So the Coalition wants a khaki election. We should have a look at its khaki credentials.
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As Scott Morrison talks big with China, telling it that a military base in the Solomon Islands would be a red line for Australia, he presides over a government that is negligently failing to get the country ready for the military risks it faces this decade.
Sounding like one of those World War I German generals he resembles, Defence Minister Peter Dutton told us on Anzac Day that the only way to preserve peace was to prepare for war. Even if that's right, he hasn't done enough about it.
If the Coalition had a report card for its defence policy performance since 2013, the first line would in fact be very positive: on taking office, it began to increase spending.
But it then wasted money and failed to urgently strengthen our forces further as we faced rising strategic risk. Above all, it has failed to overturn obsolete strategy and force our defence organisation to focus on China, China and China.
Julia Gillard deserves condemnation for cutting defence spending to 1.5 per cent of gross domestic product at a time when there was already reason to worry about a severe future threat from the north. Tony Abbott set spending on course for 2 per cent, which it has reached.
When Labor lost office, it had plans for the routine task of buying new equipment to replace old; it also proposed to increase our strength a little. But it didn't budget enough money.
So greater spending under the Coalition has ensured that we could get our current force level, rather than less.
But that spending would have been enough for a lot more military strength if this government had not turned the defence budget into a resource for buying jobs and votes.
Australia can hardly make military aircraft, thankfully, so we import them, usually getting quick delivery and good value for money. But if something floats or moves on land, the Coalition almost certainly wants to build it in Australia, wasting funds and, critically, time.
Also, if something is made here, the navy and army have more scope for fiddling with the design, adding yet more time, cost and risk. So the first of our forthcoming made-in-Adelaide frigates won't be operational until around 2033.
The frigate program is running late and struggling to meet its specification - and the Coalition is entirely responsible. The former effort to build big diesel submarines was also running off the rails last year when sudden availability of US-UK nuclear technology rightly prompted its cancellation.
The government deliberately delays warship delivery even further by stretching out construction to ensure shipyards won't run out of work. So the last of the nine frigates will probably arrive around 2045.
This, presumably, is what Dutton means when he talks about preparing for war. Let's hope that China is happy to wait two decades or so before making a move on Taiwan and then expanding its military perimeter to Southeast Asia.
Labor endorses domestic defence production, by the way.
The Coalition has boosted funding for cyber warfare, which is important, but in general it has made only incremental additions to a few types of military capability: three more aircraft here, two more there, and so on.
By 2015, China's aggression in the South China Sea was obvious. The government should have reacted by rapidly expanding the navy and air force, using the simple method of adding a little extra funding to retain old equipment.
Only about 10 years ago we finished a difficult but effective upgrade program for four frigates. Then in 2015 we began discarding them, scrapping two and selling two to Chile.
We should have kept all four, making a current fleet of 15 destroyers and frigates instead of 11 (though we might eventually give up on surface warships altogether when we decide they're too vulnerable).
A series of upgrades of our 71 Hornet fighters was completed in 2013, but we retired the lot, selling some to Canada, as replacement F-35s arrived. The government should have kept the Hornets and formed a fifth fighter squadron, cycling them in and out of storage to spread the wear and tear.
A large reserve of fighters in hangars would have been available for a sixth squadron in a crisis.
No doubt the navy and air force, keen on logistical simplicity and business as usual despite the rising threat, failed to recommend these force expansions.
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Business as usual for the services also means sticking to their beloved "Balanced Force" policy, which means having a wide variety of capabilities for different types of conflict. This is an excuse for the army, for example, to keep seeking equipment suitable for the Middle East.
Someone needs to grab the Defence Department and services by the scruff of the neck and order them to shape a strategy and acquisition plan entirely focused on meeting the risk from China - and meeting it quickly.
When Dutton became defence minister last year, there was hope he would do that. He didn't.
None of his predecessors was likely to. One, Marise Payne, was a mere backbencher before Malcolm Turnbull gave her the job.
We must give Morrison credit for securing the AUKUS technology partnership with the US and UK, including the stupendous achievement of gaining their support for us acquiring nuclear submarines.
But he and Dutton are fouling that up, too. The nuclear submarines will cost too much and turn up too late - because the government insists on building them in Adelaide.
- Bradley Perrett was based in Beijing as a journalist from 2004 to 2020.