 Free Friday, Defence Minister, the Prime Minister launched the 2013 Defence White Paper, the sequel to 2009. You were at the Red Cup at Premier, what did you think? Well it was a chilly morning in Canberra but it was a pretty good launch actually. Australia seems to be doing these Defence White Paper launches with a bit of American style pomp these days. I was at the one in 2009 where Kim and Rudd kicked off his White Paper on the back of a frigate. This time round it was in a hangar surrounded by aircraft. There was a super hornet over to one side of C17 where the press conference was held. It was a surprisingly good launch, a surprisingly solid script if you like. If this is a movie it's actually a sequel that's better than the original. But no one was really expecting a blockbuster this time. I mean our expectations were pretty low. We didn't really think that there'd be all that much meat in this White Paper but I've been pleasantly surprised. There's a clear shift in the way that the White Paper writing team has assessed the region that Australia is in. Well I was pleasantly surprised too. I thought that the hand of various senior officials was pretty obvious in the drafting of this thing. It was sophisticated strategic analysis and in many ways that was the strong part. The weak part is still the budget if you like. I mean this should be a movie made on a big budget but at the moment we just don't know how much it's going to cost. But we know how much everybody would like to spend, which is 2% roughly TDP, which seems to have been unanimous amongst the Prime Minister, the Defence Minister, former Defence Ministers and future Defence Ministers as well. Possibly. But 2% is still leaving the Defence Force underfunded by about $7.5 billion and no one's really yet made it clear what sort of risks we're incurring whilst we leave Defence underfunded to that extent. There was a promising sign that there'll be a slight budget boost in the budget in a couple of weeks time. There was some money allocated to purchases like the Digital 12 Growlers. But still there's a lot of question marks. This White Paper will promise a Defence funding model that would react to the adversity of the global financial crisis. But there's only 700 words and 132 page documents. So not quite what we're expecting there. No and I agree with you on all of that. I think that we were hoping that the Prime Minister would address some of this in her script if you like at the launch of the White Paper. But really we were given assurances that the government will try and move back towards 2% of the GDP. The opposition has promised the same. There almost seems to be a gentleman's agreement between the two sides that they weren't pushed that topic too hard. And in the meantime, those of us who are concerned about Australian Defence policy are left wondering how is the government or a future government going to get the Australian Defence Force back to the level spending it needs to do all the things that the White Paper says it should do. And the White Paper does lay out a pretty sensible set of missions, a pretty sensible structure for Australian Defence policy in terms of challenges and objectives. It's just that we're still a bit in the dark as to how we're going to get there. And in this White Paper there are the big stars, the big ticket purchases. So we've got a promise of joint strike fighters still to come. We've got now a mixed fleet. We're going to get new armadale or patrol class, patrol boat class replacements. We're going to see the new amphibious ships. We're going to see the new air warfare destroyers all coming down the track. But what's missing, I think, really in the modernisation of the Defence Force is the sort of deeper production values. So what kind of infrastructure and basing we're going to see around the country? What kind of logistics systems will underpin these big new purchases? How we will deliver fuel in Northern Australia, for example. So there's a lot of those questions still to be asked. It kind of feels like a work that's kind of halfway there but not quite fully convincing to me that there's going to be a modern Defence Force ready to face the challenges of the Asian century. Well, I see this White Paper as in some ways a good corrective to the 2009 White Paper which promised a lot. It kind of spoke loudly but ended up carrying a pretty small stick to use a sort of a reverse definition of what good statesmanship should be all about. But at the same time we're still left wondering what will the next White Paper look like. I think this is kind of part two of a trilogy of films. And I suspect that the best is going to have to be yet to come whether it's from one particular director or another. And I think you're right, a lot of the, and very nicely done with that little director references, that was beautiful. But I think you're right, we're still not quite where we need to be as far as developing a military strategy for new and uncertain times. A lot of the references to what the ADF will do are still under the old bottle talking about deterring and defeating lodgements in the archipelago around Australia. The principal tasks for the ADF are still the same. I'm sorry, you're right, I think there's still a way to go and this is only the second part of a trilogy. With that in mind, reviewing the White Paper in its entirety, what would you give it out of five stars? Look, if this was a movie, I'd give it probably three and a half. But I really want to know how much it costs. And when I find that out, it will be either a two or a five. A two or a five? Or I'm going to give it about two and a half just to split the difference.