Page 56 - Australian Defence Magazine March-April 2022

56 DEFENCE BUSINESS VIEW FROM CANBERRA
MARCH-APRIL 2022 | WWW.AUSTRALIANDEFENCE.COM.AU
VIEW FROM
CANBERRA
Back in in January 2018, when Christopher Pyne was Defence Minister, the government announced an ambitious plan to lift Australian defence exports to take us into the top 10 global defence exporters.
A SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT | CANBERRA
SO HOW are we doing?
The answer is – not brilliantly, although the overall trajec- tory is promising.
Defence statistics show the estimated value of defence ex-
port permits for 2020-21 totalled $2.7 billion. For 2019-20, the sum was $5.2 billion and for 2018-19 it was $4.9 billion. For 2017-18 – the year in which Pyne launched the de-
fence export plan – the total was around $1.5 billion and the year before a touch over $1 billion.
On the face of it the direction is up, with some bumps along the way. There are plenty of qualifica-
tions to the latest stats.
However, other countries also showed big improvements – South Korea (+210 per cent), Israel (+59 per cent) and, best of all, Portugal (+1020 per cent). Clearly Portugal started from a low base.
When Minister Pyne made his announcement, Australia was ranked 20th, and we are now 16th, so on that basis we are definitely stepping up in the world.
At the time, Defence could total defence export values no more precisely than “in the order of $1.5 billion to $2.5 billion” so it certainly appears the data now is much better.
One is the Covid pandemic, which surely hasn’t helped.
Defence exports are notoriously volatile, varying from year to year, rising when that one big contract comes through, then falling in other years. That of course applies to every- one in the arms business.
The Australian figures relate to defence ex- port permits and calculation of the value of the items to be exported, which can change. The customer can decide to take more, or less, or none at all.
“THE SIPRI TRENDS IN INTERNATIONAL ARMS EXPORTS 2020 REPORT, RELEASED IN MARCH 2021 RANKS AUSTRALIA 16TH FOR THE PERIOD 2016-20”
The buyers of our stuff haven’t changed too much over the years – North America (28 per cent), Europe (21 per cent), Asia and Oceania (both 17 per cent) and Australia (12 per cent). The Australian component is the equipment sent abroad for demonstration or repair and which is going to come back.
On one metric, the government’s defence export policy has been a cracking success and that’s in outraging the Greens, who in late January vowed to end Australian support for the global arms trade.
Export values also include ADF equipment sent abroad for repairs and demonstrations. Even the Defence exports people acknowledge that this means year-to-year compari- sons of export values could be misleading. So, knock 12 per cent off the total.
Global rankings are compiled by the Stockholm Interna- tional Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), the well-regarded NGO which monitors global defence spending.
The SIPRI Trends in International Arms Exports 2020 re- port, released in March 2021 ranks Australia 16th for the period 2016-20, ahead of Canada but trailing Sweden.
Significantly, the latest SIPRI stats show Australia lifted defence exports volume by 81 per cent over the period 2011- 15 to 2016-20. Plenty of nations went backwards, such as the UK (-27 per cent) and Canada (-45 per cent).
That means scrapping the $3.8 billion De- fence Export Facility which assists Australian companies to export their wares. That’s just the start – the Greens would also reduce defence spending to 1.5 per cent
of GDP, down 25 per cent.
With an eye to the upcoming federal election and the
prospect that Labor and the Coalition will be evenly divided in the House of Representatives, they’ve drawn up a ‘bal- ance of power list’.
That’s the grab bag of their policies on climate change, the environment, security and much more which they would demand as the price for Greens support to form a government. ■
ABOVE: Australia currently ranks 16th in the global arms export market
DEFENCE