WENDELL HUSSEY | Cadet | CONTACT
A groundbreaking report has been released by South Betoota Polytechnic’s Media, Memes And Journalism Faculty today, detailing a trend of note.
The new 452 page report outlines the different guidelines for reporting on defence spending to reporting on other uses of taxpayer dollars.
“The key thing any journalist or media personality needs to do is make sure that the language used around defence spending is extremely dry, convoluted and boring,” said the lead researcher today.
“And then the language around stuff like life saving medical treatments or the bare minimum social security payments to keep people from being homeless or turning to crime – is really really emotive and dehumanising.”
“That’s the key to make sure that 100s of billions of dollars can just be carved off for arms companies based primarily in the United States and Kingdom, without incensing taxpayers.”
The report was released this week in the wake of a raft of NATO countries increasing their defence budgets from 2ish% of GDP, to 5%.
While only a couple of percent, the actually amount of billions is of course eye-watering.
The move followed US pressure on Australia to nearly double our defence spending, from the current amount of 2%.
That of course would see Australia spend an extra 50 billion or so of magic money that definitely wouldn’t need to come from cutting something like the NDIS, education, social security or health.
The pressure from the largest manufacturer of weapons (43% of weapons globally), to increase the global spending on weapons, comes after they dropped a few bombs on a regional superpower and made everyone scared of a full blown global conflict.
“Imagine if the government came out and announced a 50 billion dollar yearly injection to the health, education, public housing and social services,” laughed the researcher.
“There would be blood on the street.”
“Which is why you need to drip feed articles hamming up the threat of invasion from China and World War 3, and then gently massage huge defence funding requests with language that makes people tune out.”
The Prime Minister has currently downplayed the US requests to up defence spending, but amidst the ‘global climate,’ arms lobbyists like the PM who signed off on a 368 billion dollar AUKUS sub deal remain hopeful of following the tried and tested formula.
More to come.
