Government cries poor – but there’s always money for war
Fifty billion dollars. That’s what the Turnbull government has just set aside in its new Defence White Paper to pay for the purchase of 12 “regionally superior” submarines.
But that’s just the beginning. Up to $100 billion will be needed on top of that to maintain the submarines over their life. So, in a period when we cannot open a newspaper without reading about cuts to one critical service or another, Turnbull and his cabinet are preparing to spend the equivalent of $6,250 for every man, woman and child on weapons of mass destruction.
This outlay is theft from the people on a grand scale. Every dollar spent on the submarines is a dollar taken from the care of the sick and elderly and the education of the young.
Every dollar spent on the submarines is a dollar taken from the care of the sick and elderly and the education of the young.
Fairfax newspapers quickly did the sums. For the same cost as just one of these 12 submarines – $12.5 billion – the government could instead build five cutting-edge hospitals, or wipe out one quarter of all university student debt, or reverse the entire $11 billion cut in foreign aid slated for 2014-18 or fund the Gonski education reforms for six years.
And when you put the cost of the whole submarine package together, you can see the sheer enormity of funds being ripped out from vital services. The $150 billion total outlay is equal to the entire government expenditure on health, community services, housing and services for the homeless for a whole year, with $10 billion left over.
It could pay for more than three years of recurrent spending on public hospitals, and it’s 20 times as much as the federal government spends each year on pharmaceutical benefits or 18 times as much as on general practitioner services. The submarines will drain the public purse by the equivalent of four years of total state and federal government spending on public schools.
So when the government says there’s no money to go around, you know it’s a blatant lie. They can always find money for war, but when it comes to our lives, the cupboard is always bare.
The submarines are only the biggest of all the big ticket items set out in the white paper. All up, the government is looking to boost military spending by $195 billion over the next decade.
The 12 submarines will be joined by 72 F35A joint strike fighters, 12 Growler electronic attack aircraft, 12 offshore patrol vessels, nine anti-submarine warfare frigates, seven P-8A Poseidon maritime surveillance aircraft, three Chinook heavy-lift helicopters, seven Triton drones, two heavy-lift Globemaster transport aircraft, 1,000 light armoured vehicles, and a range of other new ships and aircraft, along with a boost to ADF uniformed personnel of 2,500.
None of this has anything to do with “defence”. As the White Paper itself says, “there is no more than a remote prospect of a military attack by another country on Australian territory in the foreseeable future”.
No, this is all about the Australian government beefing up its preparedness to participate in regional and global conflicts as part of the US-led coalition of warmongers. Australia and the US are worried in particular about China’s growing reach, threatening the domination enjoyed by the US for many decades.
To this end, no expense is spared. And if it means health care and age pensions have to be sacrificed, so be it.
