Defence spending is currently at about 2% of gross domestic product (GDP), or around A$56 billion per year. The Coalition is reportedly eyeing an increase to 2.5% of GDP by 2029.
The Albanese government’s current spending plan is expected to reach 2.33% of GDP by 2034. And in this week’s budget, it is expected to bring forward some of its already announced $50 billion increase in defence spending.
Why do these percentages matter? US President Donald Trump has made it very clear he expects America’s allies to pay more on defence, at least 3% of GDP.
We asked five experts if defence spending should be increased, and if so, by how much. They agreed more money is needed, albeit with caveats.
TL;DR: all the experts say “yes”.
I don’t have a strong opinion on the topic, but my non-expert opinion is “probably not”. It would have been outright “no” before reading this article, but some of those arguments were actually persuasive.
It isn’t that I want a weak military, it’s that I see so many priorities the government can be spending on and defense still isn’t at the top of that list for me.
I personally wonder if cultural exchange (and similar programs) would provide an equivalent amount of regional security on the basis of the relevant countries liking us more. It wouldn’t be a direct replacement for actually having a national defense, but man military hardware can be expensive AF lol.
It isn’t a matter of liking us. I don’t think any nation sees Australia as a threat, other than as a staging ground for US forces. At the same time, I don’t think any nation is seriously considering attacking Australia. That’s why I don’t really prioritise spending more on our defense.
But, 20-30 years from now? I have no idea what the future looks like. I wouldn’t want to look up suddenly 20 years from now and be like Russia in 1912.
One of the things brought up in the original article’s arguments was deterrence, which hey I guess is fair enough on a long-term time scale where the future is unknown and some kind of “real” warfare (not just peacekeeping / anti-terror type stuff) involving Australia isn’t impossible to think up. But deterrence (due to non-trivial military power) is only one way to cool off a potential conflict; as far as I know it’s not like we’re particularly worried about say New Zealand being at war with us – even on a long-term time scale – and it’s because we’re bros 👉👈
Something that was touched upon in the article but I think worthwhile enough to mention specifically is we should have a greater ability to manufacture essential materials ourselves - this would not be strictly defence spending but is definitely adjacent to it. Things like fuel are an obvious one here but there’s plenty of basics we don’t make on shore. As an example I’m thinking of the shortage of saline solution that got into the news a while back - that’s something very commonly used and literally just salt mixed with water, but we rely on importing it…
