This week, ASPI released the 21st edition of its annual Cost of Defence budget brief ^[1], Australia’s most comprehensive analysis of defence spending. In this podcast episode, ASPI’s defence, strategy and national security program director Michael Shoebridge speaks with the report’s lead author, ASPI senior analyst Marcus Hellyer, about the biggest areas of spending for Defence and challenges for the department, as well as the difficult choices the new government faces given supply-chain disruptions, inflation and the conflict in Ukraine.