Are Our Priorities Wrong? Defence Spending vs Real Needs

 the greatest threat to Australia’s security is subservience to U.S. militarism.

Politics for the people, 30 Oct 25

Introduction: A Nation Out of Balance

The latest Ipsos Issues Monitor shows that cost of living, housing, crime, and healthcare matter most to Australians. Yet fewer than 8 per cent name defence as a concern. Despite this, defence spending in Australia now stands at about A$59 billion for 2025-26, a record amount.

While households struggle with rent hikes, soaring groceries, and lengthy hospital waits, government priorities tell a different story. If our leaders can mobilise billions for submarines and foreign military bases, why not for homes, hospitals, and community safety?

The government’s growing defence spending shows how far priorities have shifted from citizens’ needs.

The Problem: Spending That Ignores Public Needs

1. Australians Struggle While Defence Budgets Soar

According to SBS’s “If the Budget Were $100”, defence receives $6.60, health $15.90, and welfare $37.00. The government insists on “fiscal responsibility” when it comes to families, but not when signing billion-dollar arms contracts.

This surge in defence spending contrasts sharply with the lack of targeted cost-of-living support.

The mismatch is stark: Australians cite the cost of living in Australia as their top issue, yet policies focus on militarisation. A nation cannot claim security when its citizens cannot afford food, rent, or electricity.

Internal link: Inflation in Australia: How It’s Reshaping Everyday Life

2. Housing and Healthcare Left Behind

The 2025-26 Budget allocates A$9.3 billion to social housing and homelessness, barely a sixth of defence spending. Hospitals receive about A$33.9 billion in Commonwealth funding, far short of what’s needed to end long emergency queues and staff shortages.

Using public money productively, Australia could expand housing supply and modernise hospitals without “finding” tax revenue. As a sovereign currency issuer, the Commonwealth can fund whatever domestic resources are available.

Internal link: Social Justice in Australia: Its Meaning and Path to Equality

The Impact: What Australians Are Experiencing

3. Everyday Australians Feel Forgotten

Workers juggle multiple jobs. Families spend over 30 per cent of their income on rent. Hospitals cancel surgeries due to staff burnout. Meanwhile, record military budgets create jobs, but not the kind that house or heal people.

This deepens inequality and fuels public frustration. Cost of living in Australia headlines dominate the news, yet solutions are still tokenistic while weapons programs thrive.

Internal link: Why It Feels So Hard to Get Ahead in Australia Today

4. Who Benefits from the Defence Boom – and Who Are We Really Defending Against?

Arms corporations and political donors benefit most. AUKUS contracts flow to foreign firms. U.S. forces rotate through Darwin, and Pine Gap stays a key U.S. intelligence hub.

So, who is Australia defending against? Officially, the government cites a “deteriorating Indo-Pacific environment.” Australia faces no imminent invasion. The real risk lies in our alliance obligations. Much of this defence spending directly supports U.S. strategic goals, not Australian security.

When Washington pursues containment of China, Australia follows, even if it damages trade and peace. This dependence undermines sovereignty and raises the uncomfortable truth: the greatest threat to Australia’s security is subservience to U.S. militarism.

Economic insecurity, environmental decline, and eroded independence are the dangers we should fear. As a nation with dollar sovereignty, Australia can defend its people through prosperity, not through weapons for U.S. wars.

The Solution: What Must Be Done

5. Use Dollar Sovereignty for People, Not War

Australia issues its own currency. It cannot “run out” of money but can run out of political will. By embracing Modern Monetary Theory principles, the government could fund full employment, universal healthcare, and green infrastructure before military expansion.

Internal link: Investing in Peace: Rethinking Australia’s Defence Strategy

6. Re-prioritise the Budget for National Wellbeing

Australia can realign its priorities by:

1. Expanding public housing nationwide.
2. Investing heavily in healthcare staffing and preventive care.
3. Addressing crime through community programs, not incarceration.
4. Keeping defence strictly for territorial protection, not for U.S. wars.

Redirecting even 10 per cent of Australia’s defence spending toward housing and health would transform lives and strengthen genuine security.

Frequently Asked Questions

1. Why does Australia spend so much on defence?
   Defence growth is politically tied to the U.S. alliance and AUKUS, not citizen demand.
2. Who are we really defending against?
   Australia’s rising defence spending is driven more by alliance politics than genuine threats. No nation threatens Australia. The real danger is being drawn into conflicts created by foreign powers.
3. Can public money fund housing and health without cuts elsewhere?
   Yes, as the currency issuer, Australia can fund both. The constraint is resources, not revenue.
4. What would happen if 10 per cent of defence spending were redirected?
   Billions would build thousands of homes, hire nurses and teachers, and ease cost-of-living pressure.

Final Thoughts: Time to Fund What Matters…………………………………………………… https://socialjusticeaustralia.com.au/defence-spending-vs-real-needs/

October 30, 2025 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Has Trump set Australia up for a rare earths price war with China?

Who will guarantee the ‘offtake’ for Australia’s rare earths mining boom? Jude Manning on the prospect of a China price war and long-term government subsidies.

Anthony Albanese got plenty of media fanfare this week for a successful visit to Washington, despite some bizarre hysteria over a pretty good humoured exchange between Trump and Ambassador Kevin Rudd. The deal involved AUKUS and critical minerals, where they announced joint funding for projects in Australia and the US to diversify supply chains away from China. 

No sweat on AUKUS, unsurprisingly, although apparently the deal needed ‘shoring up’. The King has made a habit of squeezing his allies lately, so Trump waving the subs deal through without so much a second glance tells you everything you need to know about how good that deal is, for him. by Jude Manning | Oct 24, 2025 |

Critical Minerals

The “substance” was in critical minerals. The “$US8.5 billion deal” really involves only an $US1B commitment from each country to kickstart projects in the US and Australia. The $US8.5B figure speculates on the value of the projects, and anticipates private sector funding to make up the $US6.5B gap. A cynic might suggest the US and Australia have agreed to spend $1USB each in their own critical minerals industries. 

Two projects here in Australia have been confirmed: $307m in the Alcoa-Sojitz Gallium refinery, and $153m for Arafura’s Nolans Rare Earths Project – with nine others receiving interest from the US and Australian governments, including upgrades to Nyrstar’s Port Pirie smelter to produce Antimony. 

Rare earths are a subset of critical minerals which refer to 17 elements with similar optical, magnetic and electrical properties. Contrary to their name, they are not particularly rare. They exist in low concentrations across the globe, but are difficult to extract in large quantities.

Rare earths are essential for any advanced manufacturing, from solar panels and wind turbines, to jets, data centres, and oil refining. 

The aim of the deal is to break China’s stranglehold on critical minerals, and specifically rare earths mining and processing. China currently makes up about 70% of rare earth mining, and 90% of global processing. The deal comes as a response to China imposing restrictions on a proliferation of its rare earths, or products containing them, accelerating fears of Chinese economic coercion.  

Benefits for Australia

Tim Buckley, director of Climate Energy Finance, was optimistic about the deal, and argued Australia should leverage its natural advantages, as well as its position in the US-China trade war, to move up the export value chain by expanding its onshore processing and refining capacity. 

“It’s about time Australia stood up and looked out for its geopolitical interests … Other countries have been subsidising their industries while we’ve been playing by the free market. Which means, we lose.”

Buckley said he’d like to see Australia make this kind of deal with other governments like Japan, India, the UK and the EU. He also argued developing this capability was crucial for Australia’s Future Made in Australia plans, and suggested that the technology transfer, expertise, infrastructure and capital involved could improve the viability of adjacent projects and industries, such as Green Iron. 

“Substance and follow-through over words will be key to the credibility and real-world impacts of this new announcement.”

Environmental concerns

The open questions about this deal aren’t just a matter of substance, however. The two parties have promised to slash red and green tape to get the projects up and running as soon as possible, prompting concern that environmental and community outcomes won’t be properly considered. Or, if they are, that proposed project timelines are unrealistic.

The agreement states: 

“The Participants are taking measures to accelerate, streamline, or deregulate permitting timelines and processes, including to obtain permits for critical minerals and rare earths mining, separation, and processing within their respective domestic regulatory systems, consistent with applicable law.”

The prospect of hurried environmental approvals is particularly frightening given the nature of rare earth mining and refining, which is notoriously damaging to the environment and water intensive. Processing rare earths often involves separating them from radioactive materials like uranium and thorium, waste that is very difficult to deal with. It’s part of the reason we gave up rare earth mining in the first place. 

Who is footing the bill? 

The other big question when it comes to pouring taxpayer money into Australian critical minerals, is who will guarantee the offtake – an agreed floor price for the output. Fierce price competition from China, which already produces enough rare earths to meet global demand, is inevitable. 

“In about a year from now, we’ll have so many critical minerals and rare earths that you won’t know what to do with them. They’ll be worth about two dollars”

Trump said it perfectly. Breaking China’s stranglehold on rare earths will inevitably result in oversupply: the west has decided it wants to cut out 90% of the existing market. Experts and industry leaders are sober about the fact

‘the industry will be dependent on government support well into the long term. ‘

Australia’s demand for rare earths and critical minerals is nothing compared to advanced manufacturing nations like Japan and the US, regardless of how lucid our Future Made in Australia visions are. Does Australia have any business subsidising an industry which, by its own admission, is unprofitable? 

There are benefits to be had by moving into rare earth mining and processing, if countries who actually need the finished product stump up the capital. (Even the Reserve Bank has warned this week that rare earths could be more of a “trickle than a boom”). 

Even if they do, will Australians see a royalty for their natural resources? It’s easy to imagine how a critical minerals ‘boom’ becomes another LNG, where we lure in a foreign industry, at massive environmental cost,

“in return for few jobs and a pittance in tax and royalty revenue, all while the profits go offshore. “

October 30, 2025 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Uncategorized | Leave a comment

AUKUS architect warns not to trust Trump’s assurances

22 Oct 2025 ABCNEWS Australia

Former British defence secretary Ben Wallace has dismissed assurances given my Donald Trump about the future of the AUKUS deal, saying “Trump struggles to think in timescales longer than a round of golf.” As the Pentagon reviews the merits of the trilateral defence partnership between the US, the United Kingdom and Australia, the US president publicly guaranteed Canberra would receive its promised fleet of nuclear-powered submarines.

October 28, 2025 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Inchoate Blobs: The National Press Club Cancels Chris Hedges

22 October 2025 Dr Binoy Kampmark, Australian Independent Media

It seemed an odd thing to begin with. Australia’s National Press Club is a rather ordinary, stuffy institution, where enlightened, let alone contentious thought, rarely intrudes. For those guests of unorthodox disposition, questions of establishment swinishness await to douse any fiery rebelliousness. That they had invited war correspondent Chris Hedges, former Middle East Bureau Chief of The New York Times, was itself a surprise. Did they not get the catalogue of his recent writings and addresses, notably on how the Western media have covered the war in Gaza? 

With three weeks to go, Hedges received the news that he would not, after all, be allowed to give his address. In its October 4 statement, the slippery NPC obfuscated and deflected, first suggesting that the initial date had been “tentatively agreed to.” The club was in the business of constantly reviewing its schedule (that’s how reliable they are), and a decision was made “when more details of the address were made available.” (The proposed title of the talk, “The Betrayal of Palestinian Journalists” might have been a clue.) That schedule, it was suggested, had bulked up with individuals conversant with the Gaza conflict and Palestinian recognition: Chris Sidoti and Ben Saul (on Palestinian recognition), and UNICEF Global Spokesperson James Elder and Judge Navi Pillay on the war, slated for future addresses.

Sidoti and Pillay are members of the United Nations Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, and Israel. In September, the Commission published their lacerating report, concluding that Israel had committed genocide in the Gaza Strip. Of the five elements outlined in the 1948 Genocide Convention, it had violated four. Its political and military leaders had been responsible for incitement; the Israeli authorities had failed to punish them; and “circumstantial evidence of genocidal intent and that genocidal intent was the only reasonable inference that could be drawn from the totality of the evidence.” The Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs was terse in response: the authors, in publishing a report “distorted” and “false”, had acted as “Hamas proxies, notorious for their antisemitic positions.”

To have Hedges address the stuffed shirts, it would seem, was a case of over-egging the pudding, or, as it were, adding too much tang. But to parry suggestions of bias and being compromised, the NPC went on to state with weak conviction that its board and the Chief Executive Officer Maurice Reilly made “decisions on speakers independently.” No “outside” pressure had been brought to bear on the board regarding the war in Gaza. The inference that the decision to withdraw the offer to Hedges had been the sordid result of appeasement and work of lobby groups was “false, exemplified by the speakers we have had on the issue.” Reilly, in separate remarks, explained that the offer had been withdrawn “in the interest of balancing out our program.

What was to be made about the proposal that the balancing act in question would be the Israeli ambassador to Australia, Amir Maimon? “The inference that Mr Hedges was being cancelled to make way for the Israeli ambassador is also false and without basis.” The board could not have done a better job of hoisting themselves by their own petard. And if such organisations as the Australian Broadcasting Corporation can be swayed by lobby groups to remove journalists who challenge the Israeli narrative on Gaza, confidence in the impartiality of the NPC can hardly be brimming.  

The cancellation merely served to embarrass the press clubbers while adding even more exposure to the Hedges train. On October 20, he delivered the address intended for the NPC to the New South Wales Teachers Federation. The theme should have resonated for those serious about journalism, notably war correspondents. But authentic war correspondents are a rare and diminishing breed.

As Hedges says in his address, two types present themselves. “The first type does not attend press conferences. They do not beg generals and politicians for interviews. They take risks to report from combat zones. They send back to their viewers and readers what they see, which is almost always diametrically opposed to official narratives.”

The second type, far more abundant in number, are those of the “inchoate blob of self-identified war correspondents who play at war.” They tend to be barnacled occupants of mahogany ridge, on the sauce and expenses, and keen to stay out of harm’s way. It is that very blob, so devastatingly satirised by Evelyn Waugh in Scoop, which had sought the views of officials in background briefings and press conferences, willingly collaborated with appointed minders of authority “who impose restrictions and rules that keep them out of combat.”………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..

Hedges draws from a report published in April this year by the Costs of War project at the Watson Institute for International & Public Affairs at Brown University. Authored by Nick Turse, it found that since October 7, 2023, the war in Gaza had taken the lives of more members of the fourth estate than the US Civil War, both World Wars, the Korean War, the Indochina Wars, the Yugoslav Wars in the 1990s and 2000s, and the post-9/11 war in Afghanistan combined.  

Examples of shabby, disingenuous reporting – there are many to pick from – also feature. Hedges points to the woeful assessments by the press stable on the August slaying of Middle East Eye journalists Mohamed Salama and Ahmed Abu Aziz, Reuters photojournalist Hussam al-Masri and freelancers Moaz Abu Taha and Mariam Dagga in August. The “double tap” strike on Nasser Hospital not only killed the journalists but 15 others, including health workers. The talking points of the Israeli authorities were dutifully recorded. From CNN, we hear the IDF claim that the “hospital strike was aimed at Hamas camera.” Reuters repeated the line. From AFP, “Israel army says six ‘terrorists’ killed in Monday strikes on Gaza hospital.”

Such work was very much the poisonous fruit of Israel’s military unit known as the “Legitimisation Cell”, an entity tasked with blackening the name of Palestinian journalists as Hamas operatives. The libellous exercise also served to justify extrajudicial murder. That revelation, Hedges notes, came from the productive labours of the Tel-Aviv-based magazine +972, an outfit that knows a thing or two about war journalism. With all this, the only point of curiosity is why Hedges wished to address NPC in the first place? Even inchoate blobs can exert a pull. https://theaimn.net/inchoate-blobs-the-national-press-club-cancels-chris-hedges/

October 26, 2025 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Uncategorized | Leave a comment