The war between Russia and Ukraine and its NATO backers continues, but Australia’s chief international focus is much closer to home — China. William Briggs reports.
military spending
When German Chancellor Olaf Scholz announced a €100 billion boost to defence spending, he was continuing along a trajectory set in place more than a decade ago, writes Sibylle Kaczorek.
Today the war drums have new and highly enthusiastic beaters in Britain, America and the 'West', writes John Pilger.
The latest Stockholm International Peace Research Institute figures reveal a world in which arms spending is rising across most, if not all regions, writes Chris Nineham.
Remember last year when federal Treasurer Scott Morrison, picking up where Joe Hockey left off, declared that we had a spending problem not a revenue problem? That seems like a long time ago now.
They did try to increase revenues by floating an increase in the GST but soon after came the revelation that 600 of Australia's biggest companies paid no tax and hundreds more pay less that the 30% they could be paying. This is all the more galling when you consider that the rate has been cut from the 48% it had been in the early 1980s. And then came the Panama Papers!
It is rare that a critical article on Australia's military spending appears in one of the corporate newspapers but on October 25, the Melbourne Age published such an article by senior correspondent Daniel Flitton entitled “Does Australia's military need such tentacles of defence?”.
Flitton argued that while Australian governments have “talked the good talk of regional co-operation and engagement for decades” their “staggering shopping list of new military hardware was signalling a very different message to the region.
A new report by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute found Venezuela cut its military budget by 34% last year, leading the region in arms spending cuts. In contrast, United States political allies Paraguay and Mexico led the region in upping military spending, raising military budgets by 13% and 11%, respectively.
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