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IN BRIEF
- The defence minister will lay out priority areas for the Australian Defence Force in a speech on Thursday.
- Australia’s defence spending as a proportion of GDP will reach about 3 per cent by 2033.
Australia is preparing to make its largest peacetime investment in defense as it unveils its strategic military blueprint for the coming years.
On Thursday, Defense Minister Richard Marles will present the 2026 national defense strategy, outlining the future direction and key projects for the Australian armed forces over the forthcoming two-year period.
During an address at the National Press Club, Marles will announce an increase in defense spending by an additional $14 billion over the next four years, surpassing the projections made in the previous strategy for 2024.
Over the next decade, a further $53 billion will be allocated to defense.
This substantial financial commitment will see Australia’s defense expenditure rise to three percent of its GDP by 2033.
The federal government previously announced it would aim to reach 2.3 per cent by the 2033 deadline.
Australia has been facing calls by the US to lift its defence spend to 3.5 per cent as the Trump administration pushes allied countries to do more with their military.
Marles will say an increase in money allocated for the military was necessary given the shift in the global environment.
“Australia faces its most complex and threatening strategic circumstances since the end of World War II. International norms that once constrained the use of force and military coercion continue to erode,” he will say.
“In the face of this, the Albanese government is pursuing every avenue of increasing defence capability quickly, mostly through bigger defence appropriations but also through accessing private capital.
“The result is that we are now seeing the biggest peacetime increase in defence spending in our nation’s history.”
The defence minister will also lay out priority areas for the Australian Defence Force in the speech.
Already, billions of extra dollars have been earmarked for drones, given their successful use in Ukraine and the Middle East.
“Delivering this strategy is not only about investing more — it is about spending better,” Marles will say.
“It puts Australia on a path to strengthen our defence self-reliance. It reinforces the industrial and national foundations of defence, and it situates Australia firmly within a network of trusted regional and global partnerships.”
Opposition defence spokesperson James Paterson said the opposition would “carefully review” the national defence strategy when it was released.
“But one thing is already clear, accounting tricks don’t make Australians safer,” he said.
“Counting money we’ve always spent on things like military pensions as defence spending is a desperate attempt by the Albanese government to pretend they are finally taking our strategic circumstances seriously when they are not.
“Australia needs real increases in actual defence spending today to put tangible capability into the hands of war fighters to protect our country. Anything less is an insult to our men and women in uniform and fails to heed the lessons of Ukraine and Iran.”
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