Years ago when I first started this job, the Institute of Public Affairs — don’t laugh — had some credibility. It had its share of lunatics and bigots, but it also had sensible, consistent people like Chris Berg and even a young Tim Wilson before he became the butt of so many jokes. These were people who could be relied on to back free speech not just for the powerful but for everyone, and who would speak up against government overreach even when pursued by the Liberals, on issues like mass surveillance.
Alas, over the past decade and a half, the IPA has transformed into a pipeline for Liberal preselection and a lobbying outfit for the resources industry and the Murdochs, its once-valued principles of individual freedom surrendered to backing corporate power. Some say it was ever thus for an outfit funded by fossil fuels, tobacco companies and other malignant institutions.
The final confirmation that the IPA has transitioned into just another commercial lobbying firm came this week when it published a report in cooperation with “Strategic Analysis Australia” on the need to increase Defence spending to 3% of GDP — that’s an extra $20 billion a year — because of the military threat to Australia from China (which spends a monumental… 1.7% of GDP on Defence).
It’s almost sad that this institution, one that — whatever its other faults — had small government and a scepticism about public spending in its very DNA, should demand a dramatic expansion in the size of government on the basis of hysteria about the Chinese military threat to Australia.
And what is the august-sounding “Strategic Analysis Australia”? Step forward old mate Peter Jennings, long-time defence public servant, Liberal party staffer and former head of the reliably hawkish Australian Strategic Policy Institute, funded by Australian taxpayers, the US State Department and big tech and arms companies.
Jennings — so hawkish that he not only still thinks the illegal and disastrous invasion of Iraq was a good idea, but he also wanted us to go back there in 2015 — is these days one of those innumerable national security pundits who act as rent-a-quotes for mainstream media journalists without ever being held to account for their claims.
For instance, one of Jennings’ most vivid contributions to national security debate in recent years was his insistence that ASIO had kicked out a Russian spy ring in 2021. As it turned out — oops — it was spooks from Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s fascist regime, something the media politely ignored as it didn’t fit the standard national security narrative of how Russia and China are our mortal enemies and India our reliable ally.
The biggest impediment to Jennings’ recommendation about such a massive increase in spending is, he acknowledges, the Department of Defence’s own colossal failings. As a long litany of reports from institutions like the Auditor-General’s Office shows, it is either the most corrupt or incompetent public sector agency in the country. Jennings refers to what he calls a “vast literature” and an “endless cycle of reviews and reports into Defence’s record of underperformance, particularly in its delivery of capability”.
His answer? This is where Jennings, and the IPA by extension, gets laugh-out-loud funny. He wants fewer such reports and reviews, the recommendations of which “may well have made the problem worse, as they have contributed to Defence’s culture of risk aversion”. Although Jennings graciously admits that “it is not only outside reviews and recommendations that are to blame” for Defence’s failures.
So if Jennings thinks the Australian National Audit Office should be investigating Defence misconduct and cooperation less, what is his idea for what he insists should be greater accountability? He wants people like himself to be able to tell the government what’s wrong in Defence.
the government does need access to other voices that can speak with experience and authority … One model that we believe would have impact is the US Defense Policy Board … the board would need to report to the prime minister as well as the minister for defence.
This isn’t just a call for more Defence spending, it’s an unsolicited job application by Jennings! But wait, it gets better. Jennings also wants this board of “other voices that can speak with experience and authority” to determine what information about Defence’s spectacular incompetence should be made public.
we would also recommend a non-partisan working group consisting of experts and industry that can recommend to ministers which information should and can be disclosed to enhance disclosure and support industry. The starting assumption is that the working group’s recommendations will be implemented. This working group could be the Defence Policy Board entity in our previous recommendation.
So, let’s get straight what Jennings and the IPA want: an extra $200 billion over a decade in Defence spending, with fewer investigations and audits of Defence, but a “board” of people like Jennings telling the government what’s going on and dictating what the public should know about how that money will be — inevitably — wasted by a rotten, incompetent department.
The IPA of yesteryear would have ripped such self-serving rubbish apart. Indeed, the old IPA, with its suspicion of government and scepticism of government spending, might have recommended a “board” to devise how to slash Defence spending and to dramatically improve the transparency of Defence’s failings.
Problem is, our public policy is riddled with a deeply toxic failure to question our rapidly accelerating arms spending, courtesy of a panoply of Defence and national security institutions that constantly clamour for more arms and more security regulation, and a supine media that — the ABC’s Andrew Greene apart — fails to hold Defence accountable or to even question the basic assumptions around that spending (Nine newspaper’s rampant Sinophobia being only Exhibit A).
Such spending is a malignant tumour in the federal government budget that brings with it corruption and quite spectacular failures of accountability. No-one speaks for taxpayers in this sordid mess of self-interest, militarist hysteria and incompetence. Certainly not those who pretend to oppose big government.
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