Defence Spending in Australia

I was reading an interesting article in the latest issue of Quadrant Magazine this afternoon: "A National Security Election?", by Michael O'Connor. The ostensible subject of the piece is that both parties will give a lot of air time to the issue of defence and national security during the campaign season leading up to the Federal Election, but neither party truly addresses many of the important questions.

One of the most disturbing aspects of the debate on defence in Australia is the lack of serious thought on defence spending. Australia currently allocates about 1.9% of GDP to defence expenditure, in contrast to Great Britain and France who both spend about 2.5% and the United States, which spends about 3.3%. Although Australia is significantly smaller than these other nations, the amounts in question are not trivial. O'Connor writes:

Arguments over whether current defence outlays amount to 1.8 or 1.9 per cent of GDP are squabbles over some $700 million, at the time of a budget surplus said to be around $4 billion. These figures give the lie to claims that Australia cannot afford increased defence spending.

Australia's defence capabilities are embarrassing. Australia's contribution to the coalition forces in Iraq of about 800 troops (with 3 times more personnel in support) does not correlate with the rhetorical support that the government has thrown behind the Iraq mission. O'Connor notes that if we had sent "a contribution proportional to that of the British", we "would have seen 15,000 Australians on the job, a number that we simply could not produce, much less sustain."

In the current world security climate, defence means more than just being prepared to repel an invading force. Traditional inter-state wars are quickly becoming a thing of the past. More and more, the focus of defence forces have been paramilitary or special forces operations against selected targets within another country (terrorists, arms dealers, drug cartels), as well as peace-keeping and state-rebuilding. If Australia is going to command any degree of respect or moral legitimacy in the region, as well as in alliances on a global scale, we will need to increase the size of our defence forces, and improve their capabilities. We cannot rely on being the (very) junior partner of the United States, without our relative weaknesses becoming more and more apparent and therefore more likely for exploitation.

As the attacks against westerners, and in particular Australians, two weeks ago week in Jakarta and a couple of years ago in Bali show, the region is not immune to terrorist attacks. I fear we seeing a parallel to the late nineties, when US citizens and embassies were targeted in Africa before the major attack on September 11. Australia needs to increase defence spending to improve our international standing as well as protect the homeland.