Appropriation Bill (No. 1) 2025-2026
Mr TAYLOR (Hume) (18:16): I agree with the last speaker, that Australia does face the most dangerous strategic environment since the Second World War. There is no doubt that conflict is spreading. We've seen it in Ukraine.
We've seen it in the Middle East. But we are also seeing the biggest military build-up in peacetime in history to the north of us by the Chinese Communist Party. At a time like this, military preparedness, military capability, a strong ADF and strong alliances are more important than at any time since the Second World War.
The sad reality is that this government is not funding our ADF to the level it needs to be funded. We need the preparedness, we need the agility, we need the sovereignty and we need the people necessary to make sure that we are able to deter war, to deter conflict—which is its purpose; it's to achieve peace in our region on a lasting basis. But you can only do that with strength, and right now we are not seeing the strength in the funding applied to our ADF in this country.
When you open Budget Paper No. 2, the Defence portfolio's total payments line shows that the additional spending in this budget versus the last one is three—not $3 billion but $3 million. They're crowing about $3 million. What they are doing at a time when we are investing in a massive and incredibly important new alliance, the AUKUS alliance, is gutting the rest of the Defence Force to partially fund the AUKUS agreement, and that is simply not good enough.
This is doing a disservice to every single Australian who expects our Defence Force to be in the position it needs to be in. This is not a criticism of the people in our ADF. They are marvellous and magnificent people.
But they are not being properly funded by this government. You see, the minister is playing mathematical tricks on this. What we're seeing from the government when it comes to funding is not proper funding; its creative accounting.
What they've decided to do to get their defence spending up is change the definition of defence spending. They've decided that, for the first time, they're going to include veterans expenditure in the defence spend. Then they can go to the Americans and say: 'It's alright.
We've upped our defence expenditure.' Well, this is worse than creative accounting. This is Marles mathematics. This is absolutely unacceptable when it comes to making sure that we are in the position we need to be in at a time like this.
The truth is that Marles mathematics, creative accounting, will not defend this nation. What will defend this nation is proper funding, at at least three per cent of GDP; preparedness; agility; making sure we're getting the spending we need in our drone and counterdrone capability; integrated air missile defence systems; and hardening of the bases. There's big talk about this, but, when you actually look at the numbers, they're way short of where they need to be.
Whether it's Henderson, Stirling, Osborne or Tindal, they need serious funding that is not yet there in the budget. We all pay a price for that. Deterrence is achieved through strength.
There is no strength in creative accounting. There is no strength in changing the definition of defence spending. The strength comes from investing in what is really needed at this time.
Right at the heart of this is the importance of our alliances. It is good to see this government coming to an agreement with the PNG government, but we need to do far, far more than that. Vanuatu—what happened?
It's not there. The US? Well, I'm looking forward to this face-to-face meeting.
It has taken way too long. We've seen three meetings between the Prime Minister and the general secretary of the Chinese Communist Party but none with the leader of the free world. We need this government to get serious about making sure we have a properly funded Defence Force.
We have the agreements in place. We have the relationships necessary to ensure that we are able to deter conflict in our region and achieve peace through strength.