Australian defence spending can’t play catch-up once a war has already started | Alexander Downer

While Australia’s leaders are pouring pointless billions into windmills, this is the situation that could really heat up on our doorstep, writes Alexander Downer.

Australians are on the whole pretty unconcerned about their national security.

They may think on the whole it’s better to spend more on defence than less. After all, the media is always telling them this is an uncertain world.

But they’ve been happy to elect and re-elect governments which, on balance, would rather spend on welfare and windmills, rather than defence equipment and personnel.

I can understand why some aspects of welfare are a priority. After all, no one wants to see their fellow citizens suffer unnecessarily and sensible people believe in levelling up our society – not levelling it down.

But windmills? The billions of dollars state and federal governments are putting into building windmills and solar farms will have no effect whatsoever on climate change. It’s just eye-wateringly expensive virtue signalling.

The task of reducing global CO2 emissions and thereby reducing the pace of global warming falls on the major emitters – China, India and the United States.

China’s President Xi Jinping speaks during the opening ceremony of the Fourth Ministerial Meeting of the Forum of China and Community of Latin American and Caribbean States in Beijing on May 13, 2025. Picture: Pedro Pardo/AFP

Sure, we have to make a proportional contribution but what we are doing is diverting a sizeable percentage of our national wealth away from profitable private sector investment and underwriting our national security to no effect.

I’d be happy to invest in windmills if I thought they were having any effect on the climate. They’re not. Those investments are a complete waste of money.

It’s not an act of sound leadership to make the public panic.

Politicians did that during the Covid saga and we’re still suffering from the legacy of that. But we should be aware that a security crisis which could directly involve Australia is not beyond question.

Let’s look at one scenario.

Let us say Xi Jinping is true to his word and tries to incorporate Taiwan into the People’s Republic of China in 2027. He wouldn’t do this by mounting a D-Day style invasion of Taiwan. That would be too risky.

He’d get his customs vessels to intercept trade with Taiwan claiming that Taiwan is part of China and therefore legally entitled to inspect and, possibly, tax goods being imported into Taiwan.

China, in other words, would seek to take control of Taiwan international trade. Not only would this have direct consequences for Taiwan‘s domestic economy – it is heavily dependent on imports of energy – but it would have international ramifications.

Taiwan plays a huge role in making the world’s most advanced computer chips. They produce over 90 per cent of leading-edge chips.

A Taiwan-based company called TSMC is the world’s biggest producer. They make chips for companies like Apple, Nvidia, and AMD, on which we depend for a modern lifestyle. Those chips are crucial for the development of AI.

So if China introduced an effective blockade of Taiwan’s trade, what would the United States do?

No one can be sure but to avoid this catastrophic scenario the Americans need to make it clear that they would break the blockade and free up Taiwan’s trade.

China would retaliate and endeavour to frustrate the Americans. America’s allies in the Pacific – Japan, the Philippines and Australia – would be expected to help the Americans. If we didn’t, then that would render our alliances with the United States meaningless.

We would, in effect, be saying that we don’t want a balance of power in the Indo-Pacific region any more: we would be content for the region to be dominated by China.

China would determine the architecture of regional security, the nature of regional trading relationships and would, of course, assert its own definition of acceptable standards of human rights and international behaviour.

But to be realistic, if Australia supported the United States and Japan in protecting democratic Taiwan, then China’s People’s Liberation Army would retaliate against Australia.

Australia is so vast it is uninvadable but the way an enemy would deal with Australia is to blockade its ports, strangle its supply lines, launch drone and missile attacks on its defence bases and attack sensitive infrastructure, such as data centres.

So what would we do in that situation?

We have no capacity to clear mines, as we are in the process of decommissioning are only two minesweepers, we have almost no drone capability, we have no missile defences.

It’s not true to say we would be defenceless, because elements of our defence force would be able to fight, but we would have very limited capability to protect our vital national infrastructure.

Of course, none of this may happen. Xi Jinping may be bluffing about taking Taiwan by 2027. It may just be empty rhetoric. Or we could abandon ideas like contributing to a balance of power in our region and withdraw into ourselves. We could let the American alliance wither because we don’t like the people they elect very much.

Alternatively, we should start to think about these kinds of scenarios and invest in upgrading our defences.

It’s much cheaper to have a deterrent defence force than find oneself in a war. And that doesn’t just mean building submarines in Adelaide.

They won’t be ready for service for well over a decade, if they’re ever built at all. It means investing in effective and readily available defence equipment now.

Originally published as Australian defence spending can’t play catch-up once a war has already started | Alexander Downer