A Coalition government, if elected, would boost Australian defence spending to the 3% of GDP demanded by the Trump administration of America’s allies, opposition leader Peter Dutton will promise on Wednesday.
The opposition leader, in Perth after an occasionally acrimonious leaders’ debate in Sydney on Tuesday night, will pledge to spend $21bn over the next five years on Australia’s defence, lifting it, as a proportion of Australia’s gross domestic product, to 2.5%.
Labor was quick to criticise the proposal as unreliable and a “pathetic whimper”.
Under the Coalition proposal, defence spending would continue to increase, as a proportion of GDP, to 3% within a decade.
“The prime minister and the deputy prime minister regularly tell Australians that we live in the most precarious period since the end of the second world war,” Dutton said in a statement. “Yet, over the last three years, Labor has done nothing about it, other than rip money out of defence, weakening strength and morale.
“The Coalition will strengthen the Australian Defence Force and support our servicemen and women to keep us safe today and into generations ahead.”
Australia’s current defence budget is $56bn annually, forecast to rise to $100bn a year by 2034 – about 2.33% of GDP – under Labor’s projections.
The details of the Coalition’s proposed defence spending have not been unveiled publicly but are expected to include new drones, missiles and expanded Aukus-related infrastructure in Western Australia.
The opposition has already announced it would spend $3bn on new F-35 jets, bringing the RAAF’s joint-striker fleet to 100.
The shadow defence minister, Andrew Hastie, said the costings for the Coalition’s defence commitments would be released before the 3 May election.
“There will always be trade-offs when you’re making decisions of state,” he told Radio National.
“But what price do we put on defence? I think, with the growth of authoritarian powers, with the war in Ukraine, with the changes in the Indo-Pacific region, with the Trump administration moving deeper into an ‘America first’ perspective and position, we need to be able to defend ourselves.”
On Wednesday morning, the deputy prime minister and defence minister, Richard Marles, condemned the opposition defence’s announcement as unreliable, and a “pathetic whimper”.
“I just don’t think you can trust the Liberals when it comes to anything they say in respect of defence,” he told the ABC.
“There are some reports that the 2.5% is a target, there’s no explanation of how they’re paying for this, where the money’s coming from, or really is there an explanation of where the money is being spent on?”
He said the Labor government had engaged in the biggest peacetime increase in defence spending since the second world war and said the government’s commitments were “not a target … not an aspiration” but funded and in the budget.
“What we have here is not really a defence policy from the Liberals. It is a pathetic whimper.”
The US president, Donald Trump, has consistently lectured allies about the need for America’s allies to spend more on their own defence, rather than relying on the protection of the US military umbrella.
Trump has demanded Nato allies lift their spending to 5% of GDP, far in excess of the 2% Nato countries have agreed to, and the 3% the Nato secretary general, Mark Rutte, has urged those countries to reach.
Trump told a campaign rally he had even threatened one Nato ally the US would disregard Nato’s collective defence imperative in the face of Russian aggression for countries who had not spent enough on their own defence forces.
“‘You didn’t pay? You’re delinquent?’” Trump recounted telling a Nato member representative.
“‘No, I would not protect you. In fact, I would encourage them to do whatever the hell they want. You gotta pay. You gotta pay your bills.’”
The US under-secretary of defence policy, Trump’s No 3 man at the Pentagon, Elbridge Colby, told a Senate hearing the US wanted Australia to reach a 3% defence spending threshold.
“The main concern the United States should press with Australia ... is higher defence spending. Australia is currently well below the 3% level advocated for by Nato secretary general [Mark] Rutte, and Canberra faces a far more powerful challenge in China.”
• with Australian Associated Press
