Anthony Albanese and Richard Marles have sought to politicise the Defence Strategic Review

Defence Minister Richard Marles, left, and Defence Industry Minister Pat Conroy in Canberra on Monday. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Martin Ollman

Anthony Albanese’s long-awaited Defence Strategic Review confirms Labor’s commitment to a continuity of Australia’s strategic doctrine and defence capability.

This is significant.

It sends a reassuring message to the nation and the region that the new federal government has no plan to deviate from the broader mission. Labor won’t go soft on China.

But the review could equally be regarded as an exercise in futility – political time-wasting when strategic urgency is paramount.

There is little difference in the strategic review, in broader themes, than what was outlined in the strategic update by the Morrison government in July 2020.

In terms of force projection, long-range strike capability, funding and purpose of language, the message and intent is strikingly similar.

While the new review names China as a threat to regional stability, this is not a revelation.

In releasing the 2020 defence update, Morrison likened China to pre-war Germany and Japan. The greatest strategic threat since the 1930s, he said.

Albanese uses the more generic reference to World War II.

In releasing the review in Canberra on Monday, Albanese had the opportunity to project a powerful symbol of Australia’s politically unified position; an ­enduring bipartisan strategic and defence posture.

Instead the Prime Minister and his Defence Minister, Richard Marles, have sought to politicise it by blaming the former government for not delivering on its ambitions.

Having been on the receiving end of attacks over a lack of fidelity to national security, it now seeks an opportunity to turn the tables.

Albanese and Marles lay claim to inventing the wheel. They forget that it is still the same Defence Department with the same people at the helm.

There can be no doubt that one of the purposes of this review was inherently political. It provides a platform for Albanese, as commander in chief, to put a Labor stamp on a Coalition-inspired strategic outlook, just as he has appropriated the AUKUS nuclear submarine deal as a Labor thought.

Yet all it has achieved is adding another 12 months to a timetable of delivery of capability while creating a vacuum of uncertainty across the defence community in the meantime. This would appear incongruous to the central theme of the strategic review – strategic urgency.

Albanese and Marles know the threat and risk. The intelligence briefings they have had since taking office almost a year ago have warned of the need for swiftness.

Yet there is no new funding contained in the update for the next four years, giving the government breathing room for electoral sweeteners on the cost of living.

Again, this seems incompatible with the exigence inherent in the strategic review.

It begs another question about the politics involved in this venture.

The review essentially helps Jim Chalmers over the forward ­estimates in the budget. As Peter Dutton has called it: “A snow job?”

Governments get no points for doing what is expected of them such as keeping the nation safe.

But Australians have every right to be somewhat cynical about this.