Page 4 - Australian Defence Mag Jul-Aug 2020

4 EDITORIAL
JULY/AUGUST 2020 | WWW.AUSTRALIANDEFENCE.COM.AU
LET THERE BE LIGHT
KATHERINE ZIESING | CANBERRA
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AS I WRITE this month’s editorial, Australia seems to be coming out of the worst of the COVID-19 pandemic. The virus is far from gone but is under control in most areas of the nation, a few hotspots notwithstand- ing. I even managed to go out for a cof- fee in a café, sit there, drink out of a real cup and speak to someone in person for the first time in months. Video and phone calls are great, along with increased time on email and other collaboration tools, but they do lack a truly human connection. The last face to face event I attended was the ADM Congress in February. It feels like a lifetime ago now.
Many businesses are now at the point where they are reassessing many of their short term COVID-19 responses. There is
budget has always been a target for easy budget cuts.
“But there’s another potential threat to the capital program, and that’s an internal one,” he points out in a recent piece. “Since the 2016 defence white paper, the capital budget has underspent by around $4.8 bil- lion. Meanwhile, the sustainment program has overspent by a very similar amount. There’s a lot going on behind those numbers (exchange rate adjustments, changes to ac- counting methods, and so on), but overall it looks like sustainment costs have increased more than expected and Defence has had to dip into capital funding to cover it.”
The shell game that is Defence funding has always been fascinating to me (and I’m a Hansard nerd for Senate Estimates; I know I need more hobbies). As Hellyer rightly points out, the mega programs alone in Defence (Attack and Hunter classes, JSF and Land 400) will take a significant portion of the acquisition bud- get and then an even larger portion of the eventual sustainment budget.
“Therefore, the scale and duration of the im- pact of COVID-19 on the economy will be cru- cial,” Hellyer explains. “A short, sharp recession that’satemporarybliponthetrajectoryofAus- tralia’sGDPwillmakeiteasierforthegovern- menttohonouritscommitmenttoincreased defence spending. But the affordability of the future force will still be under pressure from the spiralling cost of systems. A prolonged, grinding recession or even depression will af- fect both GDP and the defence budget, mak- ing it very unlikely that Defence will be able to both buy and operate the planned force, even with two per cent of GDP.”
I understand that an update to Defence’s most important planning documents are due out this year, before the Budget in Oc- tober. Like all ADM readers, I am anxious to see what will change and what will stay the same in our community.
The Defence community has been able to keep operating through this period thanks to a number of factors in their favour, good planning and agility being high on the list. It’s not all doom and gloom despite 2020 being challenging on so many fronts.
pressure to get ‘back to normal’ for many office environments. But normal wasn’t all it was cracked up to be. There are quite a few practices CO- VID-19 enforced out of necessity that need to be re-examined for long-term use. This period showed how much work can be done remotely when it has to be. The intro- verts amongst us rev-
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eled in the enforced home time in many ways. Going back to ‘normal’ for some will be stressful.
The impacts of this time will echo through our workplaces, economy and pol- itics for years to come. I am eager to see what practices COVID-19 brought about that will become the new normal for our sector. I would hope that hopping on plane for single meeting is curbed for a start. That we are more mindful of staying home when we’re sick. This whole situation has been an exercise in surge capacity in many ways.
The economic state of the nation is under pressure and so is our sector. As Australian Strategic Policy Institute’s Dr Marcus Hellyer points out, the Defence