Australia’s defence budget is due to hit $42 billion a year by 2023 and $100 million a day in six years

TAXPAYERS are forking out $87 million every day for the upkeep of our defence forces — and analysts are warning the figure will blow out even further within six years.

EVERY day Australians spend more than $87 million on defence and that figure will climb to a staggering $100 million per day in six years.

A leading defence budget analyst’s detailed summary of the Federal Budget shows taxpayers will fork out a massive $42 billion on military spending by 2023-24.

Dr Mark Thomson from the Australian Strategic Policy Institute said for the next 12 months Australian defence capability would cost $87,918,454.79 per day.

And the government has promised that the amount will grow to well over $100 million a day in just six years’ time when spending is due to hit two per cent of total economic activity or GDP.

Dr Thomson forecast fairly steady sailing for the defence budget between now and 2020 when the political prize of delivering a much trumpeted surplus comes within reach.

Challenge for the government ... Minister for Defence Kevin Andrews. Picture: Zak Simmonds

Forecasting future spending ... Dr Mark Thomson from the Australian Strategic Policy institute.

“If the choice is between reneging on a promise about defence funding, or going to yet another election without having delivered a surplus, it’s not hard to guess the outcome,” he said.

Dr Thomson said the government had described the forthcoming 2015 Defence White Paper and its accompanying plan for the ADF with a range of adjectives, including “fully costed, externally assured, achievable, affordable, credible, realistic, properly funded and enduring”.

“That’s a tall order to deliver,” he said.

“But if the new White Paper is to ‘restore the compact that should rightly exist between the

Government and its Defence Force’ as the Minister has said there’ll need to be another

adjective added to the list: transparent.

“If the government wants to be believed when it claims it has a ‘credible, affordable and properly funded’ plan, it’ll have to show us the money.”

In the meantime, the brief said, government and Defence will have to manage a series of challenges, including major decisions on naval construction, a substantial internal reform program, and maintaining the size of the ADF workforce with a below-inflation pay outcome.

Local versus overseas shipbuilding was another critical area in the context of future defence budgets.

“Surely we need credible assurance that the domestic private sector firms can produce vessels at something approaching an internationally competitive price before we sign up to tens of billions of dollars of domestic naval construction,” the ASPI brief says.

“With so much extra money sloshing around due to the 2% of GDP promise, the very real risk is that we’ll end up expanding the navy to meet local industry’s demand for work.

“The tail will wag the dog, and the taxpayer will pick up the bill for creating a monopoly shipbuilder.”

Originally published as Australia’s defence budget is due to hit $42 billion a year by 2023 and $100 million a day in six years