Bigger defence budgets are more often a prelude to war, not peace
I have just returned from the Thai Burma border visiting countless refugees from the junta's merciless aerial bombing of their own civilians using Russian and Belarusian bombs. The military led a coup on February 1, 2021 after Aung San Suu Kyi won a massive re-election in 2020 for her National League for Democracy government. Hundreds of thousands resigned from their government positions to join the resistance and many fled.
I visited amputees and other wounded in Thailand's border hospitals. They are the lucky ones due to being carried across the border to receive medical treatment in Thailand. I met with the indigenous Chin leaders who spoke of more than 60 churches bombed. They are Baptists and as poor farmers their beautiful churches are their only communal source of pride; they are experiencing psychological terror as well as physical terror.
I met with Karen leaders in Thailand whose churches have also been obliterated by bombs. One of the largest ethnic groups in Myanmar, there are now 1.2 million Karen internally displaced. There are no active international NGOs and UN agencies able to function in ethnic areas – it is only the churches and Buddhist monasteries delivering basic food and limited health work. International aid groups must be approved by the junta, so the only help is in junta-controlled areas.
Civil society organisations have been blacklisted with many of their leaders imprisoned. Today there are now 3.5 million internally displaced people and 22 million Burmese in the country in dire need of humanitarian aid as the health and social systems have collapsed.
With the cessation of USAID, even the limited health support that was reaching vulnerable communities – including vaccines, and treatment for TB, malaria, and HIV – has dried up. And it was USAID feeding the Karen refugees in the nine camps on the Thai border. As of July 31, 2025 the nine refugee camps are to be closed with 108,000 refugees unable to feed themselves and no right to work in Thailand. The Thai Border Consortium, headed by an Australian, has failed to fill the USAid gap because EU and British donors have also cut aid. It is a complete humanitarian disaster.
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Defence spending decisions in donor nations are wreaking humanitarian havoc now.
But Australia has skin in the game – with Julie Bishop serving as the UN Special Envoy for Myanmar – while both the UN Security Council and ASEAN have called on the junta to halt its bombing campaign and allow humanitarian aid to flow.
I am proud that our government was one of the few nations that did not cut aid in its last Budget, and I call on the opposition to make aid a bipartisan commitment.
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