Many Australians have already figured out that we’re being softened up politically for big increases in defence spending. But as defence hawks press for that and the US military launches an “America first”-inspired review of the AUKUS nuclear-powered submarines pact, it’s time for “Australia first” to strike back.
Or, to put it another way, our political class needs to track a narrow path. It must build “social licence” among voters to put additional mega-billions into expensive military hardware, support services and technologies, and trained personnel, while not fuelling warmongers’ fear-mongering, not excessively aggravating other nations, and not letting citizen fears of imminent invasion get out of hand.
You don’t need to be a military expert to know that some substantial change to the status quo is looking inevitable, and it’s not the sort of thing leaders want to misjudge. Too much too early in a lingering cost-of-living crisis environment could be politically disastrous, but too little too late is unthinkable.
Ex-military top brass figures are talking up Australia having to shift its strategic focus from offshore projection, like East Timor and Afghanistan, to homeland defence. The foreign affairs-focused Lowy Institute has a well-established “echidna strategy” to make Australia too missile-spiky and difficult to invade. This theme of deliberately targeted continental defence and repelling superior force by being optimally equipped with “the right stuff”, whatever that is, will only grow.
Spending capital
Hugh White, the doyen of Australian military strategy experts, has a new Quarterly Essay that charts our critical balancing act between an increasingly unreliable America and an ever more capable and assertive China. While acknowledging a rising fear of China and recognising the need for Australia to do a lot more to adapt to our dominant trading partner’s evolving superpower reality, in regard to America, White warns eloquently:
“There are no favours we can do [for] Trump which will keep the US strategically engaged in Asia and committed to Australia’s defence.”
Meanwhile, over at hawk central, Sky News Australia, Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI) senior analyst Malcolm Davis warns that an “essentially undefended” Australia facing China’s “very clear threat” has to up the ante on defence spending urgently:
“We need to go to a floor of 3.5% of GDP on defence spending as soon as possible, and that means not in 10 years, it means in a year or two.”
So there’s a lot of talk and many ideas and opinions. But there’s little consensus.
Big, better or best?
Unquestionably we are living in geopolitically uncertain times. In our Pacific region, the traditional recognised threats are becoming more threatening: China’s military power has grown exponentially; North Korea is as dangerously and unpredictably nuclear-armed as ever; Putin’s Russia has gone increasingly rogue.
But it’s complicated. It’s not clear if we need more warcraft, or just better statecraft, manoeuvring for peace rather than readying for war. Or is it the right mix of both? And what does that cost?
Thanks to a captain’s call by then Liberal prime minister Scott Morrison in 2021, we’re already up for nearly $400 billion by the 2050s for AUKUS nuclear-powered submarines that we may or may not receive from the US and UK, particularly now with the Trump administration’s review of the deal. And they may or may not be the military technology platform we need by the time we get it, if we get it.
Meanwhile the US is verging on bullying Australia (and numerous other nations) to rapidly ramp up defence spending. But we can’t be seen to respond immediately because, as Prime Minister Anthony Albanese insists, we’re a sovereign nation and will make our own decisions about how much we invest in defence, and what we buy and when. (Noting, of course, that Albanese and his Labor government have backed in AUKUS, despite its manifest uncertainties and potential inadequacies.)
Asserting national independence is what Albanese would say, given he’s just been re-elected with a huge majority and a clear but limited mandate to expand defence spending from 2% of the national budget annually to nearly 2.4% by circa 2033-34. But that’s still years and a couple of elections away, and a long way short of bigger increases being canvassed, like 3.5% or even 5%.
Future tense
The government could also be overtaken by events — which is the point. The inherent challenge is about political risk as well as national security risk, and political calculations as well as financial ones. Most leaders, the sane ones at least, prefer big civilian budget items to big military ones. But most also like the optics of “khaki” when circumstances call for rallying to the flag, and none of them want to be caught out doing too little too late on their watch.
A key challenge for Labor is to bring voters inside some joined-up thinking for a wider plan to put Australia first.
It’s apparent that Albanese, his highly capable Foreign Affairs Minister Penny Wong and his wider team see the nexus between national security, economic security and energy and climate security. As well as submarines, frigates, jet fighters, missiles and drones, think Future Made in Australia, the National Reconstruction Fund, a critical minerals stockpile, a renewables-led energy transition and net zero by 2050, and bidding to host the UN COP31 in partnership with Pacific Island nations.
Labor needs to share with voters a coherent and interconnected way to navigate through a troubled world. As inflation and interest rates fall and cost-of-living concerns recede, security ones are set to keep rising. Get this wrong, and Labor will be inviting a fractured Liberal-National coalition back into the political contest. National security is, after all, the conservative side’s natural go-to territory.
Friends or foes?
When it comes to finally meeting face to face with that malignant being US President Donald Trump, it’s a matter of anywhere in the world except the White House for Albanese. We’ve all seen the videos and felt the vibe of Trump and his gaggle of Oval Office bovver boys, where political pain and embarrassment is meted out to visiting leaders.
So the outskirts of the G7 in Canada next week is an opportunity, and may or may not come off after Australia with four other countries sanctioned two Israeli government ministers, a decision condemned by the US. It’s also annoyed the administration by sticking to its guns, so to speak, over defence spending. Australia still hopes a new trade and tariffs — or ideally no-tariffs-at-all — deal can be on the negotiation menu.
But ultimately, whether it’s beef or steel and aluminium or anything else, there isn’t that much trade from Australia to the US, although there is considerably more the other way. So trade and tariffs is “cover” for the main game, which is the US alliance and Australia’s defence spending, and ultimately how the Trump betrayal of the long and profound friendship between Australia and America plays out.
My hope is that the US seeks to impose unacceptable conditions on AUKUS, and that the government has the balls to use this to cancel the deal and look elsewhere (if we really need submarines).
Yes
I think Albanese copping a faceful from Trump and his crew in the Oval Office, and giving back as good as he got, would do wonders for his reputation in Australia. While the usual suspects would rabbit on about “embarrassing” etc, I think a good showing against Trump would do him no end of good, because we all know how we feel about El Presidente.
Caving to trump makes us a target legitimately for other powers. Xi is at least sane and not a likely aggressor unless we bond to Us imperialism
The cost of Aucus and daft submarines could be redirected to social housing and other urgent domestic needs hospitals and schools etc.
close ties to USA may make us vulnerable to destroying our medical and agricultural policy that protects our vulnerable individuals and industries
Well said, Anthony. It’s a pity that the planet chooses war over peace. Trump is narcissistic moron. Bring on 2028…bring on Pete Buttigieg as POTUS.
G’day Phil, the world doesn’t choose war the MIC military industrial complex does and their shills like Marles and ASPI plus a wagon full of lobbyist and legacy media do though.
It has been well said: the only thing more dangerous to sovereignty than to be a ISA enemy is to be a friend.
Distancing ourselves from the world’s no.1 warmonger is first priority,moving Marles from defence to ambassador to Antarctica would also be helpful.Freezing him out, so to speak.
Love Harry and without an overcoat maybe.
I think Marles should be despatched immediately to defend the innocent penguins of the Herd and McDonald Islands from Trump’s terrific threats. Defence begins with your own territory after all!
We could probably afford an overcoat for him…and maybe a pointy stick…
Right on, Harry! Our historical belief that Australia could depend on Uncle Sam is even more absurd than ever. We must withdraw from all entanglement with the Benighted States and its malignant leadership.
Actually chaps,I’ve had second thoughts..we shouldn’t be so harsh on Dickie.I think he’d be an ideal Minister for a newly created LGBTIQA ministry. As a Geelong Grammar old boy, he’d already be familiar with many in that cohort.
Definitely time to abandon AUKUS. There are multiple reasons for this.
(1) It is already costing us dearly – $800M (!!) already committed
(2) Trump is on track to become an autocrat with aspirations on all the territory around him. He will not respond to Oz playing nice – he is a bully. The only credible response is to stand up to him.
(3) US ship building capacity has declined – China now builds nearly two thirds of the world’s ships – the US is barely able to build its own military shipping.
(4) The Ukraine war has shown that cheap technology can neutralize expensive platforms – this is likely in the future of submarine warfare. Australia’s expensive submarine would likely be neutralized by a cheap autonomous weapon. By the time we get these submarines they may well be obsolete
(5) As a country we dont want to embark on adventures overseas – we merely want to defend ourselves. This requires much less resources than projecting our force overseas and could be accomplished largely with autonomous weapons and missiles. Do we want to follow Trump?
This “review” is an opportunity to abandon the scheme. Lets focus on our own capabilities including STEM and programming in young graduates. We should emulate Ukraine in this regard. Be brave Albo – I suspect such a move would play well politically (though that is not why he should do it). The Defence department with its outmoded views and vested interests needs a shakeup
Don’t be so quick to dismiss subs. Whilst the cost is eye watering and AUKUS may well be in its death throes; the advantage of a sub is that they are almost impossible to track. Especially nuclear subs. Whilst moving a surface fleet is impossible to do stealthily, a sub can engage a surface fleet (or a coastal target) from very close quarters with little to no warning.
True, Mark, but then you have to dock them somewhere for replenishment or just simple storage when not in use – a bit likeva Russian bomber parked on a distant runway…
To be sure, one shouldn’t get overexcited about what Ukraine pulled off – it tends to work the first time but then adversaries also tend to rapidly develop counter-measures. Nonetheless, the issue needs a great deal of very careful thought.
Almost impossible to track- until you use them. At which point there’s nowhere to run to and nowhere to hide.
Martha and the Vandellas..”nowhere to run, nowhere to hide” great song from “Good Morning Vietnam”….Wonder if there’s a connection here?
You need a lot of submariners to operate the subs and we Don’t have enough for what we have now,
As for impossible to track, nearly is the word to focus on, we would be much better off getting a few subs from the Netherlands which non-nuclear and so silent they killed all the subs of other countries in the last exercises. Now those are subs worth buying and will cost far less than the US/UK that we all know will never arrive. Take the money and run before US does. Think about it, we’ve already worked out millions to bot UK and US so they could build the necessary needed to build the subs, also America has made too many attachments to the deal like having their sailors on our subs plus use of our ports at???? Cost to us not them then their is sharing information with them that could affect our security because Drumpf shares too willing anything with his pals/masters in Russia and Israel. He cannot be trusted with anything -look what he’s doing to America.
And dont assume Trump will behave logically or according to previous norms as Richard Marles seems to be assuming. He will be irrational and chaotic and will behave in a way that doesnt even serve America’s interests. He is completely self serving and sometimes demented.
The US AUKUS Review should be a chance/opportunity for Labor to recalibrate and sustitute the too expensive and futuristic nuclear subs with more underwater drone surveillance (with maybe smaller nuke powered mothership subs), increased satellite comms and longer range missiles for deterrance. Albo also needs to substitute Mumbles Marles with Hugh White and Mick Ryan as defence advisers. Australia also has joint USA assets in Pine Gap and the NW Cape as bargaining chips, as well as Darwin and other bases for joint Aust/US soldier and marine training. Albo and Wong also stand a better chance of including ASEAN countries as partners in trade and defence. The challenge is to get the Pentagon experts to convince the Trumpet!
While we’re looking “over there” to China and worrying about our security, climate change has already “attacked” Australia and will get worse into the future. Isn’t this our current security risk? We’ve already been invaded.
I take issue with your statement that defence is the realm of Liberals. In 1914, Fisher won a resounding victory for Labor. Although Labor lost in 1917 to the Nationalists, you need to recall that Hughes, who became PM, was actually a Labor PM before the party split over conscription.
Similarly, although Australia entered the second war with a conservatives coalition in Government headed by Lyons, it only lasted until 1941; when Labor was elected under Curtain then Chifley until the end of 1949 when Menzies won for the conservatives.
The records show that when things were at their toughest, Labor was regarded as providing the answer to the nation’s desperate needs.
If there is a time to ditch AUKUS it’s now.
By the time the next election comes it will be seen for what it is, just another LNP procurement debacle
That may be true, Kaz, but these perceptions are not based on reality. Its the same as the notion that the Coalition are the better economic managers. Neither is true but sadly in Australia you can make something true by simply repeating it over and over.
I remain in favour of sensible security arrangements with sensible Americans. It’s just that there aren’t any in the current clown show being played by the Trump administration. Hopefully that demerit will end in due course. But in any case it’s time Australia paid more attention to where our island continent’s likely chief defence deterrent risks exist, and got on with the job of being an independent oceanic power.
We need to ask who benefits most if Australia increases its spending on armaments. Mostly they would come from US manufacturers increasing profitability for them and improving the US balance of payments. US arms also tend to lock us into the US for updates and maintenance. We need to be more self reliant and let Australian industry profit if anyone must.
I agree with this. The armaments industry is big business. There is a lot of money for some people and corporations to make in war. Australia must remain independent and stop being drawn into Americas wars.
Before we even begin to think about spending more on Defence, we need to get serious about real tax reform that will bring in a hell of a lot more revenue. Think negative gearing, capital gains tax discount, tax treatment of franking credits, family trusts, fossil fuel subsidies; the list goes on and on. As has been noted, if there was ever a time for the government to be bold, it’s now, given the total absence of a credible opposition and the belated realisation that the right wing media doesn’t wield the sort of influence that we used to mistakenly think it did.
The alternative is the approach personified by that genius James Patterson, who calls for increased defence spending in one breath, and demands a return to budget surplus in the next. Oh, and of course he opposes the reforms to the generous tax treatment of wealthy superannuants. So no more revenue from there. The government can do a lot better than this, with just a modicum of imagination and courage.
Couldn’t agree more, Zelda
Spot on Zelda! I wish more people thought like you!
Absolutely!
They do Anita.
Unfortunately, not many of them appear to be in government.
Courage doesn’t seem to be a prerequisite to be in politics,otherwise we would not be in this position.
Going on Albanese’s form,I don’t expect much to change.Very happy to be wrong.
Think inheritance tax for billionaires.
Agree
But Albo wants to hang on to his political capital
Trouble is, it is not like money in the bank – it bleeds away if you dont use it.
At present the tax system is heavily weighted against Income – people with assets (ie the rich) pay much less tax. This is a major cause of inequity between the rich and poor and between generations. But the tiniest hint of tax reform generates massive screaming – the pollies just wont go there. Look at the very modest proposal to reform Super – you would think the sky is falling. Albo needs to go for it – if you are going to reform tax, you might as well go for decent reform – the screaming will be much the same
As President Bartlett said to the Governor of Florida: “Can we have it back please?”
If we want to improve our defence we need to rapidly transition to zero fossil fuel transport. We are a country that needs trucks that run on diesel to supply low inventory businesses. We have no significant fuel reserves stored here and produce none ourselves.
A couple of fast attack, minimally armed vessels would only need to sink one or two tankers en-route to Australia and our fuel supply would be cut off as no one would ensure tankers to travel here.
Forget subs, fleets, missile batteries, drones and satellites. Without imported fuel we would barely last a month.
This is spot on Mark E. Somebody needs to say the bleeding obvious!
I doubt that China is the military threat that some would have us believe. China has for some time been moving, and continues to move, towards dominating economically, and is doing so very cleverly. Yes, there has been a lot of sabre-rattling and chest-beating, but really no more than we have seen from others, notably the US. The recent “South Pacific Cruise” by elements of the Chinese navy has been no more than a repayment to some of our expeditions into the South China Sea. It cannot be seen as a serious military threat, whatever Little Jimmy Paterson and his IPA mates may say.
We should be far more concerned about efforts to control us through economic channels – apart from any other considerations, China knows that any attempt to invade or otherwise take military action against Australia would be costly, fraught with peril and nowhere near guaranteed of success. Far simpler and safer to seek to control our purse strings.
We should use the current White House “review” as an opportunity to cut ourselves loose from AUKUS and the incredibly stupid submarine deal. There are many, many more effective ways to spend our defence dollars, whilst ensuring that we are protected against those who might do us harm – and that increasingly appears to include the US.
It has always been about the Emperor’s non-existent clothes, nothing there to see, it evoked a scurrilous look from Grace Tame, and we pay homage for the ‘Emperor’s pick’ to the tune of several hundred $m pa, to try and bolster the great big horrible bill’s shortfall over the next decade, meanwhile there will be no subs and if they were to come, they would be out of date, and the US would have passed on to another form of weaponry such as AI generated messages coming regularly, from the cloned redhead whose alter ego will be motoring around his new golf course winning more trophies for his book shelves which are bare of books. Surely we will all wake up soon from this clownish nightmare.
…. if subs are really, really necessary, who other than USA makes them, and are their prices/delivery times better or worse? I hear that Japan and the French are in the sub manufacturing business. Even, Germany and China. Take out a blank sheet of paper and let’s go through the perceived issues and alternatives again. This time without Scotty’s involvement.
Now that they have a substantial landslide and mandate for progressive and strong policies under their belt, rather than sucking up to Gilead, with its fanatically racist Sinophobia, and bigoted Islamophobia, largely created by Genocidal Joe Biden, so allowing Daffy Donald Dump to win a khaki presidential election, and making Gilead still the planet’s No. 1 rogue state, by the way, both little grey dormouse canary coloured Labour jellyfish and the potato head/dopey Dave toxic totalitarian LNP Political gangsters. are enthusiastically complicit in making Australia a henchman and hitman for the gangsters running Gilead. Don’t forget that it was that gutless amoeba and unlamented piece of fish food, Harold Holt, who said, “All the way with LBJ”, so getting us into the disastrous Vietnam quagmire. The only results from our slavish arse licking to Gilead, which is the world’s number 1 rogue state in both its mendacity and brutal imperialist aggression, (before that it was the geriatric Colonel Blimp run and controlled UK, whose smelly brown stained backside we licked!!!), have been uncritical and unquestioning involvement in wars designed to promote and protect Gilead imperialist and capitalist interests from Korea, through to Vietnam. Iraq, Afghanistan, and now Palestine, against people who are not our enemies and who are no threat to us.
When Australia tried to invoke ANZUS over both the imperialistic Indonesian occupation of West Papua (which should be an independent democratic republic, subject to a fully democratic and independent plebiscite under international supervision by the way) and the Indonesian imperialist/genocidal occupation of Timor-Leste, the results from both Kennedy and Clinton were long-drawn-out yawns. So in fact, ANZUS isn’t the paper it is printed on, and in fact is really only a consultative mechanism, and not a binding military treaty, and has been only used to drag Australia and Aotearoa into US imperialist adventures to protect US capitalist and imperialist interests against people that are no threat to us, and wish us no harm, such as the Vietnamese, Iraqis and Afghanistanis. I suspect the AUKUS will be the same against people who are no threat to us and wish us no harm.
Whenever Australian politicians, along with their no/low tax paying millionaire and billionaire friends, including the reprehensible reptile, ably assisted by his pathetic minions of 10th rate semi-literate amateurish scribblers and hydrogen sulphide filled flatulent radio and television shock jocks and airheads find that the People are not listening to them they resort to Sinophobia, which is almost a carbon copy of the hollow anti-communist campaign initiated by Pig Iron Bob in the 1950s, ie they always resort to scare campaigns, as both the little grey dormouse, and his media puppet masters, such as the reprehensible reptile and the porky packer, are now doing, and moving on from the equally false claims of ‘Muslim terrorism, they are now resorting to a patently untrue racist Sinophobia campaign, blaming China for all the ‘evils’ under the sun and ratching up an equally false new ‘red/yellow peril’ fear. ONE FINAL POINT !! IT IS NOT CHINA THAT IS SURROUNDING GILEAD WITH HIGH TECH. NUCLEAR BASES, IT IS RATHER THE OTHER WAY AROUND, WITH GILEAD IN AN OBSCENELY AGGRESSIVE POSTURE, RINGING CHINA WITH HIGH TECH. NUCLEAR MILITARY BASES!!!!!
A bex and a good lie down seems in order Bolshibob, but I won’t disagree.
Dickie Marles is spending over a billion dollars on Tomahawk missiles which have a range of up to 1,000km.
China’s DF-41 ICBM has a 12,000 – 15,000km range. Canberra is about 9,000km from Beijing, so it could be destroyed by the Chinese without them leaving the comfort of their armchairs.
And we’re buying submarines which, given the way wars are fought even today, will be completely redundant by the time they turn up.
Final thought. We allegedly have nearly 60,000 people in the ADF on ‘active duty’. What do they do all day?
The shift in strategic focus from offshore projection to homeland defence is long overdue.
For homeland defence, the Ukraine war has shown the effectiveness of unmanned drones, in the air, on land, and at sea with surface boats and underwater drones. Fortunately Australia appears to be making progress in integrating unmanned drones into military planning, according to military guru Mel Pikos (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0NUl4mnk7rM).
In planning for the next decade it is important to consider the climate, even though this topic is unpopular indeed unmatchable as a conversation stopper. Climate change induced fires and floods already require assistance from the military. We have already crossed the Paris limit of 1.5°C of warming above preindustrial levels.
Best estimates are we will cross 2 deg in 2037 and 3 deg in 2060. These figures come from recent calculations of 0.43 deg C of global warming per decade; this high warming rate – considerably higher than IPCC estimates – was first reported by James Hansen and now is confirmed by Stefan Rahmstorf. Rahmstorf’s paper is discussed here by Paul Beckwith:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EYVKW04ukiY
Leon Simons (a colleague of Hansen) used the 0.43 deg per decade estimate to predict the years when 2 and 3 deg of warming will be crossed. Conditions at 2 deg or 3 deg may be unimaginable, yet serious planning for them including upgrades to emergency services is not happening; some regions, both within Australia and in neighbouring countries may become unliveable with major ramifications for the geopolitics of the Asia-Pacific region. The conditions will likely stress every sector of the country, and affect countries around the globe.
Boys will be boys they say … and that is the problem.
If we castrated all the BOY leaders in the world … and took away their toys …we may have PEACE at last … just a thought ! Be a lot cheaper for one thing … and the girls could step up if needed for clarity. and control