During this election campaign, both major parties have tried to make it very clear that concerned about our spending on defence.

Labor plan to increase spending to 2.3% of GDP by mid-2030 with the Coalition wanting it increased to 3%.

With all this concern about defence spending, you would think Australia was either at risk of imminent invasion or was spending far less than our peers. But the evidence shows that neither of these is true.

Australia has an outsized spending on defence. In dollar terms, Australia is the 12th biggest spender on defence. We spend more dollars on defence than Canada, Israel, Spain, or the Netherlands.

If Australia were to increase its defence spending to 2.3% of GDP (as Labor wants) then we would be the nineth biggest spender, devoting more of its economy than France or Taiwan, and on a par with the UK.

If Australia went to 3% of GDP (as the Coalition wants) we would pass India, South Korea, and be closing in on the United States.

Do we really believe as a nation that our security needs are more urgent than South Korea, a country that is still at war with North Korea?

It is important to remember that the more resources we devote to defence, the fewer resources we have to spend on our other priorities. As former US President Dwight D. Eisenhower said in 1953:

“Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its labourers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children.”