By Brendan Nicholson
DESPITE dire warnings about funding cuts and belt-tightening, the Rudd Government has maintained John Howard's commitment to increase defence spending by 3% a year until 2015-16 and extended that increase for two additional years.
In this budget, the coming year's defence spending is estimated at a record $22.69 billion.
Despite the Government's insistence that Defence must find cuts of $1 billion per year for the next 10 years, the organisation comes out of the budget process in much better shape than it could have hoped for.
On top of the 3% increase in funding, the Australian Defence Force and the Department of Defence together benefit from an additional increase to cover inflation.
That is based on the "non-farm GDP", which is very high this year because of high resource export earnings, and amounts to an additional 6.4% of funding on top of the 3%.
The $1 billion in enforced savings will be set aside to be reinvested in other defence projects, including $5.1 million to be spent over four years on Labor's promised Asia-Pacific Centre for Civil-Military Co-operation.
Last year, the Howard government allocated a then record $22 billion to Defence, but that was underspent by more than $1 billion.
The coming year's budget includes $1.036 billion to cover the cost of military operations including $618.9 million in Afghanistan, $215.7 million in Iraq, $174.3 million in East Timor and $27.1 million in the Solomon Islands.
Close to 1000 army, navy and air force personnel will operate in and around Iraq for the forseeable future, even after the withdrawal in June of the 600 or so soldiers designated as "combat troops".
Defence Minister Joel Fitzgibbon said another $26 million would be committed to defence co-operation with Australia's allies in the region, particularly on counter-terrorism efforts with Indonesia, the Philippines and Thailand.
The Government announced last night that real growth in total Defence spending was expected to average not 3% but 4% a year over the next four years as its white paper was implemented.
As part of a package of measures to encourage more personnel to join and stay in the army, navy and air force, Defence will this year spend $12 million on a trial giving free basic medical and dental care to the dependants of ADF members in five locations.
After a number of apparent suicides of current and past ADF members, another $2 million will be spent improving mental health services for ADF members from recruitment to discharge.
To strengthen the Iraqi security forces, Defence will spend $700,000 over the coming year bringing senior Iraqi personnel to Australia for training.
Preliminary work will continue to find a new submarine capability to replace the fleet of six Collins Class subs.