Politicians do not do irony well, especially when they are on the ropes.
How else can one understand the Coalition’s invertebrate media release two days before Anzac Day – commemorating over 100,000 Australian war dead – which outlines a defence plan that could put Australians at risk in the dystopian world the policy is supposed to fix?
The bravery of the fallen is these days outdone only by the bravado of those who advocate significant increases in military capability and expenditure without risk assessment or cost analysis. The Coalition’s braves are barracking for a $21bn increase in spending over the forward estimates to bring our national defence spending to 2.5% of GDP by 2030.
There is no courage in calling for increased spending. Lots of would-be experts do, even though only a third of Australians agree.
But it is clearly a bridge too far in the courage stakes to say where the money will come from. There are only three sources: increased taxation; cuts to existing programs or increased debt – or a combination of these.
In a political climate that favours the path of least resistance, no one is going to advocate tax increases. So, what about cutting aged care, veterans’ services, health, education and social security support? Good luck with that.
So just kick the $21bn to the future and let the kids worry about it. They’ll really appreciate that.
Increased defence spending is just another way of throwing up our hands, refusing to deal with the present (which is tricky enough), and displaying our inability to deal with the future (which is even trickier). In PPP terms, we are already the seventh-biggest defence spender in the Asia-Pacific region and 13th globally, which includes the Europeans.
It is a kneejerk response to unsupported claims of a rapid increase in the threat of armed conflict, without the careful analysis of risk that is an intrinsic aspect of strategic assessment.
Threat involves the intention to use armed force. Risk deals with probabilities. Is Australia really more threatened than, say, Taiwan, Pakistan, Finland or Poland – all of which spend less? Or are we conniving in a kind of strategic sleight of hand where our imagined military dependency on America necessitates going to war, whether our interests are engaged or not?
To answer this question, the Coalition is proposing yet another national defence strategy to replace Labor’s effort released just a year ago.
Of course, much has changed in a year. For a start, the US president, Donald Trump, has discovered tariffs – with global economic malaise an immediate result. He has also abandoned Ukraine. He has designs on Greenland and the Panama canal and has suggested that Canada would make a lovely 51st state.
Like Labor’s 2023 Defence Strategic Review, the Coalition’s offering will be prepared by leading “nationally recognised figures” (code for ideologically aligned confidants) rather than “bureaucrats”. Given the Coalition’s exposure to bureaucrats in its design of the illegal Robodebt program which brutalised social security recipients, this is perhaps unsurprising.
The Coalition’s media release reiterated the promise of a fourth squadron of F-35 joint strike fighters. But it failed even to mention Aukus, the Morrison government’s vanity and fantasy project that is now a bipartisan frolic. Apart from shadow ministerial references to more money to be spent on infrastructure in Western Australia – essentially for American submarines, but there we are – there is as yet no hint of how the Coalition is planning for the inevitable collapse of the Aukus submarine proposal.
Let’s be clear: Australia needs submarines. We needed them in the 1980s, when Kim Beazley instituted the Collins program, and we need them now. The indecision and mismanagement that has generated what may well be one of the most serious capability gaps Australia has ever faced needs to be fixed now.
It is time for a fundamental rethink of an achievable pathway from clapped-out Collins-class submarines to vessels that meet Australian, rather than American, defence needs. This would be an inordinately difficult task, bringing together military, industrial, educational and training, financial, personnel and organisational challenges of a complexity we have never before confronted – much less solved.
Whoever wins government will have to address them. If the Coalition is serious about national defence, it has to move on from an impossible dream to a practical and realisable defence policy with the full range of capabilities to handle the unlikely chance of a direct attack on Australia. The Coalition’s approach to national defence fails this test at the first hurdle.
• Allan Behm is a special adviser and director of the international and security affairs program at the Australia Institute in Canberra
