Albanese can find $425bn for defence – but not $126bn for free childcare

Defence spending is outpacing inflation as the government says it can’t afford universal childcare, dental or lifting JobSeeker above the poverty line.

Credit - joolsgriff, March 4, 2017. An F-35A fighter jet see at the 2017 Australian International Airshow

When the federal government says it’s spending more on defence, there is a trade-off: your quality of life.

The more government spends on the military – or, more specifically, arms procurements and manufacturing – the less it’s spending on you.

In 2025-26, the Commonwealth spent $59bn on defence, an increase of $16.3bn (38%) over the previous five years – way above inflation over the same timeframe at 24%.

Defence also has an eye-watering $425bn decade-long capital investment commitment.

That’s enough to pay for free GPs ($54bn), adding dental into Medicare ($77.6bn), free university ($46.5bn), free childcare ($126bn), 1 million homes ($22.9bn) and lifting JobSeekers out of poverty ($95.7bn) with some chump change remaining.

Two caveats. First, the free childcare figure is the net cost from the PBO’s costing – it assumes the Child Care Subsidy is abolished and replaced with direct funding. Second, the timeframes are mixed: some figures are forward estimates, some are decade figures. It’s a rough comparison, not an accounting exercise. But the order of magnitude is the point. The $425bn defence commitment could fund every one of these policies and still leave money on the table.

The ‘can’t afford’ list

There’s one phrase the PM and his ministers have repeated ad nauseam since they came into office in 2022: “fiscally responsible” – or political speak for “we can’t afford it”. That catchphrase – or variations of it – has been used as justifications for constrained social spending, as outlined below.

JobSeeker – Anthony Albanese, 13 April 2022:

“We don’t have a plan to increase the JobSeeker allowance in our first budget. The truth is if we are fortunate enough to form government we will form [it] at a time when debt is heading towards a trillion dollars. Whereby you can’t repair all of the damage or do everything that you want to do immediately – you’ll be fiscally responsible.”

Dental into Medicare – Anthony Albanese, 4 April 2025:

“It’s a matter of making sure that the budget is responsible. We can’t do everything we’d like to do immediately.”

Dental into Medicare – Health Minister Mark Butler, 4 April 2025:

“[It] would be very expensive, a very big job to do”.

Universal childcare – Treasurer Jim Chalmers, 4 May 2026:

“We have to calibrate our ambitions to the budget realities that we confront.”

NDIS – Mark Butler, 22 April 2026:

“We can’t afford for the NDIS to continue growing at its present rate.”

The human costs to these policies are real. The NDIS cuts announced in this year’s budget will result in more than 240,000 people being kicked off disability support. And people on unemployment payments are four times more likely to die than the general population, with suicide the leading cause of death.

The defence splurge – compare the quotes

The words “fiscally responsible” vanish when government ministers speak of military spending – replaced instead with ‘record funding’. See below.

Anthony Albanese, 14 September 2025, announcing the $12bn Henderson Defence Precinct in WA.

“Today’s investment is another way we are delivering record defence funding to bolster Australia’s capabilities.”

Anthony Albanese, 6 March 2025, after the Trump administration called on Australia to lift its defence spending.

“My government is allocating significant additional resources for defence.”

Richard Marles, 17 April 2026:

“This is the biggest peacetime increase in Australia’s defence spending in our nation’s history.”

The government cries poor when pressed on social spending, but on the military? A bottomless pit. That’s not “fiscally responsible”. That’s priorities – and we, the people, are low on the list.