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Opposition Leader Anthony Albanese has promised that Labor would implement Australia’s first Defence Posture Review in eight years.
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The review will include a holistic analysis on the nation's future strategic environment, how domestic issues will impact Defence and where to best place ADF assets.
“The 2020 Strategic Update warned of the rapidly changing circumstances in our region, and stressed that a 10-year strategic warning time for a major conventional attack against Australia is no longer an appropriate basis for defence planning,” a release from Albanese’s office read.
“Reduced warning times mean defence plans can no longer assume Australia will have time to gradually adjust military capability and preparedness in response to emerging challenges.”
Albanese’s statement went as far as to suggest that the Coalition ignored defence posture the entire time they’ve been in government.
“After six defence ministers in eight long years, the government has been neglecting planning on posture, despite deteriorating strategic circumstances,” it said.
Earlier this month, Labor’s shadow minister for defence industry Matt Keogh attacked perceived government inefficiencies in the defence industry in an opinion piece submitted to Defence Connect.
“While the urgency of the ‘drums of war’ rhetoric and the deteriorating geostrategic situation increases, our major shipbuilding projects are confirming further and further delays, there is still no clarity on the full nature of the Collins Life-of-Type Extension (LoTE) project, no decision on the location of the LOTE and Collins full-cycle docking (FCD) work from 2026 onwards,” Keogh wrote.
“Getting all this back on track should be a task that Defence engages local Australian industry on as an integral partner. Indeed, local defence industry should be seen less as a critical enabler of defence capability (though it is) and more as its own domain of capability to work with all the other domains and necessary to ensure the breadth and depth of defence operational success.”
[Related: We need clarity and support in Aussie defence industry]
