Interestingly enough, there were three camps in regards to a tank to replace the Leo AS1 and also three groups that had vocal opinions on it, the three groups being the government, the army itself and the last group being military affairs writers/commentators (many of them being ex-military). Unsurprisingly the three camps were, Leo 2, Challenger 2 and M1A1 Abrams.
The decision to buy the Abrams came down to two things, a strong political desire to strengthen defence ties with the US coupled with the fact that US made an offer that was "too good to refuse". So yeah, total costs played a very big part.
To a lesser extent the fact that the Abrams would be supplied already fitted for network-centric warfare played its part too but that again comes down to price - the other two could have been fitted with the gear but it would have been at additional cost. Every Abrams we got was a zero-hour refurbishment/rebuild of M1A1 models drawn from US Army or USMC stocks. This would also benefit the US in that it kept people employed at the tank plant and it meant cycling older models of Abrams out of inventory as the M1A2 became the mainstay of the US tank fleets further reducing total costs for everyone involved.
As for the three tanks, support for Leo 2 and Challenger 2 were about equal from the army as I recall it, with the Abrams running somewhat behind but there was a very vocal group of journo's in the defence affairs side of things who were stridently waving the flag for the Abrams. I don't recall this actually having much (if any) impact on the government decision but I definitely recall some of the rubbish they printed to belittle the Leo 2 and Challenger 2.
With the exception of network-centric warfare kit, the Abrams was not the best choice for the Australian Army but it was a very good choice for the Australian government and overall, the Army appears pretty happy with them now.
As for the Australian government abstaining from voting on the use of DU, it's got less to do with our new tanks and much more to do with decades old trade. Australia was one of the major exporters of uranium in the past and is still in the top 15 of the world's exporters of depleted uranium. The silence of the Australian government in the UN likely has more to do with keeping the export dollars rolling in. There are three very big players in the uranium mining industry in Australia and they have worldwide presence - BHP Billiton, Energy Resources of Australian and Rio Tinto (which actually owns over 50-60% of Energy Resources of Australia). All three make big wads of cash from uranium.
We have some absurdly high percent of GDP provided by mining, in the region of 15-20% and we have apparently, the world's largest supply of uranium resources. We still use coal powered electricity generation in some areas, nuclear power would be far better in terms of short and long term environmental impact but no government is willing to pitch nuclear power stations to the public, because they know the answer will be a majority "no".
Now I'm never going to declare the Australian government are not a bunch of money grubbers nor are they without hypocrisy but I believe the trade in uranium has much more to do with their decision in the UN than the purchase of the Abrams did. Voting against the use of DU would lose too many dollars in trade, voting yes would be hypocritical. The only way to save face and more importantly all those lovely, lovely export dollars, was to abstain.
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