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AUSTRALIA TO REVIEW DEFENCE STRATEGY

Press Release

The Australian Government is to commission a new White Paper on Defence and conduct a re-assessment of Australia’s future strategic outlook.

Officially opening the Royal Australia Navy’s Sea Power Conference in Sydney this week, Australia’s new Minister for Defence, Mr. Joel Fitzgibbon, said that the new Government placed a high value on defence and strategic planning, and promoting excellence in strategic policy and capability development.

Currently, the ADF had approximately 3500 soldiers, sailors and air personnel deployed overseas serving Australia’s national interests. Another 500 ADF personnel were currently undertaking border protection activities.

Global terrorism, wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the proliferation of nuclear weapons - including North Korea’s nuclear tests and Iran’s emerging nuclear program - emerging fragile states in the South West Pacific, rising tensions in the Taiwan Straits, and paradigm shifts in the global distribution of power, all these developments and events demand a review of Australia’s strategic outlook.

The Minister said that the White Paper would be essential to ensuring Australia had a sound basis for making the hard decisions needed to establish Defence’s mission and what capability would be needed to achieve strategic objectives.

He said that the Government was committed to growing the Defence budget by 3 per cent in real terms over the course of the next decade. On defence equipment procurement programs, the Minister said that delays, cost blow-outs and failure to deliver military hardware on time, would not be permitted.


Canberra
30 January 2008

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