Anthony Albanese’s defence shambles lying in plain sight for next president

When the dust settles on the US election, the decision-makers around either Donald Trump or Kamala Harris will take note of the Australian omnishambles, writes Greg Sheridan.

Whether it’s Donald Trump or Kamala Harris who emerges as America’s next president, the strategic message to Australia could hardly be clearer: we need more than ever to have a strong independent defence capability, maximum self reliance and indepen­dent power.

Instead, this week has broadcast in technicolour the pathetic shambles the Albanese government has made of defence.

When the dust settles on the US election, the Washington strategic class and decision-makers around either Trump or Harris will take notice of this Australian omnishambles.

The Albanese government has turned Australia into a comprehensive US dependency. Forget about whether having US-supplied nuclear subs compromises our sovereignty if there’s conflict over Taiwan, a more immediate way to lose sovereignty is by having no independent capability.

That’s where the Albanese government has taken Australia, just when Washington’s own strategic disposition is more uncertain than ever.

Harris, like Biden, is politically committed to US alliances. But every year in office, Biden proposed a real cut, after inflation, in defence spending. Harris will be worse. There’s no way the US can produce enough nuclear subs under such budgets to sell us some; the dire US fiscal position heightens that problem.

A Trump victory would be disastrous for Albanese, on a par with the No vote in the voice referendum. The Trump camp contains several senior advisers extremely sceptical of the idea of ever selling nuclear subs to Australia.

From climate policy to social outlook to the UN and much more, Trump fatally undermines Albanese’s narrative, just as Harris would reinforce it.

Both Trump and Harris want US allies to do more, take more ­responsibility. So consider just what a devastating week it’s been for Australian defence credibility.

We have just one submarine available out of our notional six. We’ve abolished the program to build geo-synchronous satellites for military communication, having only announced it last year. The Albanese government will put no new money into such programs. Instead we’ll rent satellite capacity or rely on the Americans to do the job for us. Last year’s commitments mean nothing now. Neither ally, foe, nor citizen can ­invest any meaning in Canberra defence statements.

It also turns out that, although Albanese said as opposition leader he would increase defence spending above 2 per cent of GDP, we have not reached 2 per cent, the NATO minimum.

Last year the Australian ­Defence Force actually shrank, though the government of course has spectacularly unrealistic and meaningless future projections.

Remember it has repeatedly told us these are the most dangerous strategic times since World War II, yet we can’t acquire anything quickly, can’t build anything quickly, can’t even keep our people in uniform.

Our dismal recruitment ads don’t help. They’ve been generic “diversity, equity, inclusion” advertisements for an amorphous priority of social inclusion in something called the Defence Force. Real people join the army, the navy or the air force. And they do so out of love of country and a sense of adventure. They don’t join the military to play cards in Darwin.

Intelligent young Australians can see there’s only one sub that works. It was also revealed this week that we give the Collins-class boats very light workloads so as not to wear them out even more quickly. A couple of years ago navy told Senate estimates the Collins could all undergo not only one “Life of Type Extension”, to give them 10 years additional service, but two, so they could go on for ­another 20 years.

It turns out they can’t even ­operate right now.

With the money we’ve invested in US and UK submarine capabilities, our government probably spends more on their shipyards than our own. But it’s still a net zero.

We’ve already retired one of our eight decrepit ANZAC frigates. We don’t send them out very often either.

Our big venture into missile manufacturing means nothing more than that we will soon start assembling, not building, the militarily lowest-profile missiles imaginable, army artillery rockets. We are many years away from having a missile-building industry, and we have no armed maritime drones at all. Nor any serious missile defence around our military bases.

The Albanese government’s big-money defence talk always stretches over decades, so that nothing actually has to happen now, or in the next few years.

It’s often observed that it makes more sense to judge Trump on what he does rather than what he says. If the Albanese government is judged the same way, our ­national defence is exposed as a complete sham.

The Albanese government’s one achievement in defence is to make us 100 per cent dependent for our security on the US, with ­little real leverage or agency. ­Harris or Trump – whoever wins – will understand this completely, and act accordingly.