Ask an average Australian what they might hope the federal government would spend $300 billion on and the answer would hopefully be vast investment in new jobs and services, given we're heading into recession, and reducing Australia's climate change impact.
The answer probably wouldn't be jet fighters, submarines and long-range missiles.
Yet rather than announce a multi-billion dollar investment plan to address global warming — a real threat — the Australian government will spend this amount on countering non-existent military threats and a thinly veiled extension of Australia's imperialist influence.
Its defence white paper, Defending Australia in the Asia-Pacific Century: Force 2030, released on May 2, proposes the "largest single defence project in Australia's history", according to ABC News Online on May 3, and is intended to strengthen Australia's maritime power over the next 20 years.
Defence minister Joel Fitzgibbon has described the bloated spending forecast as putting a "premium" on national security.
The proposed spending spree follows weeks of a frugal Prime Minister Kevin Rudd asking for "wage restraint" from workers and cutting government spending. Meanwhile, federal treasurer Wayne Swan talks about the "inevitable" budget deficit.
Fitzgibbon argues it is a matter of "big shifts" in global power.
The justification for the aggressive arms build-up is the deteriorating "supremacy" of the US. The economic crisis and the US's disastrous military campaign in Iraq have weakened its unchallenged superpower status — though not in the short-term, the government had to concede.
"While it's true, and we make the assessment in the white paper that the US will remain dominant over the next 20-year period, it's also true that there will be a number of other superpowers floating around", Fitzgibbon said, according ABC Radio on May 4.
The pitch has asserted it is essential to "remain a force in the Asia Pacific region", because the US "might not remain the dominant military force in Asia", ABC Radio National's AM said on May 4.
The aspiration for Australia to become "a more serious military power" is being sold on a fear of China's "military modernisation" spend-up and the "emerging" power of India.
"The emergence of China and India for example, the re-emergence of Russia means that in the future there won't be just one superpower, there'll be a number of substantial powers", Fitzgibbon said on May 4.
In truth, Australia has never been a simple "puppet" of US ruling interests. It is a junior partner, and has never ceased to hold this region of the world in its imperialist grip.
Under the previous Howard government, numerous interventions were implemented and troops were deployed across the Asia-Pacific region to serve and uphold Australia's economic and political interests.
"Stabilisation" interventions, as the government has continually called them, have been carried out in East Timor, the Solomon Islands, Fiji and numerous parts of Indonesia.
Responding to what the white paper calls "intra-state conflict", namely the "crises in East Timor, instability in Fiji" and numerous other "immediate neighbours", represents no great departure from Australia's economic and military sphere of influence.
The white paper ultimately illustrates how the government will continue to ensure it has a substantial say in the domestic politics and economies of these nations.
East Timor is treated as a virtual colony for Australian business interests. Rudd is following Howard's line in encouraging neoliberal reforms and privatisation while continuing to steal oil and gas from the Timor Sea.
A continuing rotation of reserve soldiers in the Solomon Islands will be an ongoing feature of Australia's status as regional bully.
Recently as well, Fiji's ongoing political instability has been either accepted or condemned by Australia according how those in power serve its political interests.
While threatening punitive measures against the current military ruler, Frank Bainimarama, and demanding elections, the reason is to simply restore the Australian government's favoured section of the elite.
The white paper argued for these strategies and all the while justifies the projections as the lynch-pin of Australia's global interests.
"The more Australia aspires to have greater strategic influence beyond our immediate neighbourhood … the greater the level of defence spending we need to be prepared to undertake", the paper said.
When it wasn't misrepresenting Australia's imperialist interests, the media focussed on all the new stuff to be bought, based on the white paper's "strategic rationale".
The spending spree includes 12 new submarines and eight new warships for the navy, 100 Joint Strike Fighters and three new air warfare destroyers for the air force. Self-propelled artillery and new cyber-warfare efforts are in line for the army.
Massive investments in land-attack cruise missiles, with a range of up to 2400 kilometres, will flag Australia's favouring of the "primary strike weapon" — "strike" basically meaning attacks on other countries.
It is the biggest defence splurge since World War II. Some of the projects, such as the doubling of the submarine fleet, represent the largest acquisition of military gear in Australian history.
It will do nothing to assail the true dangers like climate change that lie in the very immediate future.
The bloated defence white paper does give some attention to climate change, but in the context of "potential tensions" and the possibility that Australia will need to be defended from its neighbours who will be most affected by environment devastation.
Yet while the proposed upgrade to Australia's submarines will cost more than $25 billion dollars, the implementation of free public transport across the whole of New South Wales would cost about $1.1 billion in lost revenue annually.
A Greenpeace report released in June last year estimated that $12 billion would pay for the transition required to supply the entire Hunter region of New South Wales — home to the world's largest coal port and six coal-fired power stations — with renewable energy by 2020.
The overall expense of the defence white paper, when implemented over the course of the next 20 years, will most likely exceed $300 billion. Yet just $233 billion would be needed to replace global coal power with wind turbines in only 10 years.
Rudd doesn't want the Australian public to awaken to this fact, to demand money be spent on the real threat facing the entire planet. Instead, he wants us to fall in line behind "national interests" and a nation that protects its borders and advances its own interests at all costs. He wants us to fall asleep to the beating of the war drums.