We’re left dangerously exposed thanks to Labor’s lazy refusal to fund our warfighters
Labor is spending our inheritance like an eighth generation English earl with a coke habit and leaving precious little to help the ADF fight off our adversaries, warns James Morrow.
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A little later this month the prime minister is off to Canada for another G7 Summit meeting and, he hopes, a quiet word to the US president about tariffs.
It’s not hard to figure that Anthony Albanese sees this as win-win proposition.
If Albanese goes, chats to Donald Trump, and gets our exporters a break, the PM comes back a hero who helped save local steel and aluminium jobs.
That is, at least until they are crushed in Labor’s pursuit of “net zero”.
On the other hand, if he gets rebuffed, well, prepare for an almighty tsunami of spin about how the plucky lad from Camperdown stood up to Mad King Donald and came back empty handed but with honour intact – another feather in the cap for Albanese’s “progressive patriotism”.
Either way, don’t fall for it.
Because roiling beneath the surface of Albanese’s attempts to woo America lie two huge problems that are coming to a head, and it is not clear that Labor has a handle on either one of them.
The first is that economic, trade, and defence policy are now suddenly enmeshed than ever.
The position of a nation like Australia, which for years figured it could rely on trade with China for prosperity and closeness with the US for security, is no longer tenable.
The second is that with or without the Trump administration’s calls for allies to increase defence spending, Australia’s military has been left dangerously underequipped and exposed in today’s new world of drone warfare and AI – as Ukraine demonstrated to the Russians just the other day.
Trump’s return to power may have crystallised both issues, but Beijing’s ambitions to re-take Taiwan and re-make the world order meant they would come to a head eventually.
From the Trump White House’s perspective, Australia is far too enmeshed economically with Beijing through trade and (one way) investment for their liking.
Washington will have noted that despite the prime minister’s claims on Perth radio Tuesday that his government has been “consistent and clear” on trade, when it comes to China the tape tells a different story.
Speaking to the Financial Review just after his reappointment as trade minister, Don Farrell said, “we don’t want to do less business with China, we want to do more business with China.”
Yet, and to her credit, Foreign Minister Penny Wong has been a consistent voice warning of the need for Australian exporters to diversify the country’s “export markets (as) an important part of national resilience.”
But none of this compares to the problems Australia has when it comes to defence spending.
Take Donald Trump and his demands out of the picture.
Imagine that Kamala Harris had won in a landslide in 2024.
The issue, which is approaching crisis levels, would still exist.
Under Labor, Australia has abandoned plans for more F-35 Joint Strike Fighters, decided not to put Tomahawk missiles on our Collins class subs, and is realistically only pulling a little bit of money forward from future defence budgets into the here and now.
Bizarrely, the Coalition barely challenged this sorry record during its recent woeful election campaign – when it should have been sounding the alarm for the past three years.
As a result what is left is an Australia that looks impotent to its rivals, foes, and enemies.
China’s live fire exercises in the Tasman went undetected save for the watchful eyes of a Virgin Airlines flight crew, and we were unable even to send a single ship to the Red Sea to help an effort by the Biden administration to protect shipping through the region last year.
But even if it wanted to pump more money into defence, the money simply isn’t there.
Multicultural Labor may be uncomfortable with modern Australia’s Anglo heritage but this government is spending our inheritance like an eighth generation English earl with a coke habit.
Once Labor pays for all the votes it bought with increased health and NDIS and welfare spending, there is very little in the kitty.
And in the background of all this the rapidly changing nature of warfare in the modern world.
Ever since the October 7 attacks we have seen how war is now being fought – assymetrically, with cheap tech that can destroy whole weapons platforms.
Meanwhile Australia bumbles on with a she’ll be right attitude that sees the ADF looking to acquire anti-drone technology by – it is hoped – 2032.
This could very well be too little too late, and talking about the Australian way of doing things won’t be much help in the face of a People’s Liberation Army blockade.
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