The Updated Story 2025
The Defence Story before the 2022 Election..... And now after the 2025 budget.
Author Vince O’Grady. December 2022. Updated March 2025.
In 2022, the story below unfolded. It was one of Labor incompetence by the Coalition parties. As is usual with these comical stories, it started off with a huge claim and a half truth.
The claim was that Labor wasn’t very good at funding defence. At least that was the claim by the Minister for Finance in 2022, Simon Birmingham.
It was a repeat of Tony Abbott back in 2012 repeating the same general rubbish. Back then I analysed the claims and found them to be wrong, In 2022 I found the claims to be wrong also.
So why were the claims wrong? Well after David Speers asked questions on Insiders on 13 March 2022, repeating and amplifying the defence claims, The “Vogfiles” team decided they would take over Speers job and actually do the job of a Journalist.
The best way to do that was to go back to all the Budget allocations since 2008 and to put the figures into a spreadsheet.
As usual when you do this you realise that talking in generalisations like Speers often does is meaningless. Meaningless because the word Defence encompasses spending in several areas.
They were Defence proper which encompassed all the Navy, Army and Airforce spending, Defence materiel, which encompassed all their equipment, Veteran’s Affairs which encompassed all the welfare of Veterans and lastly a series of lesser defence organisations which are based on ancillary support not included elsewhere such as Defence housing.
I decided to tabulate The Defence, Defence Materiel and Veteran’s Affairs portions and the total for all Defence spending as well.
The work took us about an ordinary working day.
It also provided us with a resource that was ongoing and each Budget update we could upgrade it and analyse it.
Simple stuff really. We had a long discussion about why Journalists didn’t do this with Tax, Education, Welfare and every other contestable spend in the budget. Then they could speak to the detail and have real facts at their hands. Perhaps some of them do but we have yet to be regaled with the information in their writings.
So at an editorial discussion recently we decided to be a little proactive and actually update the facts about Defence spending and to publish the updated data.
One other interesting thing of note was that each Budget provides the actual (Estimated) spend so real data.
We didn’t do a calculation of percentage of GDP because it’s just a meaningless figure. You can buy expensive rocks to throw at the enemy but the substandard catapults you buy at a lower cost do not achieve the aim of hitting the enemy, whereas a load of cheap rocks can be used with expensive catapults (at a lower overall cost) which actually do hit the enemy when used.
Cost is not necessarily a good measure of operational effectiveness of a Military organisation.
Why we wanted to update the figures was to provide a proper basis for Electors approaching the 2025 general Election to make a comparison decision in this policy area. We haven’t yet heard much from the Journalists about what they think of the Latest Defence budget spending but when we have in the past it has been wrong in very poor ways. Please see below for the Insiders story on 13 March 2022, where much wrong information was told to ABC viewers.
So what’s New in this budget?
In 2022 we had three large revelations:-
In the 2025 budget we had confirmation that the defunding of Veterans affairs by the Coalition had a very bad effect on Veterans. The Budget paper says the following on page 9 of 205 in Budget paper 4.
Ensuring the Department of Veterans’ Affairs is well resourced to support veterans and their families. The Royal Commission into Defence and Veteran Suicide found the ASL cap led to more labour hire and higher staff turnover resulting in longer claims processing timeframes and poorer outcomes for veterans. The Australian Government made it a priority over successive economic updates to provide significant resourcing for the Department of Veterans’ Affairs, including 500 ongoing ASL in the 2022–23 October Budget. This has helped clear a claims backlog of 41,799 claims, with over 98 per cent completed as at February 2025. Since 2022, an additional $13 billion in payments to veterans has been made as a result of more claims being processed.
Author Vince O’Grady. December 2022. Updated March 2025.
In 2022, the story below unfolded. It was one of Labor incompetence by the Coalition parties. As is usual with these comical stories, it started off with a huge claim and a half truth.
The claim was that Labor wasn’t very good at funding defence. At least that was the claim by the Minister for Finance in 2022, Simon Birmingham.
It was a repeat of Tony Abbott back in 2012 repeating the same general rubbish. Back then I analysed the claims and found them to be wrong, In 2022 I found the claims to be wrong also.
So why were the claims wrong? Well after David Speers asked questions on Insiders on 13 March 2022, repeating and amplifying the defence claims, The “Vogfiles” team decided they would take over Speers job and actually do the job of a Journalist.
The best way to do that was to go back to all the Budget allocations since 2008 and to put the figures into a spreadsheet.
As usual when you do this you realise that talking in generalisations like Speers often does is meaningless. Meaningless because the word Defence encompasses spending in several areas.
They were Defence proper which encompassed all the Navy, Army and Airforce spending, Defence materiel, which encompassed all their equipment, Veteran’s Affairs which encompassed all the welfare of Veterans and lastly a series of lesser defence organisations which are based on ancillary support not included elsewhere such as Defence housing.
I decided to tabulate The Defence, Defence Materiel and Veteran’s Affairs portions and the total for all Defence spending as well.
The work took us about an ordinary working day.
It also provided us with a resource that was ongoing and each Budget update we could upgrade it and analyse it.
Simple stuff really. We had a long discussion about why Journalists didn’t do this with Tax, Education, Welfare and every other contestable spend in the budget. Then they could speak to the detail and have real facts at their hands. Perhaps some of them do but we have yet to be regaled with the information in their writings.
So at an editorial discussion recently we decided to be a little proactive and actually update the facts about Defence spending and to publish the updated data.
One other interesting thing of note was that each Budget provides the actual (Estimated) spend so real data.
We didn’t do a calculation of percentage of GDP because it’s just a meaningless figure. You can buy expensive rocks to throw at the enemy but the substandard catapults you buy at a lower cost do not achieve the aim of hitting the enemy, whereas a load of cheap rocks can be used with expensive catapults (at a lower overall cost) which actually do hit the enemy when used.
Cost is not necessarily a good measure of operational effectiveness of a Military organisation.
Why we wanted to update the figures was to provide a proper basis for Electors approaching the 2025 general Election to make a comparison decision in this policy area. We haven’t yet heard much from the Journalists about what they think of the Latest Defence budget spending but when we have in the past it has been wrong in very poor ways. Please see below for the Insiders story on 13 March 2022, where much wrong information was told to ABC viewers.
So what’s New in this budget?
In 2022 we had three large revelations:-
- That indeed Labor did take $2.37 billion out of the Defence budget....BUT... In 2015-2016, $9.9 billion “disappeared” from the budget under the Coalition. This was the year that Defence Materiel was merged into Defence proper. AND in 2019-2020 the Coalition reduced the budget by $2.64 billion. The Insiders program didn’t mention this.
- That in 8 Coalition Budgets between 2014-2015 and 2021-2022, six of those budgets defunded the Veterans Affairs budget.
- That there was no general threat from China that the 2009 Defence White Paper was supposed to have warned of. The revelation was that the standard of Journalism on Insiders was very poor and indeed false in their asserting of being warned of a threat and that the White paper was written by Mike Pezzulo. Clearly reading the documents their information was wrong.
In the 2025 budget we had confirmation that the defunding of Veterans affairs by the Coalition had a very bad effect on Veterans. The Budget paper says the following on page 9 of 205 in Budget paper 4.
Ensuring the Department of Veterans’ Affairs is well resourced to support veterans and their families. The Royal Commission into Defence and Veteran Suicide found the ASL cap led to more labour hire and higher staff turnover resulting in longer claims processing timeframes and poorer outcomes for veterans. The Australian Government made it a priority over successive economic updates to provide significant resourcing for the Department of Veterans’ Affairs, including 500 ongoing ASL in the 2022–23 October Budget. This has helped clear a claims backlog of 41,799 claims, with over 98 per cent completed as at February 2025. Since 2022, an additional $13 billion in payments to veterans has been made as a result of more claims being processed.
Conclusion to 2025 update.
- The Labor Government have paid $13 Billion in Benefits to Veterans since 2022 and also reduced the backlog of 41,799 claims.
- Labor have added to the Veterans Affairs budget a total of 500 staff to clear the backlog and process the claims
- Labor have funded (extra funding) the Veterans Affairs budget to the tune of an extra $4.4 billion since coming to power in 2022.
- Labor have added an extra (Actual) $16.6 Billion to the total Defence budget.
- In 2020-2021, the Coalition Budgeted a spend of $59.437 billion but only actually delivered an actual spend of $55,465 billion. A short fall of $3,972 billion. (lease note the graphs show the increase/reduction in budget in Actual spend terms so in that Budget year the reduction from the previous year was minus $162,654
The Original Story 2022
In 2022 the following was the story........
During the week preceding the 13th March 2022 insiders program, Simon Birmingham had appeared on the ABC and been questioned about defence. He stated that Labor’s defence spending when they were last in government was the lowest in terms of GDP since 1939.
I had heard this before when Tony Abbott stood in front of the helicopter landing docks at Williamstown in Melbourne and said the same thing. He also criticized the ALP for their defence spending.
https://independentaustralia.net/politics/politics-display/tony-abbotts-landing-helicopter-crock,5217
This article I wrote at the time (2012) is really well worth reading.
The insiders program of 13th March 2022 featured the then Shadow defence spokesman Brendan O’Connor.
Here is a link to that whole program.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-03-13/sunday-march-13-full-program/13794520
The interview starts at 19.05 mins into the program.
Most of the discussion is about using defence for Natural disasters.
At 28.39 Speers questions Labor’s record in defence.
He said. “Labor likes to talk about the average defence spend in it’s 6 years in office, but it did fall considerably in the last two years in office. Compared to where it began down to 1.5-6 % of GDP. The number of troops fell as well, we can see it here in fact (shows graph), drawn from the defence annual report, you can see troop numbers, fell in your last two years in office as well, do you acknowledge Labor cut defence spending too far, was this a mistake in hindsight?”
That was the attack.
O’Connor answered well talking about the Quality of the spend and of course the changing military necessities. More troops doesn’t necessarily mean a better defence force. Also a different time and different advice from Defence than the current government is getting. Also the GFC was an issue back then.
Speers interrupts the answer a lot.
After the interview, which ended at 34.22 mins into the program, Speers went back to the panel and then asked Lanai Scarr a Dixer question about the cost of defence and Labor.
After some initial waffle, she said. “I do want to say something in relation to Labor and their defence spending and touching on what Brendan O’Connor said that they weren’t warned of the risks, in the appropriate way, well the 2009 White paper which was written by Mike Pezzulo, actually had warnings about the strategic environment and set out a major expansion in the ADF and in 2012 Labor cut the defence budget because they wanted to get back into surplus, so I just think that’s an important point to make because they were actually warned about the Strategic environment.”
So I downloaded the 2009 Defence White paper in PDF format and looked at the metadata. It was authored by defence, no mention at all of Mike Pezzulo being the Author. In fact all defence white papers are an amalgam of different inputs from many many sources, which the actual document says.
“1.23 The Community Consultation Panel conducted 30 public meetings and 35 private meetings and received 450 written submissions. These revealed a diversity of opinions about the future direction of Australia's defence policy. The Community Consultation Program found that the Australian community continues to support the concept that the ADF's primary function is to defend Australia and its interests. There is a broad consensus that the present strategic environment is relatively benign in terms of a major military threat to Australia. Given changing geostrategic circumstances, however, caution is also evident. Many in the community expect governments to maintain an effective military posture while ever the possibility of threat of attack, however remote, remains. Most Australians continue to support the alliance with the United States.”
Note: Author’s highlights in red.
The whole paper uses the word Strategic and different ways in which to apply strategy to the size and preparedness of the ADF, but it does not warn of anything particularly, especially with China.
Scarr seems confused as to what a white paper is. This document was written by government as a plan to Develop defence capabilities for the challenges of the future and how to do that with a wider Strategic outlook. It is not as she suggests a paper TO the Government, it is a Paper BY the government.
Having watched the little play act between Scarr and Speers, it was also interesting that Scarr had carefully prepared notes from which to read. But what she read was basically wrong.
I then went to the budget papers since 2006-2007 and tabulated Defence Spending to the date of the latest budget, which was March 2022. I updated this to reflect the new Labor government’s budget in October 2022.
I think the figures below show that the accusation that Labor is poor on defence spending is wrong. The highlighted (in grey) figures show the reduction in actual spending year on year.
Speers and Scarr were right that there was a $2.5 billion reduction in spending in the 2012-13 budget year, but they neglected to mention the larger reductions under the Coalition in the 2015-16 and 2019-20 years.
The most distressing part of the Spend in Defence is in Veterans Affairs, where just before the 2022 Federal Election there was a backlog of 60,000 claims by Veterans.
This is well explained by the tabulated figures of the Veterans Affairs spend during those budget years already mentioned.
The conclusion I draw from all of this is that the Journalists concerned don’t have a grip on the facts of Defence Spending and just cherry picked one year in order to attack the Labor party.
During the week preceding the 13th March 2022 insiders program, Simon Birmingham had appeared on the ABC and been questioned about defence. He stated that Labor’s defence spending when they were last in government was the lowest in terms of GDP since 1939.
I had heard this before when Tony Abbott stood in front of the helicopter landing docks at Williamstown in Melbourne and said the same thing. He also criticized the ALP for their defence spending.
https://independentaustralia.net/politics/politics-display/tony-abbotts-landing-helicopter-crock,5217
This article I wrote at the time (2012) is really well worth reading.
The insiders program of 13th March 2022 featured the then Shadow defence spokesman Brendan O’Connor.
Here is a link to that whole program.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-03-13/sunday-march-13-full-program/13794520
The interview starts at 19.05 mins into the program.
Most of the discussion is about using defence for Natural disasters.
At 28.39 Speers questions Labor’s record in defence.
He said. “Labor likes to talk about the average defence spend in it’s 6 years in office, but it did fall considerably in the last two years in office. Compared to where it began down to 1.5-6 % of GDP. The number of troops fell as well, we can see it here in fact (shows graph), drawn from the defence annual report, you can see troop numbers, fell in your last two years in office as well, do you acknowledge Labor cut defence spending too far, was this a mistake in hindsight?”
That was the attack.
O’Connor answered well talking about the Quality of the spend and of course the changing military necessities. More troops doesn’t necessarily mean a better defence force. Also a different time and different advice from Defence than the current government is getting. Also the GFC was an issue back then.
Speers interrupts the answer a lot.
After the interview, which ended at 34.22 mins into the program, Speers went back to the panel and then asked Lanai Scarr a Dixer question about the cost of defence and Labor.
After some initial waffle, she said. “I do want to say something in relation to Labor and their defence spending and touching on what Brendan O’Connor said that they weren’t warned of the risks, in the appropriate way, well the 2009 White paper which was written by Mike Pezzulo, actually had warnings about the strategic environment and set out a major expansion in the ADF and in 2012 Labor cut the defence budget because they wanted to get back into surplus, so I just think that’s an important point to make because they were actually warned about the Strategic environment.”
So I downloaded the 2009 Defence White paper in PDF format and looked at the metadata. It was authored by defence, no mention at all of Mike Pezzulo being the Author. In fact all defence white papers are an amalgam of different inputs from many many sources, which the actual document says.
“1.23 The Community Consultation Panel conducted 30 public meetings and 35 private meetings and received 450 written submissions. These revealed a diversity of opinions about the future direction of Australia's defence policy. The Community Consultation Program found that the Australian community continues to support the concept that the ADF's primary function is to defend Australia and its interests. There is a broad consensus that the present strategic environment is relatively benign in terms of a major military threat to Australia. Given changing geostrategic circumstances, however, caution is also evident. Many in the community expect governments to maintain an effective military posture while ever the possibility of threat of attack, however remote, remains. Most Australians continue to support the alliance with the United States.”
Note: Author’s highlights in red.
The whole paper uses the word Strategic and different ways in which to apply strategy to the size and preparedness of the ADF, but it does not warn of anything particularly, especially with China.
Scarr seems confused as to what a white paper is. This document was written by government as a plan to Develop defence capabilities for the challenges of the future and how to do that with a wider Strategic outlook. It is not as she suggests a paper TO the Government, it is a Paper BY the government.
Having watched the little play act between Scarr and Speers, it was also interesting that Scarr had carefully prepared notes from which to read. But what she read was basically wrong.
I then went to the budget papers since 2006-2007 and tabulated Defence Spending to the date of the latest budget, which was March 2022. I updated this to reflect the new Labor government’s budget in October 2022.
I think the figures below show that the accusation that Labor is poor on defence spending is wrong. The highlighted (in grey) figures show the reduction in actual spending year on year.
Speers and Scarr were right that there was a $2.5 billion reduction in spending in the 2012-13 budget year, but they neglected to mention the larger reductions under the Coalition in the 2015-16 and 2019-20 years.
The most distressing part of the Spend in Defence is in Veterans Affairs, where just before the 2022 Federal Election there was a backlog of 60,000 claims by Veterans.
This is well explained by the tabulated figures of the Veterans Affairs spend during those budget years already mentioned.
The conclusion I draw from all of this is that the Journalists concerned don’t have a grip on the facts of Defence Spending and just cherry picked one year in order to attack the Labor party.
