Why didn’t Richard Marles explain to Donald Trump and the other 31 leaders of NATO nations that they don’t need to invest more in their nations’ defence to deal with an aggressive Russia enabled by China? Instead, they only need to focus on the quality of their existing 2 per cent of GDP spend.

Surely they would be delighted to know that the actual amount of money they allocate to their military is a mere distraction.

I suspect the reason Mr Marles kept this theory to himself is because he knows it’s ridiculous. It’s a manoeuvre that can justify sitting on his hands while our nation faces dangerous times. 

Politicians are used to using arguments of convenience to get through their days and avoid uncomfortable facts, but when it comes to Australia’s security, we’ve reached new high points of sophistry and avoidance.

Unlike our own leader Mr Albanese and his deputy Richard Marles, NATO leaders apparently do think the headline budget for defence matters.  That’s why the national leaders of this 32 nation grouping have just agreed to lift defence spending from 2 per cent of GDP to 5 per cent (made up of 3.5 per cent on defence and another 1.5 per cent on defence-related investments like roads and bridges that can support heavy military equipment).

Marles must also have known that the Spanish prime minister Pedro Sanchez had been trying out the other line on defence spending that the Albanese government uses here at home to hide the fact they’re leaving our military short. 

Sanchez had tried to convince other European leaders that 2.1 per cent of GDP on defence was enough because Spain knew the capabilities it needed and this determined their spend. Sound familiar? Except that we’re not even matching Spain, we’re stuck at 2 per cent (and Spain isn’t trying to afford nuclear submarines in their budget).

The reaction to this ploy by the Spanish leader in Europe was best captured by an official who simply said “I have no words to express my disgust”.

So, no surprise Marles would have been delighted to be squashed up in the back corner of the formal leaders’ photo well out of the way. He must have been even more delighted to not have to meet Donald Trump or any other senior US administration figure and be forced into a serious conversation.

Reacting to the Spanish government’s position, Trump has since said he’s considering doubling US tariffs on Spain to shift their thinking.

One other point on the ‘we fund the capabilities we need rather than setting some arbitrary top line number’ nonsense from our government.  The government’s own strategic review, by Angus Houston and Stephen Smith, recommended a list of capabilities Australia’s military needed and quick as a flash, the government didn’t fund them.  They set an arbitrary top line budget – 2 per cent of GDP – and cancelled plans the review supported on key systems like air and missile defence and support ships to let our Navy operate at range. 

The hypocrisy is so thick it’s getting hard to breathe.

Now, what about Marles’ new manoeuvre – the money you budget to spend isn’t what matters, it’s the quality of how you spend it?  I tried that out at home, but my partner told me our budget was what determined what we can and can’t buy. 

And Josef Stalin famously said ‘Quantity has a quality all its own’. That’s still true. 

But beyond that, the way the Australian Defence organisation spends the $59 billion taxpayers are giving it annually is wasteful and profligate.  The last thing it could be described as is quality.

So, we’re in the worst of worlds: not spending enough and spending what we do have badly.

In international defence circles, the extravagance and delay in Australia’s acquisition of 3 Hunter class frigates ranks near the top of scandal-plagued defence programs.  The frigates were chosen back in 2018, but it’s taking until 2032 for the first ship to be delivered to the Navy.  And each ship is costing $9 billion (our 3 better armed air warfare destroyers cost less than $3 billion each).

The Hunter frigates are so lightly armed that when we have the first three sometime in the late 2030s, they would all be outgunned and overmatched by the single Chinese cruiser that circumnavigated Australia earlier this year. 

The Americans are thinking about cancelling their own frigate program that’s buying Constellation class ships similar to our Hunters because it’s taking 9 years to get the first ship (not 14 years like us) and each ship is costing $A1.8 billion (not $9 billion).

The Americans think this is outrageously delayed and expensive, but our Navy’s Hunter program makes it look like a beacon of efficiency.  Our Navy has more admirals than it does warships – and Admirals are meant to command fleets.

The Hunter frigates are Faberge egg level of luxurious self indulgence.  And those Faberge eggs were the high point of extravagance and decay in the Russian empire of the czars on its way to being toppled by the Russian Revolution.  If only the same was in prospect in the halls of Defence Headquarters in Canberra, without the violence.

One other example from a completely different part of our Defence organisation shows the Hunter scandal is not a lonely phenomenon. Back in 2020, the then Morrison government’s Force Structure Update said that being able to build at least some of the missiles our military would need in time of war was an urgent and essential thing and instructed Defence to act. 

Defence responded, rapidly forming a new internal bureaucratic outfit within Defence it called the Guided Weapons and Explosive Ordnance enterprise.  Five years on its large staff has however, not proven to be terribly enterprising. 

There is one piece of good news: they have managed to give one company a contract to build a missile factory in Newcastle.

But apart from that, the primary other outcome from what must be a multi-million dollar staff bill so far seems to be paying $320 million and taking 5 years to ‘evaluate and develop the feasibility of select Australian companies to manufacture components’ for Lockheed Martin’s short range land attack missile.

It’s also funding a study about where a large shed – grandly named the Australian Weapons Manufacturing Complex – might eventually be located to assemble these American-made missiles (the government has talked about this as ‘production’).

Do we need no doubt hundreds of people in a new organisation within the already bloated Defence organisation to sign contracts with companies?  Everything it is doing looks just like business as usual for Defence before it even existed. And can we afford to be so sleepy about an essential input for our military that we know they will run out of in weeks if there is a war?

Plenty of other nations get much better value for what they spend on defence.  Finland, Norway, Singapore, Poland and South Korea are examples, let alone Ukraine and Israel.  So, change is possible.

The money Defence is getting is delivering a weaker military right at the time Australia needs a stronger one. 

The huge expense of the very slow projects the government is allowing Defence to spend our taxpayer funds on – Hunter frigates and nuclear powered submarines – is sucking all the money out of the rest of our force and doing nothing for our security for the next 15 years.

This is what Richard Marles describes as doing what is necessary to ‘meet the strategic moment’. 

Australia deserves better from our government and our defence bureaucracy. And so do the men and women of our defence force.

This article was first published by Sky Digital.