discovered a new comparative measure for the softest materials anyone will ever encounter.

“They’ve called it the GNSQ, or to give it its full name, Graham Norton Show Questions.

“We have alerted all scientific regulatory bodies around the world who will now adjust all the softness scales they currently employ to accommodate the new GNSQ,” the spokesperson said.

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