First, a little context. At current levels, defence spending accounts for about 6 per cent of Commonwealth expenditure. In the last federal budget, all categories of Commonwealth spending with the exception of “general public services” outstripped spending on defence: education was $31.9 billion, health was $69.4 billion, and welfare $154 billion. Extrapolated over the next decade, that means Australia will spend five times more on these areas than it will on defence. And there’s an important difference between those pools of government spending and the defence budget, too. State governments and the private sector both contribute to education, health, and welfare. But it falls to the federal government alone to make provision for our national defence effort.
Defence activity is around $32B in the last budget.
Veteran's Affairs is around $12B. It is an actual output of Defence.
$44B.
For exactly what?
Hardware justified on Operation: USELESS DIRT efforts in the M.E. and S.E. Asia regions.
Waste.
I would be more friendly to a 'we need to give defence more money' but since they are currently poor stewards of our money along with buying dumb weapon systems, I'll pass.
As for the Canberra was the right decision theory.
Well, Defence, to-date, has not proven they know how to maintain ships. The last ships for this activity were not maintained properly.
Pure...negligence. When will we see the Canberra-class falling into disrepair?
And, that ski-jump, is a monument to requirement stupidity. Lost deck space. A Mistral would have been more useful.
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