Richard Marles’ spray against think tanks, former generals and ‘washed-up bureaucrats’ was revealing

Richard Marles doesn’t like criticisms about his record as defence minister and the funding he is capable — or not — of delivering for Australia’s security under his friend and ally, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese.

The Defence Minister’s spray against think tanks, former generals and “washed-up bureaucrats” who have urged him to raise Australia’s defence spending sooner and faster was as unbecoming as it was revealing.

“Quite frankly, a lot of this commentary is worthless,” Mr Marles told the National Press Club in Canberra.

“Because increases in defence spending do not happen as a result of think tanks, or former generals, or washed-up bureaucrats. It happens by winning arguments around the ERC (expenditure review committee) table where every dollar is hard-fought as it should be.”

This was not an off-the-cuff response to a question but a scripted part of his speech, and it featured high up.

He should swap his glass jaw for a little Teflon coating, because his headline announcement, that Australia will boost its defence spending to 3 per cent of GDP in seven years looks like catch-up, on delay.

At last we have our answer for how Prime Minister Anthony Albanese scored his free pass from Donald Trump on defence spending last year during his White House visit.

Until now, the accepted measure has been closer to 2 per cent of GDP. This was well below the 3.5 per cent of GDP that the United States Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth had publicly requested last year.

So notionally, Australia should have been in line for a NATO-style bollocking from Mr Trump when he met Mr Albanese for their first face-to-face bilateral meeting last year.

But it never happened. Instead, Mr Trump said: “I’d always like more, but they (Australia) have to do what they have to do. You can only do so much. I think they’ve been great.”

The Australian Government successfully persuaded key figures in the Trump Administration that if you calculated Australia’s spending on security in the same way that NATO members do, to include military pensions, payments to veterans and so on, Australia’s defence spending was much higher.

Mr Marles put it at 2.8 per cent of GDP during his press club speech in Canberra.

And it was no accident that a $12 billion upgrade to Henderson shipyards in Western Australia, which will support AUKUS, was announced just before Mr Albanese’s dash to Washington DC, something Mr Trump lauded as “tremendous” at the time.

By adopting the NATO way of calculating defence spending to take Australia’s headline rate higher, the Government should now be measured against benchmark. But here, the comparison leaves Labor in a dim light.

If current defence spending is 2.8 per cent now, an increase to 3 per cent by 2033 constitutes an increase of 0.2 per cent over seven years.

NATO countries have pledged to reach 3.5 per cent by 2035. On Labor’s trajectory, this would leave them needing to make up 0.5 per cent of GDP, or more than double the next seven years of spending, between 2033 and 2035.

Indeed, the latest NATO data shows that Poland, Lithuania and Latvia are exceeding 3.5 per cent as of today, while Estonia, Norway, the US, and Denmark are all spending more than 3 per cent today.

It is no surprise that so many of the countries that have experience with Russian imperialism are the biggest spenders.

The question for Australia is whether it can afford to take seven years to increase the budget by another 0.2 per cent of GDP or whether it should be a little more Polish and muscle up now.

The 2026 National Defence Strategy which informs budgetary decisions, suggests so as it presents a bleak picture.

“The world has entered a new and more dangerous age,” the Defence Strategic Review said.

“We have entered a more dangerous and unpredictable era, characterised by a more overt struggle among states where thresholds against the use of force are being eroded. This will elevate risks to Australia’s security and prosperity over the coming decade.

“Intense competition between major powers — principally the United States and China — will be an enduring feature of our strategic environment.

“The net effect is that Australia will face elevated levels of geopolitical risk over the coming decade and our exposure to force projection and military coercion will reach levels not seen since the Second World War.”

Ordinary Australians looking at the cost of filling up the tank don’t need a bureaucratic warning to know that their economic security has never felt more vulnerable and hostage to the whims of individual world leaders.

The United States, which promised not to get involved in overseas forever wars, has reverted to type and begun a war against its decades-long adversary, Iran.

Having failed to prosecute the initial campaign successfully, the US is now having a second go with its blockade of the Strait of Hormuz, a tactic aimed at forcing the Iranians to stop denying the flow of oil through the waterway and holding the global economy hostage.

The war in Iran has exposed several home truths that apply to Australia. This Administration is capable of starting wars that it expressly stated it wouldn’t. It will blame allies when things go wrong. And as the experience of the Gulf countries shows, hosting joint US bases makes you a target, and the US is not necessarily capable or willing to defend them.

Finally, smaller states like Iran and Ukraine have both shown they can take on bigger countries with cheaper, non-traditional forms of warfare, most notably through the use of drones.

US support for the Australian alliance is priced in the Defence Strategic Review, something that cannot necessarily be guaranteed.

China has circumnavigated the country with a naval flotilla in the time that the Albanese government has been in power and “stabilised” the relationship.

Next year, the window opens when China’s President Xi Jinping has told his military to be ready and able to take control of Taiwan if necessary.

This does not necessarily mean an invasion and conflict is inevitable; China will naturally prefer to control Taiwan through non-military means, like intimidation, coercion, infiltration and influence over Taiwanese politics.

Xi will have noted that Putin and Trump have started wars and found them difficult to bring to an end. But it is also possible that the visible rift between Trump and allies, the strategic incoherence of this White House, and the deployment of military resources from the Indo-Pacific to the Middle East, also serve as an incentive.

So, how is the Albanese government preparing the country to cope with these deteriorating conditions?

The headline numbers announced are good. $53 billion over the next 10 years, $14 billion in the next four. But what will this buy us and by when?

The National Defence Strategy defined three epochs. Over the next two years, the military will focus on what can be done now with critical capabilities coming online before 2030.

It is not until this time next decade that the government predicts the Australian Defence Force will be “fit for purpose”.

AUKUS continues to gobble up the budget. Investment in the army and air force will rise by 24 per cent from two years ago and 11 per cent for the navy, excluding AUKUS. Spending on missiles will double.

But the amount ploughed into acquiring nuclear–powered submarines increases by 71 per cent.

The government’s pledges on building resilience and missile defences and ordnance stockpiles are the most welcome new promises.

But they are light on detail. Mr Marles could not say when hypersonic missiles, being developed under AUKUS Pillar II will come online.

“Mr Marles correctly noted that the trends of an insecure world were there years ago. And more should have been done.

But those trends have sharpened into reality since 2022 and we have war in Europe, war in Middle East and increasing tension in our region including an unprecedented military build up by China,” Justin Bassi, Executive Director of the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, one of the think tanks the Deputy Prime Minister was likely referencing in his speech.

“That reality means more investment is required and more urgently, in areas such as integrated air and missile defence, preparedness of current forces, warstocks and civil defences.

“While all countries face budget constraints, investing in defence and security now will help deter adversaries and prepare Australia for crises so that we avoid having to spend even more later, which has to be the lesson of the conflicts in Europe and the Middle East.”

Labor’s defence strategy is banking on being ready in ten years time. It needs to show it can scale up fast, should that bet prove to be wrong.