Much has been made about Labor’s expenditure on defence in 2012-13, as a percentage of GDP, as being the lowest since 1938. To use defence spending as a percentage of GDP to gauge the level of a government’s security, is a misleading variable. When the wealth of a country grows, expenditure on defence may actually increase in real terms, while as a percentage of GDP, it may fall.

If we use this singular component of measurement then John Howard’s defence spending of 1.62% of GDP in 2002-3, was at that point, the lowest since 1938. When Howard left in 2007, defence spending was at 1.78% of GDP. During the GFC when the economy slowed down, Labor’s defence spending under Kevin Rudd, as a percentage of GDP, rose to 1.93%. As the country began to climb out of the worst effects of the GFC, expenditure as a percentage of GDP fell by 2012-13 to 1.6% of GDP under Julia Gillard.

To put that in context, Australia’s expenditure on a per capita basis remained superior to any of our neighbours in the region and compared favourably with that of Canada, Italy and Germany. Also bear in mind that was in the relatively benign world of Hu Jintao, a far cry from today’s entrenched dictatorship of Xi Jinping.

More Queensland bashing from Murdoch

A recent Courier Mail headline, “No school, it’s cloudy”, drips with sarcasm. Terminology evoking ‘chaos’, ‘confusion’ and ‘havoc’ proliferates. Later we read “the decision to close schools was based on advice from police and state disaster coordination.” No prizes though, for guessing who was in the firing line.
When we were hit with more than 700 millimetres of rain in 72 hours, the Queensland premier-bashing game was once again in evidence. This time Annastacia Palaszczuk hadn’t predicted the “rain bomb”. Nor, for that matter, had the Bureau of Meteorology.

I can’t help but smell a rat. It reeks of a desperate, orchestrated attempt to save the furniture in Queensland for Scott Morrison at the upcoming federal election by diverting attention from his last 3 years of miscalculations on the fires, the pandemic and aged care. So why not just turn the blow torch on Labor in Queensland?

A recent Courier Mail editorial (26 Feb) urges us to focus on economic issues as we decide which party we’ll choose at the next election.

The latest budget update from December shows the deficit will total $99 billion this fiscal year, $99 billion in the next, and $85 billion the year after. Even four years from now, the deficit is still expected to top $50 billion, and Commonwealth net debt is set to soon blow past $1 trillion.

We know that both the Prime Minister and Josh Frydenberg are familiar with the treasury portfolio, but both contributed to doubling the deficit even before the pandemic. Anthony Albanese is accused of lacking fiscal experience even though he has not professed any expertise in that area. He relies for that on shadow treasurer Jim Chalmers, whose credentials and qualifications are well known.

We are also urged not to allow the election campaign to be overshadowed by “trite, superficial distractions”. Well, we cannot pretend that rorts on a mega-scale did not happen. We cannot ignore the acceleration of deaths from COVID-19 this year and the terrible toll it has taken on people in aged care.

We cannot ignore how the political debate on security has been turned to divide parties on ideological grounds. We are all Australians, treasuring our democracy, our sovereignty and our way of life.