The government’s Defence White Paper released today may be destined for a short shelf life. Having been brought forward 12 months, it has already been dismissed by the opposition, which insists it will commission its own White Paper once in government. This dismissal has been accompanied by much complaint about Labor’s cuts to defence spending, and a promise to lift it again when “budgetary circumstances” permit.
As it turns out, that’s the government’s view as well, as it today committed to lifting defence spending to 2% of GDP when the budget allows it. Which, of course, isn’t a commitment at all.
While Australians instinctively respect the sacrifices of our soldiers, sailors and air force personnel, even when we don’t support the conflicts they are pitched into, defence procurement in Australia is widely seen as problematic. This is partly because defence procurement must serve the interests both of defence and national security, and industry policy — just as it does in every other developed country.
For that reason, our procurement budget is divided between Australian-owned defence companies, the local subsidiaries of foreign defence companies, and foreign (usually US) defence contractors. Despite repeated efforts to improve procurement contracting processes, there remain serious concerns about our capacity to achieve major acquisitions on-time and on-budget, even as we deal with the legacy of botched procurement processes of the past, such as the Collins class submarines.
A reflexive insistence that Defence should receive more funding when all other areas of the budget are under intense scrutiny won’t increase the likelihood that we improve our defence procurement record. Taxpayers should be able to have more confidence that we won’t keep repeating the major procurement errors of the past before they are called on to contribute more in this area.
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Our very own First Dog on the Moon has decided to record oral versions of some his cartoons, so that people with a visual impairment can dissolve into giggles as much as the rest of us. You can listen in to the first of his audioseries here — his first attempt is yesterday’s cartoon on how to fund the NDIS. Happy listening!
When in First Dog’s name is Australia going to wake up and stop spending ENORMOUS amounts of money on useless nonsense boys toys like submarines that don’t submerge properly, helicopters that fall out of the sky, massively hi tech planes that arrive so late that they’re obsolete even in the testing phase ?
And when they DO arrive, they cost more than the domestic product of Tasmania to fly two laps of the damned airfield. It’s as dumb as building a dam in the Simpson desert – but national security, well, everything goes then.
Small brains, small, small brains.
Yeess Helen bugger defence! never will be able to defend our Sovereignty alone. Might I suggest more diplomacy and co-operation a la the Asian Century with our closest neighbours many of whom we already have very good relations with. Let the USA “power push” develop their own and get their bases OUT of Australia.
Why is it called defense spending? Who is attacking us militarily or economically?
Now, I can understand Iran and North Korea wanting to up their defense capabilities with the US and its allies posturing and pressurizing them to do as we say and forget about what we do.
Nobody, not even the USA is at all likely to attack us any time soon – unless, of course we provoke them to.