Shadow Defence Minister Brendan O'Connor says the Howard and Rudd-Gillard governments both spend 1.7 to 1.8 per cent of GDP on defence. RMIT ABC Fact Check investigates.
"Civil defence and current expenditures on previous military activities, such as veterans' benefits, demobilization, conversion and weapon destruction".
This includes appropriations from the government, but excludes own-source revenue. An example of own-source revenue could be payments which defence receives from soldiers for meals.There is no consistent source for these figures for the period from the Howard government's first full financial year in office, 1996-97, to Labor's last full financial year, 2012-13.
From these annual reports, Fact Check has chosen a figure which excludes payments made for the Defence Force Retirement Benefits Scheme and the Military Superannuation and Benefits Scheme, whichDr Hellyer noted that this inconsistency was unlikely to produce figures that materially changed the result of this analysis.Below, Fact Check has graphed defence spending over the Howard and Rudd-Gillard governments.
Consistent with previous analyses, Fact Check has used GDP at "current prices" and the nominal defence spending figures to calculate defence spending as a share of GDP.It was as low as 1.72 per cent in 2000-01 and as high as 1.84 per cent in 2003-04. In Mr Howard's last three budgets, it stayed below 1.8 per cent.Labor's first year of defence spending in the 2007-08 financial year gave a figure of 1.72 per cent of GDP. Its first full year in 2008-09 saw a figure of 1.
Fact Check has previously used this measure to test claims surrounding whether particular years of spending represented the lowest level since 1938. Fact Check previously noted that the government's policy, as outlined in the 2016 Defence White Paper, was to decouple defence spending from GDP to ensure "budget certainty" in a "more complex strategic environment".While large cuts in individual years can affect projects, experts say it's better to look at average spending rather than individual years to assess a government's record.
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