The noise around Australia’s investment in Defence and National Security is growing. For how long can we continue with a strategy of (self) denial?
The media’s interest in the current state of Australia’s Defence seems to be growing ahead of meeting between a re-elected President Trump and Prime Minister Albanese on the sidelines of the G7. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has put on the record that the US would like to see Australian Defence funding at 3.5% of GDP as soon as possible. The Government’s response has been to emphasise capability and strategy over spending targets:
“Defence Minister Richard Marles has dismissed suggestions that Australia should commit to a specific defence spending target. His comments come after the United States called on allies to raise investment to 3.5 per cent of GDP amid growing global tensions. Mr Marles told Sky News the Albanese government would determine its defence budget based on strategic needs rather than meeting any benchmark.”
The Defence Minister’s remarks deserve thorough consideration. Few in the Defence & National Security community would disagree that the Department of Defence must deliver greater return on investment with taxpayer’s money. Greater accountability, streamlined procurement processes with fit for purpose regulation is certainly needed. But given the Minister himself regularly refers to the geopolitical context being the most dangerous since WWII, why is Australia’s budget significantly below the Cold War average?
Strategic Analysis Australia’s Peter Jennings is brutally frank with his assessment of Government’s claims of record Defence Spending:
“Marles says his government has made ‘the largest peacetime increase in defence spending since the end of the Second World War’. The claim is pure sophistry… The truth is that we are spending just over 2 per cent of GDP on defence. For most of our post-war history defence spending has been higher than that. In the Cold War, spending was closer to 3.5 per cent of GDP. Now the government, with Marles in the lead, claims that our current era is more dangerous than it was during the Cold War. Marles’ failure to persuade his colleagues to lift defence spending means the current Australian Defence Force is being hollowed out to pay for AUKUS submarines.”
The current policy settings are raising the rhetoric but not the revenue. Calls are growing louder from across the Defence community that this approach risks undermining readiness and the capacity to scale the force in being should large scale conflict occur in the next decade. It shouldn’t take an ultimatum from an Ally for Australia to accept its fair share of the burden for upholding the rules based global order.
🖼️ via Sky News Australia, links to articles from Sky News Australia and Strategic Analysis Australia are in the comments.