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Prime Minister Scott Morrison speaks during the launch of the 2020 Defence Strategic Update in Canberra. Australia significantly increased its defence spending, with Morrison warning the post-pandemic world will become more dangerous. Photo: AP

Australia boosts defence spending by 40 per cent as China tensions rise

  • PM Scott Morrison said US$186 billion will be spent over the next decade to ‘maintain regional security and deter or respond to aggression in the Indo-Pacific’
  • Canberra’s relations with Beijing are increasingly strained over trade, the South China Sea, Huawei, espionage allegations, and Hong Kong
Australia
Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison on Wednesday announced a significant increase in defence spending to boost the country’s military prowess in the Indo-Pacific, amid jitters about China’s growing power in the region.

In a major speech in Canberra, Morrison said the government would spend A$270 billion (US$186 billion) on defence over the next decade, up nearly 40 per cent from the A$195 billion pledged under its previous strategic review in 2016.

Warning that Australia must prepare for a post-pandemic world that would be “poorer, more dangerous and more disorderly”, Morrison said the country faced a “conflation of global economic and strategic uncertainty” not seen since World War II.
“The challenges and changing nature in the Indo-Pacific have meant we need a new approach and one that actively seeks to deter actions that are against our interests,” Morrison said. “These new capabilities will provide a strong credible deterrent in our region that will help provide the stability and security we need.”
Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison and Defence Minister Linda Reynolds walk past a Boxer Combat Reconnaissance Vehicle ahead of the launch of the 2020 Defence Strategic Update in Canberra. Photo: EPA-EFE
Under the 2020 Defence Strategic Update and Force Structure Plan, the US ally will invest in new long-range missiles, cybersecurity capabilities and an underwater surveillance system as part of its efforts to “maintain regional security and deter or respond to aggression in the Indo-Pacific”.
The plan, which says Australia faces the “most consequential strategic realignment since World War II” amid increasing competition between the United States and China, identifies the “immediate region” including the north-eastern Indian Ocean, Southeast Asia and the South West Pacific as a defence priority.

Among other spending, A$75 billion will be allocated for maritime capabilities including combat and surveillance, A$60 billion for air combat and reconnaissance, and A$15 billion for cybersecurity.

Defence spending is expected to reach 2 per cent of GDP in 2020-21 – the highest proportion in a quarter-century.

The major investment includes the purchase of the AGM-158C Long Range Anti-Ship Missile from the United States Navy at a cost of A$800 million. The missile is capable of striking targets more than 370km away, triple the range of the current AGM-84 air-launched Harpoon anti-ship missile.

Australia, US must boost defence, cybersecurity ties to counter China: report

The defence overhaul comes amid increasingly strained relations between Canberra and Beijing marked by a growing list of disputes spanning trade, the South China Sea, Huawei, allegations of espionage, and the situation in Hong Kong.

Ian Hall, international relations professor at the Griffith Asia Institute in Brisbane, said the government’s announcement reflected concern about Beijing’s “increasingly assertive and even belligerent behaviour”.

Canberra now saw the need to “invest in capabilities that are not just defensive, but that might be able to deter attacks on Australian interests by Chinese forces”, Hall said. “Those capabilities include things like long-range missiles as well as instruments of cyber warfare.”

Hall said the strategy also reflected Canberra’s refocus away from the Middle East and Central Asia, where it has supported US-led wars since the September 11 terrorist attacks.

“But it is not just concentrating on defending the northern approaches to the Australian continent – it is declaring that Australia has interests in the area from the Bay of Bengal through Southeast Asia into the Southwest Pacific,” he said.

Explainer: why has the China-Australia relationship deteriorated into ‘trade war 2.0’?

John Blaxland, a professor of international security and intelligence studies at the Australian National University, said the strategy was not only a response to China’s growing military clout, but also US President Donald Trump’s “transactional retreat” from global leadership and challenges at home such as bush fires and Covid-19.

“It is a response to a growing sense of unease, the increased great power contestation, the fact that the defence force is being called out for a whole range of activities in domestic response and regional response – the combination of all those factors, coupled with a dramatic increase in China’s military capabilities, both numerically and qualitatively, has spooked the neighbourhood,” Blaxland said.

He described the scope and scale of the investment as a “big deal” for a country of Australia’s relatively small size.

“It’s a massive jump in investment in defence writ large, and it’s not just in traditional defence, it’s in regional engagement, it’s in cyber, it’s in space,” Blaxland said.

This article appeared in the South China Morning Post print edition as: 40pc defence spending rise amid china jitters
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