Defence is now front and centre of the election campaign after the Opposition promised to boost Australia’s military by 21 billion dollars by 20-30. The pledge would increase Australia’s defence spending from 2 to 2 and half per cent of g-d-p going above and beyond Labor’s commitment.
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00:00Here in Perth, Liberal leader Peter Dutton has officially announced that under a coalition government,
00:07defence spending would be boosted by $21 billion.
00:11What that means in terms of GDP is it would go from where it's currently at at around 2% of GDP to 2.5% in five years time.
00:22The goal is then within a decade to see that rise to 3%.
00:26That's something that the Trump administration has been calling on.
00:30Now for comparison, Labor is promising to boost defence spending as a portion of GDP to 2.3% in the early 2030s.
00:41Now a big question that Mr Dutton was asked here today is about exactly how he would pay for this extra $21 billion.
00:49He did point to Labor's tax cuts saying that a coalition government would look to repeal that
00:55and that would help to pay for some of this defence spending.
00:59Now exactly what it is going towards, there were some details around that.
01:04More F-35 fighter jets, that's something that's already been announced.
01:08And then extra capabilities like drones.
01:10But we are still expecting some more detail about exactly what all this money would go towards.
01:16But Peter Dutton did also talk about the precarious period of time.
01:20We need to keep our country safe and if we're to preserve peace and stability in our region,
01:26if we're to be a good ally with our partners, then Australia needs to invest in defence.
01:31As defence minister, I was incredibly proud of the work that we did around AUKUS in particular.
01:36The money that we put into Red Spice, which helped defend us against cyber security attacks,
01:41attacks on our banking systems, on infrastructure, critical infrastructure like water and sewerage.
01:47And we need to make sure that whatever confronts us over the course of the coming decades, we can stare down.
01:54Peter Dutton there setting the scene for why he believes this extra spending is so needed.