Mr Albanese has two choices on Australian defence spending as he prepares to meet US President Donald Trump in New York (hopefully, perhaps).  He can increase Australia’s defence budget from its current 2 per cent share of GDP to somewhere around the 3.5 per cent of GDP America’s European allies have—or he can try to make Australia’s defence budget LOOK bigglier than it is.

Judged by recent media releases and statements from Mr Albanese and his deputy, Richard Marles, Mr Albanese appears to have chosen option 2 and is using the tried and tested ‘announceables’ method to achieve his goal.  

Announceables are ideas and messages that sound grand and generally look huge but turn out to have very little actual content. They are usually missing things like detail, timelines for action, clear outcomes, actual cash to fund them, and firm plans for when the thing being ‘announced’ will actually happen.  Think big impressionistic paintings, not realistic landscapes.

The perfect announceable is one that can be used again and again without the need for anything to happen while the person announcing it is in the job.

And an announceable must never be confused with a deliverable – because deliverables are things that do actually need to be done, and usually by a given time.

Deliverables are politically dangerous because they involve measurable commitments and so can have the nasty effect of making the politician who unwittingly agrees to one accountable for results.

So, in the days before Mr Albanese jets off to New York for his encounter with The Donald, we’ve had two biggly defence announceables from the Albanese Government and some novel Australian forms of statistical massage around defence spending. 

The first announcement is a $1.7 billion commitment to buy uncrewed Ghost Shark submarines from the US company Anduril.  Here at home, the government has emphasised these will be built in Anduril’s Australian facility. But when it comes time to talk to Team Trump, it’s probably going to be emphasised that Anduril is owned and run by an ardent Trump supporting American tech billionaire, Lucky Palmer.   

Details were sketchy.  Mr Richard Marles was photographed alongside B2, the second developmental prototype of the Ghost Shark, but we’re told ‘dozens’ of the real thing will be in service with the Australian Navy in the next few years, maybe even starting in 2026.

How much of that comes to pass doesn’t matter all that much. The message: Australia is doing great stuff in the uncrewed undersea world and undersea is where AUKUS happens.  Even better it’s got a US brand all over it.

But the Anduril announceable was detail heavy small beer compared to the $12 billion Mr Albanese told us the Government was pumping into the Henderson Maritime Precinct. Apparently this is to build maintenance facilities for AUKUS submarines and to deliver Army landing craft and navy frigates.  $12 billion is the type of number that has the ‘wow’ factor that worked so well in Utopia, an Australian TV send up of politics Canberra-style.

The Henderson Maritime Precinct was the ideal announceable for the previous Coalition government and it did sterling service for the Albanese Government in its first term. It’s still giving and giving today.

Back in 2017, then defence minister Christopher Pyne told us about the Turnbull Government’s ‘unwavering commitment’ to ‘the continuous building of naval vessels in Australia, investing ‘around $90 billion’ for this, with ‘a massive injection of funds – $1.3 billion – to develop vital infrastructure in the nations’ shipyards’.  The Henderson Precinct was the place for a chunk of this investment.  But nothing happened.

7 years on, in December 2024, the Henderson announceable was a centrepiece for the Albanese Government’s rewarmed “Plan for continuous Naval Shipbuilding and Sustainment”. Instead of Mr Turnbull’s mere $90 billion, Mr Albanese promised a ‘record investment of up to $159 billion over the next decade’ (‘up to’ is probably doing a lot of work here).

Henderson was announced as the place for ‘development of a Commonwealth-owned Defence Precinct at Henderson, supporting contingency docking and depot-level maintenance of nuclear-powered submarines, as well as the construction of Army landing craft and major surface combatants’.

Since then, though, we’ve discovered that nothing is happening soon or fast.  Defence is spending $127 million on pre feasibility, feasibility and concept studies for the new Precinct but these won’t be finished until sometime in 2027. 

And in their recent statement, amongst the $12 billion hoopla, Mr Marles and the PM let slip that not only are the designs for any of the facilities at Henderson yet to be done, but underpinning issues like the ‘delivery models, including the opportunity for private funding models,’ are yet to be determined (ie. How the thing will be paid for and by whom, and how anything will be done is all still in play….).

Let’s be clear: despite Mr Albanese talking up the government’s achievements, the Government’s $12 billion ‘commitment’ to build new facilities for submarine maintenance and other work is not ‘a significant downpayment for the defence precinct’.  It exists only on a government spreadsheet in the bowels of the Finance department and in the PM’s press release.

In the necessary national debate over how much Australia is actually spending on our defence, to give an idea of scale and significance, $12 billion is about 1.5 per cent – or 3/200ths – of Australia’s defence budget over the next ten years. So, it doesn’t even register on, let alone move, the dial of Australia’s spend.

It’s also not an ‘early commitment of funding’ in any sense that an Australian bank , company or accountant would understand.  And it is not an ‘initial investment that will underpin delivery’ of anything.  It is vapourware that is subject to myriad internal government processes and decisions that can drag out into the pretty distant future.

It is, however, a very useful announceable – again – as Mr Albanese heads to the US and wants to convince President Trump Australia is all in on defence and the AUKUS subs plan.

Assuming the feasibility and concept studies finish up in 2027, Defence procurement efforts can’t start until then.  And public works of any major scale in Australia take years of detailed planning and Federal, state and local government process and consultation, on top of years of defence tendering and tender evaluation before contracts are awarded and any actual physical construction begins. 

That’s true for things that are not about handling top secret submarines with reactors containing highly enriched uranium, which will require novel build standards and materials to be used in Australia.

So, the idea that the Henderson precinct will be up and ready to maintain US, Australian or UK nuclear submarine anytime before the late 2030s looks highly aspirational. 

And there’s more.  It turns out that the real news about Henderson is that the Government has ‘early independent planning and advice indicating the Henderson Precinct will require investment in the order of $25 billion over the decade’. In other words, ‘committing’ $12 billion means the Government is leaving a funding hole of $13 billion or more in its grand plans.  

None of this will matter for the next couple of weeks. The afterglow of the big announcement only has to last until Mr Albanese gets on the plane back home from his meetings in New York. 

In a parallel to our Australian situation, former Lithuanian minister for foreign affairs Gabrielius Landsbergis has just written a scathing article – “White Lies Won’t Work Forever” – calling out European leaders for pretending they are acting with decision and resolve on defence while doing little. As he observes, “Kicking the can down the road is a viable strategy if paired with strong statements and gestures in the right direction.” Governments find this “much cheaper politically and financially.”

Given Mr Albanese’s continued resolve to not increase Australia’s defence budget to anywhere near even 2.5 per cent of GDP in face of the dawning realisation that his government’s defence plans can’t fit into the budget he’s allocated, you have to admire his team’s efforts to at least make that budget look bigglier.

There’s still time for other rabbits to be pulled out of other hats to pump up the figures even more.  How about adding in the Veterans’ Affairs budget to the Defence figure, and pretending that big infrastructure projects like Inland Rail or Victoria’s Big Build are all for defence purposes?  What about adding in the medical research reactor at Lucas Heights?

I think I may be behind the curve here.  Richard Marles has already got the creative accountants at work to shift the boundaries of what he claims is the defence budget.  He’s apparently already discovered enough non-Defence stocking fillers to tell us (and Donald Trump) we’re already spending 2.8 per cent of GDP on defence. And the delicious part of this story for his friend the Treasurer is that he’s achieved this amazing success without putting any more real dollars into Australia’s military.  

Authoritarians and populists know this technique well: if an official number is causing you discomfort, move the goalposts and change it – that’s routine on youth unemployment and growth statistics out of Beijing, but it’s disturbing to see this trend here. Instead of taking our nation’s security seriously, we’re engaging in new forms of statistical massage.

The Utopia comedy series finished in 2019. But political comedy and performance keep rolling in the land of Australia’s defence.