One Nation defence plan could blow out budget by $400b and require conscription

One Nation leader Pauline Hanson’s defence spending plan would cost taxpayers an estimated extra $400 billion over four years – more than the entire cost of the AUKUS program – and require a combination of tax increases, massive budget cuts and possibly the reintroduction of conscription.

Hanson used a speech at Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort last November to urge Australia to lift defence spending to at least 5 per cent of gross domestic product, echoing a call by billionaire Gina Rinehart during last year’s election campaign.

One Nation’s polling surge, which has pushed it above Labor and the Coalition in several major surveys, has focused attention on the right-wing populist party’s policy platform and how it would operate if it becomes a major party.

There is no defence policy on One Nation’s website, and the party has not provided any detail on how the extra money would be raised, what it would be spent on or when Australia would hit the 5 per cent funding target.

Australia spends around 2 per cent of GDP on defence – around $63 billion a year.

Leading defence economist Marcus Hellyer said lifting core defence expenditure to 5 per cent of GDP would grow the budget to around $692 billion over the four-year forward estimates, up from $277 billion under the current policy settings.

This figure would continue to grow dramatically in subsequent years.

The plan for Australia to acquire a fleet of nuclear-powered submarines under AUKUS is estimated to cost between $268 billion and $368 billion over the next 30 years, a price tag that has helped spark intense debate about the merits of the plan.

Hellyer, head of research at the Strategic Analysis Australia think tank, said the huge defence spending increase would require either tax increases or cuts to portfolios such as health and aged care to avoid blowing out the budget.

The 5 per cent figure is associated with wartime economies such as Ukraine and Israel, he said.

“South Korea doesn’t even spend 5 per cent of GDP on defence, and it is sitting next to nuclear-armed North Korea,” he said.

“To spend that amount of money, you’d need to get a lot more people into the defence force to operate all the equipment you are buying.

“You immediately start to think of some form of national service because you won’t get there voluntarily in peacetime.”

Most strategic experts believe Australia should be spending at least 3 per cent of GDP on defence to fund AUKUS without hollowing out the rest of the defence force, he said.

Hellyer added that it would also be difficult to quickly ramp up defence spendin