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Defence Update
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Defence Cut in Mini-Budget but White Paper Aspirations Survive
The Defence Minister, Mr Kim Beazley insists that the major thrust of this year’s Defence White Paper remains intact in spite of cuts inflicted in the Government’s mini-budget on May 13. Such confidence, not surprisingly, is not shared by Opposition MPs, and even within some of the military. But Defence officers are used to this. This disquiet is not so much directed at preserving the major capital equipment and facilities programmes on which Mr Beazley and the White Paper set much store, but on the nitty gritty of the Defence apparatus, a key element of which is the personnel.
The fact of the matter is that $1. 4 billion has been sliced off the Defence Department’s forward estimates over the next three years. Those forward estimates were based on planning guidance which foresaw a real growth increase in Defence spending of around three per cent.
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