Comment

John Hewson
Australia needs a national debate on defence

As opinions about our defence posture gather force, the case for complete transparency of the process has become overwhelming. The Australian people have a right to know what discussions are being undertaken, and what deals, commitments and understandings are being entered into. There should be a formal parliamentary debate on what is proposed in relation to our defence strategy and spending.

The government’s defence decision-making has obviously been complicated by the fundamental shift in the United States’ stance that has been under way since the first term of President Donald Trump, which has emboldened the likes of China’s Xi Jinping and North Korea’s Kim Jong-un. Trump continues to accommodate Russian aggression, amid his failure to achieve the promised end to the Ukraine war, and his commitment to article 5 of NATO remains unclear. Now, Trump has himself flouted international law with the bombings in Iran.

So far, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has been saying the right things. He has promised his endgame is our national interest, to protect our sovereignty, and to resist pressure from Trump and his team to more than double our defence budget from the projected 2.3 per cent of gross domestic product. That’s despite the apparent willingness of Albanese’s deputy and defence minister, Richard Marles, to offer more to the US and suck up to the Trump agenda. He risks becoming known as “the minister for the Pentagon”.

Our federal opposition still apparently has little to offer by way of constructive contributions, beyond its vague commitment at the last election to increase defence spending by some $21 billion. Its only recent input has been to criticise Albanese for turning down the invitation to the recent NATO meeting.

The Coalition seems to have learnt little from being smashed at the last election, as revealed by shadow defence minister Angus Taylor’s recent waffling appearance on weekend television. While obviously hoping to emphasise his leadership credentials, he failed to provide any real detail of the Coalition’s defence strategy and how it would fund or spend the promised increase in budget, beyond a recruitment drive and more repairs to naval ships. He simply repeated the vacuous commitment to release all policies with implementation detail and funding by the time of the next election. Seriously? Where have I heard that before?

The bottom line for the opposition seems to be the simplistic view that Australia needs to increase defence spending to the level proposed by the Trump administration in order to secure its backing should this country come under attack.

Emeritus professor of strategic studies at the Australian National University Hugh White has addressed this specific issue in a recent comment piece in this paper. In the absence of specific identified threats to our security, White refers to the way in which our politicians “hint darkly at China’s growing military power and ambition, and its threats to Taiwan. We are left to join the dots… China’s threat to Taiwan threatens Australia.”

As White points out, “Beijing’s subjugation of Taiwan would be a tragedy, but it would not threaten our security directly. What would threaten our security is deciding to go to war with China alongside the US to defend Taiwan.” As I have stated several times in this column, we should emphasise to the US that we have no interest in joining another American folly, this time in Taiwan. It is a major weakness of the AUKUS deal that it carries this assumption in relation to the use of our submarines – if they are ever delivered – as part of any US response to China invading Taiwan. As White notes, “There would be no strategic gain or moral merit in following our ally into yet another massively mistaken adventure, like Iraq or Afghanistan but a thousand times more costly.”

White also argues quite persuasively that “a much better and more compelling reason to increase our defence spending is the very high likelihood that within a few decades, and perhaps much sooner, the US will withdraw strategically from Asia and abandon its alliance with Australia”.

Albanese and Treasurer Jim Chalmers both emphasise they have established a rolling Defence Strategic Review process that is updated every couple of years, and the next review is due in 2026. These reviews of our strategic circumstances provide the basis for spending decisions on defence, as they should. This is the way our sovereign government meets its responsibilities – considered processes, not responding to bullying to achieve some meaningless commitment for spending relative to GDP set by some other country’s whim or delusion.

Marles recently said Australians should expect more US troops on our soil. Clearly the government needs to make a firm stand that we don’t exist as a nation to be picked off by the US to meet its perceived “force posture” needs, given our strategic locational advantages as a staging base for potential US operations into Asia, and the Indian and Pacific oceans. The fact is we have already given much by way of troop deployments, bases and intelligence gathering via Pine Gap, with commitments that include: the agreement struck by former prime minister Julia Gillard with then president Barack Obama to base US marines in Darwin on a rotational basis; the Harold E. Holt naval communications station and the Sterling base – both in Western Australia – to house and service US submarines; and US access to RAAF Base Tindal near Katherine in the Northern Territory.

These commitments to the US military machine carry significant security risks for our nation, putting us up in lights as a potential target for aggression or retaliation. We certainly shouldn’t need to offer more in terms of additional access for the US to our bases and certainly should not have to allow the US to construct its own bases in our country.

Given the widespread disquiet across Australia about Trump and concerns about the wisdom of the $368 billion deal for nuclear submarines – and about the real advantages of our alliance with the US, more generally – it seems only sensible that our government conducts a complete review of these matters from the point of view of our longer-term national interests.

In a recent interview on the Latika Takes podcast, Marles claimed the US presence in Australia made us safer, while admitting that the government has been on “a journey … over the last few years” with the previous and current US administrations. He went on to say “it’s important that we are very clear with the Australian public” and to explain that “what we are seeking to do here is to build capability in Australia, which in turn contributes to balance and stability and ultimately the peace of the regions in which we live”.

His most credible point was the need for transparency. He and other politicians are too quick to downplay or deny that the US is mainly motivated by a desire to prepare for combat with China on some Asian front, and to use us as a staging base.

In particular, the Australian public should be well informed about the role Pine Gap plays in global intelligence gathering. For example, was its intelligence used by the US and the Israelis in relation to the war against Hamas in Gaza, or the various actions in Iran? Has our intelligence played a role in the Ukraine war and is it the “intelligence eyes” on China on behalf of the US?

The government needs to spell this out in detail. I seriously doubt most Australians would be happy to be acquiescing to US strategy in all of the above contexts. At best we would be little better than “cannon fodder” and a serious risk as a target for retaliation. So much for our sovereignty.

The Albanese government has clearly been careful not to offend Trump and his administration, hoping to avoid more difficulties in getting the meetings it wants with the president and his officials. All nations witnessed Trump’s tirade against Spain for not committing to defence spending increases to match the other NATO countries, and his threats to hit the country with penalty tariffs – threats that again reveal Trump’s lack of understanding about how tariffs work.

Albanese clearly felt compelled to support the Trump bombing raid on Iran, despite its lack of backing by congress and the United Nations. The prime minister’s stance was also totally inconsistent with the attitudes of Labor – and indeed his own position in opposing the US invasion of Iraq in 2003. The US action makes a mockery of our sustained defence of the international rules-based order, which President Trump has seemed determined to undermine in his trade and foreign policies, but which is so fundamental to what we believe and aspire to as a nation.

The best we can hope for in all of this is for Albanese to hang tough in our national interests. He must continue to defend our sovereign right to determine our own defence strategy and not be swayed by the self-interest and bullying of an increasingly erratic superpower.

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