There has never been an election campaign like it. We’ve been militarily humiliated by China, repeatedly and publicly mocked for our military impotence by a Russia seeking greater military presence in our region, told in blunt terms by the US that we urgently need to increase our defence budget by half.
Washington has also told allies that its old security guarantees no longer necessarily apply.
Our response? Absolutely nothing, no meaningful policy response at all.
The security environment is technicolour Mad Max Thunderdome, our election campaign continues as Wizard of Oz fantasy, with the nation dreaming we’re already somewhere over the rainbow and the outside world will never touch us.
Sure as hell, we’re not going to have a meaningful policy response to the gathering crisis all around us.
No increase in defence spending, no investment in national resilience, no policy discussion of what military effects we could produce with a meaningful defence budget and no economic reform.
While not unique in our history – the 1930s was a pretty grim refusal to face reality – this dereliction is unlike anything since World War II.
We’ve often had national security at the heart of election campaigns. We’ve often had elections with big national security events in the background. We had an orderly, decent election in the midst of World War II, in 1943. We had bitter, deep, serious divisions over the Vietnam War, where the rival parties had serious conflicting positions that they argued before the electorate. And we typically spent a much higher percentage of a much smaller national wealth pie on defence than we do now.
The Russian ambassador in Indonesia, Sergei Tolchenov, will surely have to be careful of his media profile or his Indonesian hosts will start getting annoyed.
Whatever deals the Indonesians are doing with Moscow, they don’t want Russian diplomats dominating their relationship with Canberra.
On the other hand, Russia is probably more important to Indonesia than Australia is, being its chief military supplier.
Tolchenov followed up his initial statement abusing Australia, and claiming, preposterously, that US forces rotating through Darwin were a threat to Southeast Asia, with a second statement in the form of a letter to The Jakarta Post.
Tolchenov has plainly inherited that old Cold War knack for slogans.
Remark his claim that Canberra’s concerns about Russia’s military involvement in Indonesia are a joke because, as he quotes Donald Trump, “you have no cards”.
It breaks my heart to say it, but Tolchenov’s words sting precisely because they’re broadly true. The only genuine strategic card we have left is our relationship with the US. We have no independent cards of our own.
The fault for this appalling situation lies with the Albanese government, and indeed the governments of both parties that have preceded it since John Howard left office.
Don’t take my word for it. Read the devastating 60-page analysis produced by Strategic Analysis Australia. It’s available on the SAA website.
The Albanese government hates documents such as this and never answers them. The whole elaborate program to eventually neuter if not destroy the Australian Strategic Policy Institute is, I would guess, aimed to stop it producing this kind of work.
SAA’s document, Defence 2025: Dollars and Decisions, is written by three former ASPI analysts, Marcus Hellyer, Michael Shoebridge and Peter Jennings.
Chapter two, Defence funding – past, present and future, is a straightforward, factual account of what our defence spending has actually been over the past decade. It’s not without moments of wry humour but is mainly deadpan and understated. It’s absolutely devastating as a consequence.
As a proportion of the economy, defence has been hovering just below or just above 2 per cent of GDP since 2018. If the current budget forecasts are realised, and that’s a big if, it might reach 2.05 per cent of GDP this year. That basically static funding is a sign of a nation that’s not serious.
It’s much worse even than that.
Defence spending has followed almost exactly the money commitments from the 2016 defence white paper. The SAA analysis concludes that the total real increase in defence spending over the 2016 white paper forecasts by the start of the current budget is a pitiful $400m. But for some of the years when defence spending was allegedly increasing, inflation ran higher than the relevant budget forecast. Defence was not compensated for during that erosion in purchasing power.
But it’s worse than that again. During the period of alleged increase Defence has had to pay, from Defence funds, for numerous other commitments, including $1bn in aid to Ukraine, $1bn for Pacific engagement, $1bn for a national cyber-security program. These are all expenditures I strongly support. But by funding them out of existing Defence allocations, the government chooses to reduce the amount of money devoted to military capability.
Anthony Albanese declared this week: “We’ve increased defence expenditure by $50bn.” That is complete baloney. The government has promised to increase defence spending by $50bn over the 10 years ahead.
Serious increases even within that amount don’t come along until the last year of the Albanese government’s second term.
Promise counts for infinitely less than performance. This is a government that has overseen weakening defence capabilities just when we need increased capabilities more than ever.
There’s more bad news. The Albanese government plans to pay for the AUKUS subs over the next 10 years but not to substantially increase resources devoted to military capability beyond that. Our interest payments on our national debt are scheduled to grow at a far faster rate than our defence budget.
So the Russian ambassador is contemptuous but right. We have no cards. Meanwhile, we’ve seen the Chinese ostentatiously disrupt aviation routes across the Tasman, to make sure we registered the humiliation they were subjecting us to.
Legendary US strategic analyst Walter Russell Mead, in a podcast with John Anderson, suggested Beijing’s purpose was to demonstrate our vulnerability and refusal to take our own defence seriously “without galvanising an effective response”. Beijing was completely successful in this.
Elbridge Colby, Donald Trump’s new Under Secretary of Defence for Policy, in prepared testimony at his congressional confirmation hearings, said Australia faced a more serious security threat than European nations and should be spending 3 per cent, not 2 per cent, of GDP on defence.
Meanwhile, the Liberals, who’ve run an ineffective campaign, still haven’t released a defence policy. That means it’s already a dud. In the very unlikely event it meaningfully addresses the national dilemma, the Coalition has not given sufficient time, energy, priority, wit or commitment to convince the electorate, or indeed anyone, that it’s serious on defence. Unless it’s somewhere over the rainbow.
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