Gina Rinehart calls for a huge change to Australia’s military at moving Anzac Day vigil

By MAX ALDRED FOR DAILY MAIL AUSTRALIA

Published: 14:52 BST, 24 April 2025 | Updated: 14:58 BST, 24 April 2025

Australia’s richest person, mining magnate Gina Rinehart, has called for Australia to more than double its defence budget at an Anzac eve sunset vigil. 

Ms Rinehart, Opposition Leader Peter Dutton and Defence Minister Richard Marles attended the Channel Seven Anzac Day Eve ceremony outside the Sydney Opera House on Thursday evening. 

Former prime ministers Tony Abbott, Scott Morrison, and John Howard were also in attendance. 

Ms Rinehart used the platform to call upon leaders to spend five per cent of the nation’s gross domestic product (GDP) on defence. 

Defence spending has been at 2.02 per cent of GDP under Labor who are projected to increase funding to 2.3 per cent by 2034. For comparison, the US spends about 3.4 per cent of its GDP on defence.

Mr Dutton on Wednesday said a Coalition government would increase defence spending to 2.5 per cent of GDP by the end of the decade. 

From there spending would reach 3 per cent of GDP by 2035, the amount US president Donald Trump called on his allies to spend. 

The mining billionaire said the government has not done enough to protect Australians with tensions rising in the region and across the globe.

Mining magnate Gina Rinehart is pictured at the Channel Seven Anzac Day eve ceremony 

Ms Rinehart’s ambitious defence spending hike proposal would significantly exceed those proposed by political leaders of either major party

‘We urgently need to do more to defend Australians, starting with protecting our ports, airports, sea lanes and other vital infrastructure, and significantly boosting our smart sea mines, war drones and Israeli-style (ballistic defence) domes accordingly,’ Ms Rinehart told the crowd. 

‘Boosting our defence manufacturing here in Australia, as well as our budget to five per cent of GDP. Five per cent of GDP, like Europe is moving towards.

‘I have so much more to say on this, at another time.’

It is unclear how Ms Rinehart proposes the government afford such a spending increase. 

The Coalition’s plan to increase spending to 3 per cent would cost at least $100billion in the first half of the 2030s. 

‘The prime minister and the deputy prime minister regularly tell Australians that we live in the most precarious period since the end of the Second World War,’ Dutton said in a statement on Wednesday. 

‘Yet, over the last three years, Labor has done nothing about it, other than rip money out of defence, weakening strength and morale.’

Mr Dutton would not disclose exactly how a Coalition government would cover such expenditure.

Former Prime Minister Tony Abbot and Opposition Leader Peter Dutton (left and second left) are pictured greeting Ms Rinehart at the sunset vigil outside the Sydney Opera House

He said he would begin by repealing Labor’s marginal tax cuts, due to take effect from mid-2027. 

Australia has not spent five per cent of its GDP on defence since the Korean War in the 1950s and only a select few countries do so today. 

Liberal campaign spokesman Senator James Paterson defended the party’s defence target of 3 per cent of GDP when he appeared on Sky News on Thursday. 

‘Nobody contends that we’re spending enough on defence right now,’ he said.

Senator Paterson suggested Australia’s delayed response to the live firing exercises of a Chinese warship in the Tasman Sea demonstrated the need for increased military spending. 

Defence Minister Richard Marles said the Albanese government had budgeted for ‘the biggest peacetime increase in defence spending that has occurred in Australian history’. 

‘We certainly agree that the world is an unpredictable place, and that our strategic circumstances are as complex and in some respects, as threatening as we have faced since the end of the Second World War,’ he said at a press conference on Thursday. 

‘So, it’s no small step that we’ve already taken, and we will continue to assess the strategic circumstances and what is the appropriate defence spend in the context of all of that.’

:
Gina Rinehart calls for a huge change to Australia’s military at moving Anzac Day vigil

***
Read more at DailyMail.co.uk