Brace for defence broadside, says Richard Marles

Defence Minister Richard Marles has warned taxpayers to brace for higher military spending.

Defence Minister Richard Marles in Canberra on Monday. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Gary Ramage

Defence Minister Richard Marles has warned taxpayers to brace for higher military spending as he revealed the cost of the nation’s planned nuclear sub­marines was likely to start to hit the budget from next year.

The warning came as Opposition Leader Peter Dutton hit back at Mr Marles’ claim that the Coalition had left the defence portfolio in a “complete mess”, bequeathing Labor $6.5bn worth of budget blowouts and a cumulative 97 years of project delays.

Mr Dutton said the analysis was “a comical distraction” by Labor – which had lowered defence spending to 1.5 per cent of GDP when it was last in office.

“We put more money into defence than Labor ever did. Labor when they were last in government reduced Defence spending to the lowest level since 1938,” Mr Dutton said.

“Labor didn’t have any problems with boats being built or submarines being built because they never ordered one.

“And therefore yes, we had to catch up over the course of the last nine years because Labor never ordered anything.”

In the last federal budget, defence spending was forecast to come in at 2 per cent this year, rising to 2.2 per cent by 2032.

But, a fortnight ahead of Labor’s October budget, Mr Marles warned defence spending needed to rise “over the ­medium to long-term” to meet growing strategic threats.

He said the cost of the AUKUS submarines would begin to be seen in the federal budget after a decision was made in March about which boat Australia would get.

“We need to know what the platform is we’re running with, how quickly we can get it, how we can deal with capability gaps, making sure that we are compliant with our non-proliferation obligations,” Mr Marles said.

“But cost is an important element of that. It is from there that we will then be able to place those figures into the budget.”

Mr Marles said the government would “get back to basics” to keep projects on track, pledging a series of reforms including “changing the culture of Defence”. But he said it was the ­former government and its “revolving door” of defence ministers – not the bureaucracy – that was responsible for project cost and schedule overruns.

“This is not the fault of the Department of Defence; this is not the fault of Australian defence industry,” Mr Marles said.

But opposition defence spo­kesman Andrew Hastie said the bureaucracy should bear its share of the blame.

“Richard Marles spent a lot of time blaming politicians this morning, but departmental secretaries and departments have responsibility as well. Their task is to operationalise the projects that we select,” Mr Hastie said.

Defence industry sources agreed, saying an overhaul of senior officials was needed.

“You can’t say that (former defence industry minister) Melissa Price was responsible for the Hunter-class (frigate) program being four years late,” one said.

“She could only take advice from the department.”