Marles, the fake defence minister with a real American agenda

For some time the pressure has been building on Labor to increase defence spending — and not just from the usual suspects in the national security commentariat. Labor insists it’s already taking spending to 2.33% of GDP by 2034 and that goes well beyond what the Coalition left it with. But the Coalition didn’t have Trump 2.0 to deal with when it left office. Labor does.

Australia no longer has a reliable security guarantor.

So, with the opposition mulling increasing defence spending to 2.5% of GDP or higher, and on the eve of what is more a pre-election spendathon than a credible budget, the government decided it would try to prevent itself from being left exposed. Not by an actual change in policy, but with the kind of budget fakery that gives all politicians a bad name.

Thus, Richard Marles met the media at the Avalon airshow yesterday to announce:

In the Federal Budget there will be an increase in defence spending over the forward estimates of $10.6 billion. This is the most significant increase in defence spending in peacetime Australia since the end of the Second World War.

Wow — sounds impressive! $10.6 billion over the forwards! Was Labor recognising that Australia, like Europe, now faces a serious task of establishing the capability to defend itself in the absence of its US colonial overlord? Well, not quite. Not a dollar of that is new money. It’s all spending that was already committed by the government. The only “new” bit is:

Part of the $10.6 billion sees bringing forward an additional billion dollars, and that’s because of the need to accelerate Australia’s capability development.

That is, money that was going to be spent after 2029 is being brought into the forwards. $1 billion of it. Over four years. In an overall spend of $50-60 billion a year, depending on how ineptly the Defence Department gets the money out the door.

All fakery.

But it gets better. What will that additional $250 million a year, on average, be spent on? What’s this “capability development” we’re accelerating? Marles again:

What this will do is see us have ready HMAS Stirling, the Henderson Defence Precinct for the establishment of the marine rotation force — the Submarine Rotational Force–West.

So the government is bringing forward the money for part of the so-called pillar one of AUKUS — basing US (and eventually UK) nuclear submarines in Perth. It’s actually got nothing to do with Australia getting nuclear submarines itself, it’s more a tacked-on feature to give the Americans and the Brits an additional “home” port to operate from deep in the Southern Hemisphere.

And, of course, what it does is further undermine Australia’s sovereignty by locking us ever more firmly into the US military machine — something that Anthony Albanese and Richard Marles have devoted themselves to doing since they were elected.

It’s the ultimate form of national security theatre: fake new spending for “capability development”, but with the real purpose of degrading Australia’s capability to operate independently, reducing us to a mere military outpost of the United States, airstrip and sub-base one.

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