Albanese Follows Trump’s Lead by Increasing Military Spending Whilst Cutting Disability Funding

Australian defence minister Richard Marles announced that the government will raise military spending to 3 percent of GDP by 2033, during a 16 April 2026 speech at the National Press Club, whilst health minister Mark Butler addressed the same venue on 22 April, spruiking heavy cuts to disabilities support, and taken together this reflects the agenda of the US Trump White House.

Marles explained that changes in defence spending in the coming 12 May delivered 2026-27 budget will reflect an additional $14 billion rise over the next four years, which translates as a $117 billion spent on defence over the next decade. Whereas a week later, Butler outlined that he’ll be cutting $15 billion from the National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS) over the next four years.

These announcements being just a week apart and involving an increase in $14 billion on military spending and a reduction of $15 billion on assisting people with disabilities involves a clear equation and a shifting in government priorities, whereby building and acquiring weapons to assist the US in foreign theatres of war now trumps social services to assist vulnerable members of our community.

But the math that federal Labor is employing here, isn’t even its own. The Albanese government is doing exactly as the US Trump administration has been demanding Australia and all of its other allies do since it came to power in January 2025, and that is to raise military spending, which includes a veiled threat of no longer being a US ally if such a hike in our defence spend is not forthcoming.

The other side of the equation is dumb math that Washington doesn’t need to explain: if a nation is to up its spending on weapons of war, then it must cut spending on social services, and being left to do the heavy lifting on where to source these extra funds the health minister and PM Anthony Albanese have chosen people with disabilities as a prime vulnerable sector to deprive.

Criminalising disability support

Butler, whose portfolio is supposed to be about improving health, outlined at the National Press Club last month that instead of the projected $70 billion that the NDIS was expected to sit at by 2030, this is being reduced to $55 billion, which translates to around 160,000 people now eligible for disability supports being cut from the program.

The health minister has decided that being diagnosed by a qualified professional with a disability will no longer mean that an individual is eligible, as he will be moving legislation to “introduce standardised, evidence-based assessments”, so if an individual with disabilities is assessed by the test to have a higher functioning capacity then they’ll no longer be eligible for such assistance.

Indeed, at the press club, Butler cast the 2013 Gillard government initiative to assist Australians living with disabilities, as a criminal con job, with no visible evidence for 90 percent of claims, which means 60,000 claims a day are made without proof, and he further suggested that the Australian Criminal Intelligence Commission has found criminals are paying kickbacks to recipients with disabilities.

The slashing of social services and overseas aid is exactly what Washington has been up to as well: that’s what Elon Musk’s DOGE initiative was all about. And Washington has recently made significant cuts to medical funding for the poorest, as well as reductions to social security, although congress blocked US president Donald Trump’s long-spruiked cuts to disability programs.

The Albanese government did initially attempt to resist US pressure to increase defence spending, however the concurrent slashing of disability funding and increased spending on bombs undeniably reveals that Labor is no longer resisting this coercion, and the intense rise in support for One Nation in the polls is likely to have played a significant role in its decision to follow Trump.

Splashing out on shiny weapons

The defence minister put his decision to up military spending to 3 percent of GDP into context, when he explained that the former Coalition government “increased defence spending by just $10 billion over the decade”, “which is to say, this Labor government has done 12 times as much in four years as the Liberals did in nine”.

As Marles waxed lyrical about his warmongering ways, he forgot the nation is aware that US secretary of war Pete Hegseth has been pushing for a rise in defence spending to 3.5 percent of GDP since mid-2025. And when Trump was asked about whether this spending hike had satisfied him, he raised his annoyance about Australia not joining the US forces in the Strait of Hormuz instead.

Increases to defence spending are a whole-of-west initiative being run by the Trump administration, as Washington has too been pressuring its European allies to raise their defence spend to 5 percent of their respective GDPs. And the 2025 Hague Summit Declaration saw all NATO leaders presenting a joint commitment to make this hike in military spending by 2035.

Speculation regarding the military spending push suggested that a United States in decline was no longer willing to fit the bill for military spending in regard to its allies no longer appears to be so plausible, as Washington is not pulling back on its spend on weapons but is itself making slashes to its own social services in order to fund its domestic military spending increases.

In early April, Trump released his spending proposal for the 2027 fiscal year and he’s suggesting to raise military spending to $1.5 trillion a year. Currently, US defence spending sits at over $900 billion. And in order to make this hike, Washington is going to up discretionary spending by around $250 billion, pass a bill for an additional $350 billion and slash spending on social services by $73 billion.

Hard rains coming  

Since the second coming of the Trump administration, the president has passed more than 250 executive orders. These have in part sought to roll back what he refers to as the “woke agenda”, which means government attacks on the rights for people of colour, women, LGBTIQA+ peoples and Indigenous peoples, while his administration has also been eroding social services.

The current US administration appears to be attempting to roll back rights to the time before the 1950s civil rights movement, as well as whittling away at the 1930s established welfare state, so that government will no longer have such responsibilities to its constituents. And on the global stage, the Trump White House is seeking to tear down international law and extinguish human rights.

The Trump administration is reshaping the US into an authoritarian nation, and it’s consolidated its power via a mass deportation drive of undocumented immigrants, which includes a growing number of detainment camps, and the use of excessive force by immigration agents in their hunting down of migrants to lock up, which is now further unofficially sanctioned to be used upon US citizens.

The current White House commenced pushing for Australian institutions to cease diversity hiring and as well, the recognition of more than two sexes early last year. But since late 2025, it has too announced that its actively monitoring migration crime in this country, and last month, it came to light that the local US embassy is actively promoting pro-US propaganda in our public sphere.

But this shift towards extreme, far right politicking is already well underway in this country. The fact that the Albanese government is attacking people with disabilities, whilst seeking to up national defence spending is a clear reflection that the Trump agenda is being progressed locally, with its own homegrown character.

Australian politicians have always had a predilection for the denial of rights. Trump has expressed his admiration for the harsh regime that this country applies to asylum seekers. And the NSW Minns government recently set the NSW police upon pro-Palestinians with the use of unbridled force to teach them a lesson about not speaking out against the Gaza genocide.

One aspect to remember about the Nazis is not only did they target Jewish people in a similar manner to the way in which Trump is pursuing undocumented migrants. But the Nazis also targeted Roma people, LGBTIQA+ people and people with disabilities.

The Nazis even established a sterilization program for people with disabilities and on top of that, they murdered at least 250,000 of these people.