Budget 2017: In Defence of the Defence Budget

The Australian Budget is on everybody’s lips, and among the budget ‘winners’ and ‘losers’ which were announced yesterday, a big dollar figure was pledged to our defence force – $321 million is the figure. But it seems to come at a cost with foreign aid being slashed, a surprising contrast to the extra spending on our overseas soldiers.

There are a lot of defence-related conversations surrounding countries such as the US right now, however Australia is still somewhat distanced from these. The Daily spoke to Lise Waldek, Lecturer at the Department of Security Studies and Criminology at Macquarie University about these budget surprises.