A question of priorities
In New Zealand last week for talks on trade and "defence" links, PM John Howard took on the job of trying to persuade New Zealanders that it really is in their interests to spend millions more dollars on defence — and in particular on Australian military hardware.
Howard didn't pull any punches when he stated the Australian and United States governments' position: if New Zealand wants the "benefit" of the Australian-US "security" umbrella, the time has come to pay up. He urged NZ PM Jim Bolger to commit to buying two more ANZAC frigates (at around $500 million each) and four naval helicopters (at a total cost of $271 million).
Reports indicate that the newly elected NZ government responded with caution. Mindful of the NZ public's strong anti-nuclear and anti-militarist sentiment, Bolger said that his government did not intend to increase defence spending in its next budget and would not commit NZ to buying the frigates.
Determined not to be out-hawked by Howard, Labor leader Kim Beazley jumped into the fray, declaring that the PM hadn't pushed the frigate sale hard enough. As a former Labor defence minister, Beazley is accustomed to arguing that more taxpayers' money should be allocated to military expenditure.
Labor has a rotten record on "defence" expenditure. From 1983 to 1996 — and despite the end of the Cold War — Labor governments presided over the biggest peacetime rearmament of the Australian defence forces: $25 billion was allocated over a 15-year period to purchase frigates, FA/18s, AWACS and Collins class submarines, and to assist the PNG government to wage war on the peoples of Bougainville, and the Indonesian government on the East Timorese, West Papuans and people of Aceh.
The Keating government, which allocated 10% of the budget to "defence", vigorously pursued arms exports — euphemistically called "defence self-reliance" — training military personnel of oppressive regimes and signing the security pact with Indonesia.
The Howard government hasn't deviated from this militaristic path. In just under a year in government, it has beefed up the Australian-US military alliance by promising, among other things, to continue hosting US military bases, organise and stage war games such as Operation Tandem Thrust and allow nuclear-powered warships to use Australian ports.
While in NZ, Howard announced that defence would again be quarantined from cuts in this year's budget — despite the alleged $2-3 billion "black hole".
Howard and his corporate backers don't see the perverse contradiction of spending billions of dollars of public money on military hardware and war preparations while, at the same time, cutting billions from health, education, child-care and other socially necessary services.
It's a matter of priorities. Those of us who believe that government spending should meet people's needs, not line the pockets of corporations, have to make this clear. Billions of dollars wasted on military hardware to fight the peoples of the region is no investment in the future. Neither is support for the political designs of murderous regimes such as Suharto's.
The New Zealanders have shown the way: the lasting legacy of the mass antiwar movement of the 1980s (which included the popular anti-frigate campaign) was a major political factor in Bolger's refusal to meet Howard's demands. We have to reject Howard's budget priorities and demand that he implement ours.