Election 2025: Military hike kicked down the road

The Coalition would defer 40 per cent of its promised $21bn defence spending boost until the fifth year of a Dutton government and cut foreign aid by more than $800m.

An RAAF F-35A in action at the Avalon Airshow, west of Melbourne. Picture: David Caird

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The Coalition would defer 40 per cent of its promised $21bn defence spending boost until the fifth year of a Dutton government and cut foreign aid by more than $800m in its pursuit of a better budget bottom line than Labor.

The opposition has vowed to out-do Labor on military spending but its ramp-up of the Defence budget to 2.5 per cent of GDP would start slowly, increasing by just $200m in the coming financial year if Peter Dutton is victorious on Saturday.

Over the four-year forward estimates period, the Coalition has pledged to spend an extra $12.7bn on Defence, with its biggest annual increase of $8.3bn not due until 2029-30.

Opposition defence spokesman Andrew Hastie has previously derided Labor funding pledges outside the four-year forward estimates period as cheques that can’t be cashed.

The Coalition’s costings show it would slash $814m in foreign aid over the next four years but the document says the Pacific, Indonesia and East Timor would be quarantined from the “efficiencies”.

The lion’s share of the cuts would likely hit Southeast Asian programs and Australian support for multilateral institutions at the same time as Donald Trump slashes American aid across the developing world and Chinese President Xi Jinping looks to fill the influence void.

Defence Minister Richard Marles said the costings showed the Coalition’s numbers “simply do not add up”.

“The Coalition’s costings set out in black and white what we knew all along – that over three years in opposition, they haven’t done the planning or strategic thinking for Australia’s defence,” he said.

Mr Marles said the cost of the Coalition’s “only half-baked idea” – to buy an extra 28 F-35 joint strike fighters for $3bn – had been grossly underestimated. “It will cost as much as three times that, the equivalent of every additional dollar they’ve promised over the next four years,” he said.

Opposition defence spokesman Andrew Hastie at the Coalition’s defence policy launch with Peter Dutton, Liberal senator Michaelia Cash and Liberal candidate for Swan Mic Fels. Picture: Richard Dobson / NewsWire

Foreign Minister Penny Wong also lashed the opposition’s financial statement, saying that a Dutton government would leave Australia “weaker and less ­influential in the Indo-Pacific”.

“These costings show that Peter Dutton was right to say that past performance was the best indicator of future practice,” Senator Wong said.

“He hasn’t learned and will do it all again – undermining Australia’s relationship with nearly every one of our critical Southeast Asian partners.”

Experts joined the pile-on, with former Defence official ­Michael Shoebridge saying the Coalition had fallen for the same trap as Labor.

“Australia’s dangerous security environment needs action now, not in ‘out years’ on distant Treasury spreadsheets,” he said.

“The big problem is that our political leaders seem unable to be honest about the dire state of our Defence Force and so are spending urgently needed resources on cash splashes to buy votes.”

Development Intelligence Lab chief executive Bridi Rice said the Coalition’s planned step back from Southeast Asia came at a time when Australia needed to step up: “Aid is not charity. It’s frontline diplomacy and in Southeast Asia the development dollar delivers unmatched impact.”

The Coalition has pledged an extra $2bn in Pacific infrastructure loans to counter surging Chinese influence across the ­region.