Chinese warships have exposed Australia’s defence spending problem | Paul Starick

A commercial airline pilot was the one who sounded the alarm over China’s live fire drills. Think about that, writes Paul Starick.

The message sent by a Chinese flotilla conducting live fire exercises off Australia’s coast was stark, clear and chilling.

Australia’s national security is under threat unless we get serious about rapidly improving our defence capability. Australia is exposed and isolated.

Two decades of indecision, particularly on the submarine fleet, has left us in the woeful predicament that a Virgin Australia pilot had to sound the alarm about the Chinese live-fire naval drills.

This happened despite impressive surveillance technology, including the Adelaide-developed Jindalee Operational Radar Network – an over-the-horizon radar that monitors activity across thousands of kilometres invisible to conventional radar.

Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Defence, Richard Marles with SA premier Peter Malinauskas, visiting the Osborne Naval Shipyard. With worker Trinity. Picture: NewsWire/ Roy Van Der Vegt

United States President Donald Trump is rapidly up-ending the established world order, particularly the expectation that his superpower nation will automatically come to the aid of endangered allies.

Like it or not, Trump’s America First strategy means exactly that. Australia cannot blindly rely on the US shielding us from any Chinese threat.

This means we must overturn the somnolence of the post-Cold War decades, during which defence spending declined among our allies and successive Australian governments lacked any urgency.

The chief case in point is the lamentable indecision and fruitless debate about replacement submarines for the Adelaide-built Collins class fleet.

Six diesel-electric Collins submarines were built by ASC at Osborne Naval Shipyard, in Adelaide’s northwest, under a $5bn contract signed on June 3, 1987. The first boat, HMAS Collins, was launched in 1993 and handed to the navy in 1996.

This is the fleet that Australia will rely on, with a so-called life-of-type extension, until three US Virginia class nuclear-powered submarines are delivered in the 2030s or Adelaide-built boats hit the water from the early 2040s.

By way of comparison, Microsoft Windows 1.0 was released just 19 months before the Collins class deal was inked. Windows 95 was the latest operating system when HMAS Collins started operating for the navy.

Ahead of the 2007 election, Labor leader Kevin Rudd vowed his government would award ASC the contract to build Australia’s next generation of submarines in Adelaide, with construction starting in 2017.

This never happened. Years of other aborted plans followed.

By mid-2022, though, Defence Minister Richard Marles was warning China’s “massive” and “opaque” arms race had put the Indo-Pacific region on edge. But he’s been left playing catch-up on defence spending.

Speaking at The Advertiser’s Defending Australia forum on Wednesday, Mr Marles pointedly left the door open for increased defence spending, now 2.03 per cent of GDP.

A day later, US Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth made a strong and eloquent case for rebuilding the military, responding to a Chinese statement saying it was “ready to fight” any “type of war.”

US President Donald Trump speaks as he prepares to sign executive orders in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington, DC on March 6. Picture: Mandel Ngan/AFP

US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth delivers remarks to the press during a meeting with UK Defense Secretary John Healey at the Pentagon. Picture: Win McNamee/Getty Images/AFP

“Those who long for peace must prepare for war … That’s why we’re re-establishing deterrence in the warrior ethos. We live in a dangerous world with powerful, ascendant countries with very different ideology,” he said.

“They’re rapidly increasing their defence spending, modern technology, they want to supplant the United States. If we want to deter war with the Chinese or others, we have to be strong.”

Mr Hegseth is right. Australia must follow suit. This will mean uncomfortable spending deci

Governments have to get serious about cutting waste in the NDIS and effectively scrutinising the enormous sums ploughed into health, to ensure taxpayers are getting value for money.

This is not to deny the importance of looking after Australian people. In fact, it is the key point.

We need to defend our democracy, freedoms, enterprise and government services. If we value our Australian way of life, we need to start spending properly to stand up for it effectively.