By Kirsty Needham
SYDNEY (Reuters) – Australia’s conservative opposition party leader Peter Dutton, trailing in polls related to the May 3 election, has pledged to boost defence spending to 3% of gross domestic product within a decade, as the Trump administration pushes allies to spend more on security.
“You don’t achieve peace through weakness,” Dutton said in Western Australia state on Wednesday, outlining his Liberal Party’s defence policy, echoing U.S. President Donald Trump’s line of “peace through strength”.
His party would offer the United States military greater access to northern Australia, he added.
Focusing on the conservative party’s strength of national security in the final stretch of the campaign, Dutton, a former defence minister, said if he was elected his government would spend A$21 billion ($13.41 billion) more than Labor on defence over five years to reach 2.5% of GDP, and 3% within a decade.
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s Labor government in 2023 committed to spend A$368 billion over three decades on AUKUS, Australia’s biggest ever defence project with the United States and Britain to acquire nuclear-powered submarines. Labor has previously said it would lift defence spending by A$50 billion over a decade, but pledged no new money in this year’s national budget.
The Liberal’s defence spokesman Andrew Hastie, a former special forces officer in Afghanistan, told reporters the defence force was suffering a recruitment and retention crisis.
“We are going backwards on AUKUS, this is a multi-generational nation-building endeavour and they are failing,” he said.
Hastie’s Western Australian electorate is near the HMAS Stirling base where a rotating fleet of four United States Virginia attack submarines and a British Astute submarine will be based from 2027.
Western Australia needs to lift training, and divert mining workers to AUKUS submarine construction, he said.
Australia’s lesson from Ukraine was that nations need to stand on their own two feet, he said.
“With the election of President Trump, America is moving to an America First posture. We still have a strong relationship with the United States but we can’t take anything for granted,” he added.
Dutton said the Liberals could pay for the increased defence spending because their election pledges for cost of living relief – the top issue for voters – are temporary measures.
Labor’s defence spending is forecast to reach 2.33% of GDP in 2033-34.
“We’ll continue to look at what is the appropriate level of defence spending to have,” Defence Minister Richard Marles said in a television interview with Nine’s Today Show.
($1 = 1.5654 Australian dollars)
(Reporting by Kirsty Needham; Editing by Saad Sayeed)
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