Labor announces $50bn boost to defence spending as it flags non-citizens may serve in ADF

The defence minister, Richard Marles, says Australia will spend an extra $50.3bn on defence over the next 10 years. Photograph: Mike Bowers/The Guardian

Australia is pouring an extra $50bn into defence spending over the next 10 years, as part of an overhaul that the federal government says will ensure the military can project power further from its shores.

The defence minister, Richard Marles, has also flagged plans to recruit non-citizens to serve in the Australian defence force to address workforce shortages.

Releasing two major defence planning documents on Wednesday, Marles said the Albanese government would spend $50.3bn extra on defence over the next 10 years, when compared with the trajectory inherited from the Coalition.

That includes an extra $5.7bn over the first four-year budget cycle, in a sign that most of the funding is for the medium to long term. The Coalition has repeatedly argued the key test for Marles is how much funding he can secure in the looming budget.

This immediate funding includes $1bn over the next four years for long-range strike, targeting and autonomous systems. The Aukus nuclear-powered submarines are another key spending area for defence.

More than a year ago, the defence strategic review warned that the ADF was structured for “a bygone era” and the security environment was “radically different”.

Marles said the national defence strategy announced on Wednesday would transform the ADF and equip it “to survive in a much less certain world”.

Marles said Australia’s national security “actually lies in the heart of our region”, because “the defence of Australia does not mean much without the collective security of the region in which we live”.

He stressed the need for Australia to seek to project military power further from its shores.

“To contribute to regional security we must be able to project,” he said.

“To resist the coercion that would come from the disruption of our sear lines of communication we must be able to project. And to defence Australia’s interests in the geography-less domain of cyber we must be able to project.”

Marles said China’s military buildup was occurring without transparency or reassurance, and intensifying competition between Beijing and Washington was creating an environment “where the risk of miscalculation is more ominous and the consequences more severe”.

Amid longstanding challenges with recruitment and retention of ADF personnel, the new strategy calls for wider eligibility criteria. That could include options to recruit people who are not Australian citizens and streamlining the recruiting system.

“Like the defence forces of our friends and allies, we also need to look at ways in which we can recruit from among certain non-Australian citizens to serve in the ADF,” Marles said.

A second document released on Wednesday is the integrated investment program, which lays out spending on defence capabilities including Aukus over the next 10 years.

Marles said while the new spending program includes extra funding, it “also required the reprioritisation of $22.5bn over the next four years and $72.8bn over the decade”.

The announcement comes two weeks after Marles hinted that some programs would be cut, even as defence spending increases overall.

Australia’s defence spending is on track to increase from about 2% of Australia’s economic output to 2.4% by 2033-34.

The Labor government’s rationale for making the changes is that it wants to rein in the practice of “over-programming”, where a raft of defence projects are pledged without enough money allocated to fund them.

In a speech to the Sydney Institute two weeks ago, Marles said the former Coalition government had laid down a defence budget at “historically high levels of over-programming”. In some cases, he said, “for every $100 Defence had to spend it was planning to spend $140”.

While the government argues some level of over-programming is prudent to allow for unforeseen circumstances or delays, it says excessive use of the practice is “costly for industry and ultimately dishonest” because not all projects will actually happen and “everyone is just waiting for the eventual train-wreck”.

Labor has been highly critical of the Coalition for “make-believe announcements or hoopla”.

In turn, the Coalition has accused Marles of failing to secure the increase in defence spending in the near term that the increasingly complex strategic environment demands.