Australian Financial Review, 2018
It would be odd to buy insurance without knowing what the policy covers. Nevertheless this pretty much describes how Australia’s annual defence spending, to be announced in Tuesday’s budget, has been worked out.
Defence spending is a nationwide insurance policy. It mitigates the risks and provides training and capacity to deal with potential but unknown future risks to the safety of Australians. Currently the price tag is about $35 billion per year or equivalently about $95 million per day. That is a lot of cash that is not going to schools, hospitals or statues of Captain Cook. On the other hand it’s only about $1500 per year per person. So arguably it’s not an unreasonably expensive insurance policy – if it delivered what it promised.
militaryppp.com 