Deputy PM Richard Marles bites back at criticism of Defence spending

In a seldom-seen fracture of rock-solid composure from the Minister for Defence, Marles spoke out against the media’s “pretty scant relationship with the truth”, during a press conference with Chief of the Royal Australian Navy Vice Admiral Mark Hammond at the Indo Pacific Sea Power Conference earlier this month.

The minister’s return serve was prompted by scepticism directed at the federal government throughout this year, whether Australia was committed to funding the Australian Defence Force and lifting the national Defence budget beyond 2 per cent GDP for defence.

The government previously announced they had achieved the balancing act of providing the first federal budget surplus in 15 years earlier this year, alongside funding commitments to the AUKUS agreement and recommendations brought forward by the newly released Defence Strategic Review.

“The comments that we see in the media today are just not true. They’re not true. And they really, they’re a pretty scant relationship to the truth,” he said at the conference.

“Fact of the matter is that since coming to power, we have not only committed and fulfilled the commitment of maintaining Defence spending on the growth trajectory that we inherited from the former government. We’ve increased it by 10 per cent, whereas the former government had Defence spending go to 2.1 per cent of GDP in 2032, we have now put Defence spending on a pathway to 2.3 per cent of GDP.

“There is a significant growth in Defence spending above the growth level that we inherited, even above the growth level that we committed to at the last election. So the comments that have been made are just plain wrong.”

Minister Marles said the federal government is keen to get the Defence budget back in order after languishing under the previous government.

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“The fact of the matter is that when we came to power, a full quarter of what Defence was expected to procure in its future, there was no money for. And that’s because the former government was in the habit of announcing big programs without allocating any money to them. Or certainly not the money needed to provide for those programs,” he said.

“We had the Hunter program over time, over budget. Offshore patrol vessels over time, over budget. A revolving door of ministers which led to a lost decade in terms of our submarine future capability which gave rise to a capability gap which we have now filled.

“So that is the facts of what we inherited and the facts of what we are now doing. We are properly funding the program for Australia acquiring nuclear-powered submarines. Guided weapons so that we have a long-range strike capability, we’ve doubled the funding for that so that we actually are putting that on a meaningful trajectory where we will be manufacturing missiles in this country in two years’ time, which is certainly not what was on the cards previously. So the statements that are made are wrong.

“There are difficult decisions that we have made and there are difficult decisions that we have made because we want to have a focused Defence Force which has the capacity to engage in impactful projection.

“Now there was no serious strategic thinking about what our Defence Force was meant to do for a decade. And in focusing our Defence Force there are difficult decisions, and we make no apologies for that. But the option is to let our Defence Force languish as it had been prior to us taking government. We are getting the Defence budget back in order. We are funding well beyond what we inherited. And we are giving the Defence force the focus [it] needs.”

Minister Marles also hit out at claims that the federal government had made the wrong decision by cutting the number of infantry fighting vehicles in the LAND 400 project from 450 to 129.

“We did that because there was no world in which Australia would be able to take 450 infantry fighting vehicles beyond our shores,” he said.

“We have made really clear what our strategic intent here is. We need to be able to project. We were not going to be protecting with those infantry fighting vehicles.

“The fact of the matter is, we need a force which is able to project and we make no apologies for the decisions that we’ve made there.

“We’ve also got new capabilities. We are properly funding long-range strike. We are standing up a long-range strike brigade for the first time, which we based in Adelaide, where our test ranges are, where our defence industry is. It’s a really significant step forward in terms of the lethality and the potency of the Australian Army, and it comes from doing the strategic thinking.

“Now there are, as I say, difficult decisions, and when you make a difficult decision, you’ll always find somebody who will make a complaint about it. But we are not afraid of that because the fact of the matter is, we have a decade of no decisions being made at all and Australia has faced a 10-year capability gap as a result of that.”

During the same press conference, VADM Hammond officially ruled out deck upgrades for the Canberra Class landing helicopter dock to allow deployment of F-35 joint strike fighter aircraft.

“It’s not something I’m looking at,” he said.