Achi news desk-
There will be a debate about whether Labour’s announced increase in defense spending from 2% to 2.4% of GDP over the next decade is justified – though not in the Fairfax papers, where not only the idea of ​​needing more military spending against Chinese hordes is self-evident, Labour’s commitment is actually considered insufficient.
However, we’ll leave that aside for a moment, and focus on Defense Secretary Richard Marles’ claim, made this week at the National Press Club, that there is a new era when it comes to defense spending. Attacking the coalition in his speech, Marles said “there has been no consistency in government action…a strategic vacuum…a lost decade. The Liberals were one of the worst defense governments in our nation’s history at a time when Australia could least afford it”.
This is palpable nonsense. The Coalition was no worse than most governments in Australian history on defense spending, at least until near the end, when Scott Morrison made his spectacular AUKUS blunder – a mistake Labor doubled down on and supported. Indeed, when Merles complains that “the Coalition is in and out of a submarine deal with Japan and then in and out of a submarine deal with France”, he neglects to mention that Labor supported both of these resolutions.
In fact, the best decision made in defense procurement in recent decades was Tony Abbott’s decision to buy off-the-shelf conventional submarines from the Japanese – a decision strongly opposed by Labor, and ultimately overturned by Abbott’s own party. Tried to save the careers of South Australian MPs. Australia’s submarine capability might be very, very different if Abbott had been allowed to have his way.
Marles characterizes the coalition’s tenure as having “a defense budget that included commitments of $42 billion without providing a single dollar. Overprogramming that was on track to average about 36% over the next four years. Twenty-eight major projects were conducted for a total of 97 years over time.”
All this will change, Merles insists, with Labor in charge and throwing many more billions at security, as well as reallocating funding within spending – for example, reducing our purchases of the flying pile of shit, the F-35 (after two decades, More subject to major delays).
This isn’t the first time Marles has tried the “there’s a new sheriff in town” stuff. In October 2022, he promised that “the quality of defense spending [was a] The priority of the Albanian government.”
As we mentioned in February, it got off to a rather inauspicious start. If Marles – an idiot and a Labor hack promoted to high office solely because of his geographical origin and factional allegiance – is stupid enough to attack the Coalition for delays in major projects, it should be noted that project delays have worsened significantly under Labor – from 405 months to 453 months, according to the Audit Office Australia’s national Marles, by his standards, is 11% worse than when Pete (Dayton) was part-time on defense.
The Defense Department’s continued confirmation of incompetence was accompanied by additional moves to shield itself from liability for these delays, which “provides a reduced level of transparency and accountability to Parliament and other stakeholders,” according to the auditor general.
Marles’ claims that he would be the Hercules of the Ojan stables in Brussels were always dangerous. The Haganah captures its officers and turns them into political shields due to its poor performance, the shocking culture and the deep distaste for transparency that characterizes its officials – one that runs from refusing to answer embarrassing questions about defense procurement, to trying to prevent the auditor general from holding them to public account. Any defense minister – Labor, Liberal, whoever – who claims to have reversed the institutional and systemic handlessness of the defense bureaucracy should be treated with the utmost skepticism. But few have produced evidence of their failure as quickly as Marles.
All this was bad enough in February, but now the government promises to hand over billions more to those officials. In current dollar terms, Labor’s commitment would increase defense spending by almost $10 billion a year until the mid-2030s – much of it, of course, flowing into the already troubled AUKUS project due to US and UK manpower constraints.
Marles claims that he and Defense can now be trusted with all this extra money – despite Defense’s long history of procurement flaws, and despite its performance and accountability having fallen substantially since Labor was elected.
The target of all this spending, of course, is China. Xi Jinping has many serious problems, but Australia’s military threat is not one of them. The idea that we will magically change our record of incompetence in procuring major projects is likely to cause howls of laughter in Beijing.
