{"id":6327,"date":"2013-05-15T12:14:34","date_gmt":"2013-05-15T02:14:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/?p=6327"},"modified":"2013-05-20T20:05:34","modified_gmt":"2013-05-20T10:05:34","slug":"the-defence-budget-a-first-look","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/the-defence-budget-a-first-look\/","title":{"rendered":"The Defence budget: a first look"},"content":{"rendered":"
Mark Thomson is\u00a0squirreled\u00a0away producing his usual tour de force budget analysis (on the streets May 30) so readers of The Strategist will have to make do with my first take on the Defence budget.<\/p>\n
Let’s start with a look at the headline figures. A reasonable figure for how much money Defence will have is \u2018Total Defence Funding\u2019. Last year’s budget (as amended at Additional Estimates) provided Defence with $24.355 billion. This year’s figure is $25.434 billion\u2014a nominal year-on-year increase of $1.079\u00a0billion, or 4.4%. But in real terms (allowing for inflation), the increase is a little over 2.1%, or about $519 million. It’s worth noting that the increase is against a pretty low baseline\u2014as Mark pointed out, last year’s budget represented a greater than 10% real decrease on the previous year. Still, I suspect that Defence is relatively relieved by this outcome. At least for this year, the Lord giveth.<\/p>\n
Table 1.<\/b> Total Defence funding.<\/p>\n
<\/a>Sources: Defence Additional Estimates Feb 2013<\/a>, Defence Portfolio Budget Statement May 2013<\/a>.<\/p>\n One of my major interests is the capital acquisition budget; in crude terms, the money available to buy the ADF’s new equipment and the facilities and support required to operate them. Looking out across the forward estimates, there’s some extra cash there, amounting to more than $3.5 billion compared to last year. (See the table below.) But the budget papers say that the defence budget has been ‘re-profiled’ over the forward estimates. In other words, money has been taken from future years to allow investment to proceed in the near-term. In that sense, there\u2019s actually no extra money for equipment in the long-term, apart from the $200 million earmarked for the Growler acquisition. That said, there’s more likelihood of the DMO actually being able to spend a more evenly distributed budget rather than eking out a living for a while and suddenly splurging.<\/p>\n Table 2.<\/b> Capital investment budget (major projects + minor projects + capital facilities)\u00a0\u2013 all figures in billions of dollars.<\/p>\n