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April 16, 2026
Defence Minister Richard Marles must come clean on his accounting trickery with a radical new measure of defence spending, as well as his $5 billion of secret cuts.
In today's National Press Club Speech, the Defence Minister obscured more than he revealed.
Australia faces the most dangerous strategic environment since the Second World War, yet two years on from the last National Defence Strategy and the crisis in the Strait of Hormuz, the Albanese government refuses to meaningfully increase defence spending and instead has chosen to hide behind accounting tricks.
Historically Australia has used one way of measuring defence spending as a share of GDP, which excluded military pensions and other expenditure. Now when the pressure is on, Labor are changing the rule book to suit their narrative. Accounting tricks don’t make Australians safer.
Only immediate real increases in defence spending will put tangible capability into the hands of war fighters to protect our country.
Anything less is an insult to the men and women serving in uniform and fails to heed the lessons of Ukraine and Iran.
What we do not need is $5 billion of secret cuts to defence capability. The government must come clean with the Australian people and explain what capabilities will be cut, in addition to their previous cuts to infantry fighting vehicles, self-propelled Howitzers, F-35s, Hunter class frigates and military communication satellites. Even reservists are having their days cut because Labor has failed to fund defence properly.
If Labor was really increasing defence spending these cuts would not be necessary.
The government must follow the expert advice of people like Sir Angus Houston and Professor Peter Dean and increase real defence spending to 3% of GDP to fund important future capability including AUKUS, without cannibalising the rest of the ADF.