The weekend’s revelation that Labor will seek to cut $10B from the defence budget means that voters in Herbert probably called the consequences of a Rudd Labor government correctly. Herbert is home to Lavarack Barracks and saw a relatively small swing to Labor of 6.03%. (Leichardt next door saw a 15% swing to Labor). The army vote was probably crucial.
One of the reasons that Labor is viewed as being less able in defence than the Coalition is because it has a history of under-spending on defence needs. Another is a widespread suspicion that it’s in fact antipathetic to defence because of the entanglement of its left wing with anti-war movements and pacifists.
The decision to cut the defence budget will cement poor perceptions of Labor and defence. What’s more it’s bad policy.
Defence Minister Joel Fitzgibbon may think that he can cut the civilian component of the armed forces and leave the effectiveness of the forces untouched, but that ignores the fact that the secret to military success isn’t battle-field heroics, but logistics. What that means is the ratio of support staff to field combatants needs to be somewhere in the region of 10 to 1, and that the 10 are just as much a part of the war effort as the 1.
The government might find that it can eliminate some support, but it is likely that the deficit will have to be met by contractors, so the savings will be ephemeral – sack an army cook and you might need to open a Macdonald’s on the battlefield.
The government says it won’t cut back on capital investment, meaning Australia could end up with the best mint condition equipment, because it won’t have the resources to deploy them.
All of this points to the real problem the government faces – the difficulty of making any real cuts in the budget. The Howard government’s greatest profligacy was in making payments to specific demographics, such as the baby bonus and the pension and superannuation concessions. If this government has trouble eliminating a one-off carer’s bonus, then these other programs will be too much for them.
While no government would find it easy to remove these programs, David Burchell in Saturday’s Australian puts his finger on a weakness of the Rudd government – it hasn’t developed a compelling foundational narrative. Without such a narrative it won’t be able to muster the community support to make hard decisions, meaning that unpopular or out-of-sight, yet vital, services like defence will be under pressure.