A MATTER OF STRATEGY
ALL EYES ON NATIONAL SECURITY
FOR the first time since the Cold War ended 30 years ago, Australians will this year go to an election with a government keen to show that only it can be trusted on national security and defence.
In contrast, the Labor Party will spend the next few weeks seeking to downplay any differences between the two sides.
The political strategies of the two sides could not be more starkly different.
The government, keen to claim the high-ground in an area that has grown massively in importance since China’s Xi Jinping began sabre rattling a decade ago, wants Australians to compare its current record defence spending with Labor’s record of cuts when it was in office between 2007 and 2013.
The opposition on the other hand is keen to stress that little will change, if it comes to power in May, in areas where the party shares common ground with the government, starting with its long-term support for the US alliance to its endorsement last year of the AUKUS agreement that will see Australia acquire nuclear-powered subs.
Labor is also keen to stress it has backed the revival of the Quad dialogue between Australia, India, Japan the USA as well as increased defence spending and most recently the lethal aid we have offered to Ukraine as it battles its Russian invader.
Unsurprisingly, Defence Minister Peter Dutton says in reality, “Labor never takes defence seriously – they’ve always got other priorities.
“The Indo-pacific is more and more uncertain and what we are seeing in Europe shows there will be a period of uncertainty for the next decade and beyond,” he said.
“The government has taken a number of decisions to prepare Australia and to deter any adversity.”
In contrast when Labor was in government, “they didn’t order any ships or subs”. Dutton points out that defence spending as a share of GDP dropped to 1.56 per cent in the 2012-13 Budget – the lowest level of funding since 1938 – and immediately following its 2009 White Paper, Labor cut or deferred more than $16bn from the defence budget. “Had spending continued on that trajectory we would have had $55bn less in aggregate spent in defence and on acquisition over the course of the last several years and we would be facing a budget today with a three in front of it instead of a four,” he said.
Unsurprisingly, Dutton’s opposite number Brendan O’connor, rejects the charge that Labor was weak on defence when it was in office.
“No one denies there’s more spending now, as there should be, and we’ve supported increased spending since 2013,” he said. “But the facts are whether you look at the Howard government or the Rudd-gillard governments, the annual average expenditure was between 1.7 per cent and 1.8 per cent of GDP.”
There was a time, he pointed out, when John Howard was introducing the Chinese premier to the parliament.
“Labor agrees that China’s behaviour has fundamentally changed and that’s why we support the government’s response whether it is in AUKUS or the Quad,” O’connor said.
Independent experts disagree on how much difference there is between the two sides. Veteran defence analyst Alan Dupont believes despite the name calling there’s not much difference between them.
“There’s some difference in rhetoric but very little difference in substance,” he said.
“I think Labor have probably been a little bit more cautious on criticising China – and they’ve also been critical of aggravating problems with China – but otherwise Albanese has been at pains to announce there’s no real difference between them.”
John Blaxland, Professor of International Security and Intelligence Studies at ANU agrees. “I don’t think
the differences are that great to be honest,” he said.
“When you look back to the 1990s when John Howard came to office, one of the first things he did was cut defence when he cancelled the ready reserve scheme.”
Blaxland says there is no doubt defence spending as a percentage of GDP reached a low-point under the last Labor government but the dollar terms were still substantial because the economy was much bigger. “It’s easy to cast aspersions about Labor’s handling of defence matters in the early 2010s particularly the funding of the 2009 and the 2013 defence White Papers but it’s important to remember the context – it was pre-trump, the unipolar world hadn’t quite had its sunset and we hadn’t seen Xi Jinping’s wolf warrior diplomacy,” he said.
In contrast, although Peter Dean, chair of defence studies at the h University U i it of f Western Australia, thinks “there’s no doubt the government wants to run a sort of khaki election” the differences between the two are mainly differences of emphasis.
“Morrison is very focused on the China threat and what he calls the axis of autocracy [whereas] Albanese, if you go by his Lowy speech, put climate in a national security context as does the Biden Administration.”
The Th Opposition O it Leader, he said, is more focused on national resilience, national sovereignty and national unity. “He’s taking a broader more holistic emphasis on national security. It’s a difference in emphasis based on different political views and where they see different political advantages.”