Mark Thomson is squirreled away producing his usual tour de force budget analysis (on the streets May 30) so readers of The Strategist will have to make do with my first take on the Defence budget. Let’s …
Mark Thomson is widely quoted this morning as saying that the defence budget outcome is better than many observers hoped. Saved by the government’s decision to keep the overall budget in deficit, Defence was not …
In a recent post, Neil James made some interesting points about defence spending metrics and the political economy of defence in a democracy. With the federal budget due in three weeks’ time, I thought I …
As a budget, a White Paper and an election crowd the calendar, Defence counts down the days to the withdrawal from Afghanistan. It’s easier for the Defence Minister to talk about Afghanistan than to say …
As Graeme Dobell’s account of Defence Minister Stephen Smith’s speech suggests, there was scepticism in the audience about his claim that the defence budget over the past twelve years averaged out at a little over …