Defending the defence budget: Making sense of the $195b

We’re confused.

On one had, we’re told the country needs to tighten the purse strings.

On the other, Australia just committed $195 billion to military funding over the next decade.

Former army general Jim Molan tried to explain it to us.

‘It’s a big sell, isn’t it, and I can understand people being confused,’ he said.

‘(But) if we think defence is expensive – war is fabulously expensive.’

Burnso: How on earth does a joint strike fighter and submarine protect us against terrorism?

Jim Molan: Well, of course it doesn’t, John, because it’s not meant to. We defend ourselves against terrorism by the organisations we’ve built up in Australia over the last couple of years since this threat of domestic terrorism has come to us. And we defend ourselves against terrorism by assisting the deployment of forces with our allies into the places terrorism comes from.

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